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Densify vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Densify
Ranking in Cloud Management
27th
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
8th
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (11th), Cloud Analytics (5th)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Cost Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Densify is 2.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.6%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)2.6%
Densify2.3%
Other95.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

AbhishekGupta2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr PreSales Cloud Architect at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Optimized cloud costs and automated right‑sizing have reduced spend while reporting needs improvement
The best features Densify offers are actionable optimization recommendations, which tell you how to reduce costs while maintaining performance; the ML-powered predictive analytics feature, which considers historical patterns to provide recommendations; multi-cloud coverage for optimization across AWS, Azure, and GCP; and a solid balance between performance and cost. Out of those features, I find myself relying on actionable optimization recommendations and predictive analytics features the most because Densify goes one step beyond by providing recommendations considering historical patterns, especially for workloads that only spike during certain times of the month. Densify has positively impacted my organization by providing significant cost savings through right-sizing and eliminating inefficient resources, allowing faster decisions based on data, and reducing manual intervention for cloud operations, thus providing automation of basic cloud routines. I usually see a twenty-five to thirty percent cost saving in my customer's environment, and from a time-saving perspective, it has almost halved the time of the operations team.
Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight
The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product has provided us with a more comprehensive solution that is now replacing nearly all other tools which were previously used in the different platforms and environments within the account."
"The ability to increase server density inside of my environment, which has helped me drive reduction in costs."
"The tool will come back and tell us that we can operate with 1,000 minutes as an example, save 90% on the contractual rate and not run into any issues."
"The Densify Control Console, and Environment Status."
"Our team members are now spending more productive time on other priorities and are handling much more effective tasks."
"One would be the automatic rebalancing of the environment. That was one feature which helped. With that, we could improve our efficiency of our VMware infrastructure."
"I would say that the initial thing is that it provides us with a technological basis to expand capacity management beyond Excel."
"We switched to Densify because it gave us a more complete end-to-end picture of the environment and really became the system of truth across all of our environments versus having to aggregate information from many dissimilar systems."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) does the best with the architecture of the CVM because one CVM for each node makes it more distributed and improves usability, offering more technical improvement compared to other vendors."
"The solution has automated reports and workflows. You can configure it to automatically send out reports to the business units responsible for managing cloud costs, so you don't need to log into the tool to get information. Cost Governance's user interface and dashboards are beautiful. The customers love it because it's easy to use. They can run it and get a report an hour later to immediately see the savings."
"The Nutanix technical support is very, very good."
"It saves time since it is a single pane of glass. Our efficiency has increased because of that. We don't have to log into multiple servers when we do upgrades. We can do it on one console. This saves us eight to 10 hours a month. Upgrade activity on servers, which was offloaded to the Nutanix platform, used to take hours on our Legacy platform."
"Using these features in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reduces time in my daily operations."
"The unified platform is also very user-friendly and clickable, similar to the Windows environment, making it easier for users to navigate and maintain."
"Using X-Play is simple. In three steps you can define things and there is also a wizard to guide you... The wizard is the simplest way to automate and the resulting automation saves us time."
"Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused."
 

Cons

"Initially we talked about some custom reporting, wherein our customer expected certain reports on a few areas, like how the storage is allocated, how the network performance is doing, and how the network utilization is happening for a virtual machine."
"The solution's stability is the primary concern for me."
"Service management level integration is probably the biggest area for improvement."
"Densify can be improved in a couple of areas: the learning curve for new users, where it feels like an advanced optimization tool that needs time for full leverage; enhancements in reporting and filter options for more detailed custom reports; and improvements in UI performance since some users feel that the UI is a bit slow or outdated, especially with certain interfaces such as the Kubex Console or the Cloud Decks."
"Some parts of the interface are rather complex and require a bit of time to navigate, but this has never stopped us as a Densify advisor is readily available to help with our "how to" queries."
"There are times when results are very slow when we search for servers."
"In terms of integration, the tool has great data. However, it's not always meaningful because the true business attributes of how most Fortune 500 companies operate are not maintaining in one tool, they're in a school of many tools."
"Initially we talked about some custom reporting, wherein our customer expected certain reports on a few areas, like how the storage is allocated, how the network performance is doing, and how the network utilization is happening for a virtual machine."
"NCM is a mature technology product, but it is more costly than some of the other solutions available, which leaves room for improvement."
"I would appreciate more advanced networking features in the dashboard."
"We'd like the demos to be longer - maybe two to three months. Some clients need much more time for a POC."
"We have some Oracle systems. The licensing is a big challenge over here because it will be very costly if we go with Nutanix."
"In our company, even though not directly in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), we saw that tool has many layers in it. An integration between Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and Nutanix Kubernetes Platform would be a great deal."
"For Nutanix, there are options to go with different types of hardware vendors for using the AOS operating system. We can deploy it on Dell, Lenovo, or IBM servers. If Nutanix had its own server, it would be good."
"The main area that could be improved with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the cost."
"The design could be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Setup cost is negligible, as it scales fairly well."
"Cost is always involved, but then I feel that this solution is better than other products that we have."
"There was some sticker shock, as this is not just another software product to spit out graphs."
"Densify has licensing setup so you can collect data without licensing. It gives you the ability to collect on everything, then choose later what you would like to license."
"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."
"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager's pricing is fair at the moment."
"Compared to Dell HCI, Nutanix is a lot cheaper."
"Its acquisition and support cost is nominal. It is not too high, and it is not too low. It is within the budget, and there are no issues on that part."
"The product is expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."
"Its licensing is cheaper than VMware. However, the price for certain licenses or use cases is not clearly indicated. For example, replication of the cluster to switch from one VM to another when one is down is not included in the standard price. It requires an additional license, but it is not clearly indicated."
"In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise75
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Densify?
Densify can be improved in a couple of areas: the learning curve for new users, where it feels like an advanced optimization tool that needs time for full leverage; enhancements in reporting and fi...
What is your primary use case for Densify?
My main use cases for Densify include cloud cost optimization, predictive resource sizing, assistance in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, and reducing the manual analysis of the environme...
What advice do you have for others considering Densify?
My advice for others looking into using Densify is to focus on setting up governance policy early, integrate optimization results into your usual sprints, and train FinOps and engineering teams tog...
Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?
For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...
Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?
When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...
Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?
Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central, Nutanix Software Subscription
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AIG, Bank of America, Cigna, Citi
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Densify vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.