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Horizon 8 vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

Horizon 8
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
User Virtualization (1st)
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Horizon 8 is 9.2%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 17.7%, up from 14.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Tim  Abboud - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, reasonably priced, and simple to install
It can be challenging to assess the stability of Horizon because it relies heavily on the underlying infrastructure, including vCenter, network, and storage performance. It is important to pay attention to these factors when evaluating the stability of the system. We rely on vCenter, network, and storage performance, and any weakness in these areas will affect the performance of Horizon. When discussing this with customers, I always emphasize the importance of these factors. If the foundation is solid, Horizon should not experience any performance issues. If the fundamentals are weak, we will encounter issues with Horizon on a regular basis. However, the product itself, VMware Horizon, is highly stable. While the Horizon product itself is very stable, it is important to be well-informed about any potential side effects from using other related products.
Shambhu Narayan  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-manage solution that has really good customer support compared to other market players
VMware Workstation makes it easy to manage all the resources that we are handling. VMware Workstation has reduced our infrastructure cost. If someone wants machines, I can create them easily using the solution. VMware Workstation is easier to manage than other workstations like Oracle Workstation. VMware Workstation is an easy-to-manage solution, and its support is really good compared to other market players. Overall, I rate VMware Workstation an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The USB redirection is one of the valuable features of VMware Horizon"
"The solution includes good user profiles and policies."
"Scalable and stable virtualization solution, with good technical support offering timely responses."
"The support from VMware is very good and they have amazing experts."
"The solution has data leak prevention features that ensure data is not copied from the base machine to VDI, and API copyright capabilities."
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"VMware has a lot of experience in virtualization — they are the pioneers in virtualization."
"The benefits of this solution are that it is modern and it works perfectly well with the rest of the VMware environments we have. Having this vertical integration is what matters to us as an organization and this solution excels in this area. You deploy it and it works without much hassle."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"We are able to simultaneously run multiple operating systems in a single machine and have virtually no performance hit."
"VMware Player's best feature is the ability to run different OS's simultaneously."
"The technical support is good."
"The features are good."
"The tool’s GUI is very user-friendly."
"Technical support is very good."
"Great at solving connection problems."
 

Cons

"There should be a function where one can connect and work; whenever not required, one can deprovision it."
"The integration could be improved."
"The installation is complex and could be easier. The full installation with testing took a couple of weeks to complete."
"My deployment is complex and I hope it will only take a month."
"The issue now with VMware is that we don't know the future of the solution. Because if you follow the news, it was acquired by another company, and they are changing the old product line."
"Technical support could be better and faster."
"In the future, I would like to see better support for application virtualization."
"Areas for improvement in VMware Horizon 7 would be the logging and the troubleshooting, e.g. they could be made clearer."
"The tool can improve network storage technology."
"Performance could be improved, it's somewhat clunky."
"VMware Workstation’s scalability could be improved."
"It would be great if VMware Workstation had more networking options and compatibility, that would be great. I would like to deploy virtual switches and play around with networking a bit more. Otherwise, I have to deploy ESXi Virtual Edition and emulate it, which is painful and clunky."
"They could bring in many different features from VMware vSphere to Workstation."
"VMware Player should provide a cloud version with no limitations to hardware resources."
"The network configuration was not as easy as it could be and could take less time. We faced challenges with backup due to limitations in the free version, requiring us to switch to a paid version."
"The solution freezes sometimes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing could be improved."
"VMware Horizon View's licensing cost is not expensive."
"The solution is more expensive in comparison to Citrix but when comparing the technicalities VMware Horizon, is worth the money."
"The pricing is quite reasonable."
"I cannot provide a detailed comment on the pricing; however, I can say that it is quite expensive."
"The VMware Horizon 7 license is for three months. We are in the testing stage, we are still evaluating the product. We are sure now that we need to buy a license for the production environment."
"I don't know about the price. I know there are different tiers with the license, but I'm not sure exactly what it costs anymore."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive solution in Asian countries."
"VMware Workstation's costs are lifetime."
"I use the free version of VMware Workstation."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"It is an expensive solution."
"VMware is expensive. Licensing can be tricky. For example, I recently had a client running VMware vSphere Essentials and wanted to migrate to a more scalable solution. However, they had no choice but to purchase a completely new license and deploy a completely new instance of VMware."
"With a VDI solution, there is always extra cost running a VDI solution but it's not for cost purposes anymore. In the beginning, it was to save money on hardware but at the moment it's other aspects that are more important why you should use a VDI solution."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does VMware Workspace One compare with VMware Horizon 7?
VMware Workspace One has a powerful set of helpful features. The solution offers very good documentation, the initial setup is easy, and the product is very stable and reliable. I think the fact th...
What do you like most about VMware Horizon 7?
VMware offers a friendly environment, and it's easy to provide the user with the package. It is a bundled solution that is readily deployable. The advantage lies in its simplicity, it requires mini...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Horizon 7?
We paid a lot of money for software that is not really fully operational out of the box. We had to have patches from VMware to get it into production. Hence, we lost a lot of time implementing the ...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
What do you like most about VMware Workstation?
The product is stable, very easy to deploy, easy to use, easy to configure, and easy to set up.
What needs improvement with VMware Workstation?
The product's integration capabilities are an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.
 

Also Known As

VMware Horizon, VMware Horizon View, Mware Dynamic Environment Manager
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LCMC Health
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Horizon 8 vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.