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Citrix XenServer vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 17, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.8
Citrix XenServer offers significant savings and flexibility, justifying its cost through excellent virtualization, resource utilization, and performance benefits.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMware vSphere reduces costs and boosts efficiency by minimizing physical servers, speeding deployment, and saving electricity and hardware.
My clients generally maintain their Citrix infrastructure without shifting, suggesting stability and reliable operation as Citrix XenServer is fully established.
We can say 10% is the approximate amount of savings because most of the things are automated and streamlined, so the manual work is eliminated in most cases.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
4.2
Citrix XenServer support is knowledgeable yet inconsistent, with varying response times and expertise affecting user satisfaction and experiences.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware vSphere's customer service is friendly and available, though response times and escalation for complex issues vary.
With valid licenses, we can access hotfixes, service packs, knowledge base, self-help tools, diagnostics, downloads, live chat, and phone support.
They do not provide adequate support for midsize businesses.
There appear to be very few engineers at Citrix who understand the problems.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Citrix XenServer is praised for scalability and ease of use, despite some disk management limitations and update frequency concerns.
Sentiment score
7.3
VMware vSphere offers exceptional scalability, flexibility, and performance, making it ideal for diverse enterprise needs and large-scale environments.
Familiarity with Linux can enhance its performance and usability.
Citrix XenServer is definitely scalable enough.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
It is a highly scalable solution.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Citrix XenServer offers reliable performance and high stability, with effective updates and documentation beneficial for various business sizes.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMware vSphere is stable and reliable, with minimal crashes, responsive support, and effectively manages updates with improved stability.
It runs very stably.
I haven't had any significant issues with Citrix XenServer installations over the last 10-15 years.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
Mostly we don't have issues, but sometimes we have faced some stability issues because of some bugs and some CPU compatibility issues with Intel CPUs.
 

Room For Improvement

Citrix XenServer requires better backup, Linux support, network management, third-party integration, and user interface modernization to enhance usability.
VMware vSphere's costly, complex interface faces stability and integration issues, with inadequate documentation and reliance on Flash problematic.
Although the product is technically competitive, it is not widely known or used due to poor marketing.
Citrix needs to improve the hypervisor, specifically in security and performance.
We can implement high availability and live migration with pools, along with security and backup to enable role-based access control for safer management.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
 

Setup Cost

Citrix XenServer is a cost-effective virtualization solution with free basic features, but commercial support and scaling increase costs.
VMware vSphere is seen as costly, with complex licensing, although valued for stability and features compared to competitors.
It is cheaper compared to its competitors.
Organizations save substantial money because competing solutions, such as VMware, cost double or triple.
The pricing and licensing policy of Citrix XenServer is not transparent and quite confusing.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Citrix XenServer offers cost-effective virtualization with high availability, ease of deployment, robust security, and scalability for small to medium businesses.
VMware vSphere excels in availability, scalability, and management with features like vMotion, DRS, and robust security.
The benefits from using Citrix include increased productivity, as users don't have to search for what they need to open.
The most valuable feature is transferring and sharing applications that allow users to move files between devices, including smartphones, tablets, and computers without needing USB cables, internet connections, or data usage.
It provides secure access to applications and resources, which is crucial for us and our clients.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
I always use VMware vSphere vMotion; we work with this feature all the time. vMotion is very useful; that's why we use the virtualization.
 

Categories and Ranking

Citrix XenServer
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware vSphere
Ranking in Server Virtualization Software
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
457
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Server Virtualization Software category, the mindshare of Citrix XenServer is 4.8%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSphere is 16.8%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Server Virtualization Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSphere16.8%
Citrix XenServer4.8%
Other78.4%
Server Virtualization Software
 

Q&A Highlights

AS
Mar 05, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

Jörg Köhler - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting benefits from robust consulting while also recognizing the need for improved disk management
When it comes to optimization, that's one of the weaker points of Citrix XenServer, especially regarding disk management, which is somewhat clumsy. Backup-related issues and disk management should be improved. Especially concerning backup, as discussions with Veeam engineers about Citrix XenServer backup strategy indicate there might not be a solution from Veeam soon. License optimization is not such a significant problem, but licenses are quite complicated. Vendors constantly invent new license models, making it difficult to order the correct licenses needed. There is not a big difference between Citrix and VMware products because Citrix can implement Windows and Linux anyway.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

VL
Jan 13, 2015
vSphere vs. RHEV vs. Hyper-V vs. XenServer
We have used the following functions: 1. Hypervisor: to ensure that the virtual server provide web and email services to the company, thus providing a stable operation a with single sign-on integration of an AD server and vCenter. 2. Network and Storage: centralized data server…
 

Answers from the Community

AS
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019
Sure, at a high level: VMware products allow you to set up multiple virtual servers on a single physical server. This allows you to run the virtual servers on the physical server resources. It is an easy way to replicate environments so that there are no surprises when you go to production. You can set up development, QA and UAT all on the same physical box which are identical. Citrix products...
2 out of 9 answers
it_user99459 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 23, 2014
Vmware and Citrix both do similar things. They both offer server virtualization and desktop virtualization (plus other related software). VMware is the clear market leader for server virtualzation (Vsphere) and Citrix is the leader in desktop / application virtualization (Xendesktop / Xenapp). They both offer network software enhancements (and Citrix has NetScaler hardware). If you have any questions, please email howieb@hotmail.com
it_user113568 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 23, 2014
Adding to Howard's points above, VMware uses their existing Hypervisor platform to enable customers build their own Cloud too.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business174
Midsize Enterprise137
Large Enterprise256
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Citrix Hypervisor?
The core function enables multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server. This maximizes hardware utilization and efficiency.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Hypervisor?
Licensing with Citrix XenServer is very cost-effective. Organizations save substantial money because competing solutions, such as VMware, cost double or triple. If you are using Citrix load only, t...
What needs improvement with Citrix Hypervisor?
I would say I would need a self-service portal as an additional feature to see in the future to make it even better.
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?
For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Hypervisor
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

U.S. Army Shared Services Center, SoftLayer, Educational Services of America, Independent Bank, and SK Telecom.
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix XenServer vs. VMware vSphere and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.