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Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

Morpheus
Ranking in Cloud Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (20th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Morpheus is 4.7%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 6.2%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation6.2%
Morpheus4.7%
Other89.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2773878 - PeerSpot reviewer
Morpheus specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Has improved automation by cutting VM provisioning time in half and simplifying environment setup
From my perspective, the best feature Morpheus offers is the service catalog. The service catalog stands out for me because it allows me to prepare or develop something for a client to automate or clearly prepare forms for a client who may not be familiar with more specific details of the product, such as the provision of virtual machines. In my organization, Morpheus is a very useful tool to automate processes. For example, provisioning new virtual machines reduces the time required, and every action is very fast using Morpheus, allowing me to prepare new environments for testing or proof-of-concept projects.
reviewer2597814 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure Manager at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Compliance is maintained effectively and automation boosts productivity but further improvements in full-time reduction are desired
I am still using VMware tools. In fact, I have to migrate to a new alternative. I do not deal with vCenter or vSphere as or other VMware products yet. I do not deal with vSphere either. I do not use the Horizon Cloud yet or Horizon Desktop. We use VMware Workstation and vRealize. I use vRealize. VMware Aria Automation is compliant. It is not difficult for them. The regulations request us to perform or to have some security managed ways, and the regulations are clear about that, including authentication and everything related to security. Based on my experience, I rate VMware Aria Automation 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

"Provides a good automation platform."
"The most valuable feature of Morpheus is its strong integration with vSphere Cloud."
"In my organization, Morpheus is a very useful tool to automate processes—for example, provisioning new virtual machines reduces the time required, and every action is very fast using Morpheus, allowing me to prepare new environments for testing or proof-of-concept projects."
"Morpheus is an intuitive solution that is very easy to use."
"Morpheus provides a very easy and one-click solution to scaling up and down."
"The most beneficial features for us were the API integrations with various cloud vendors like Nutanix, VMware, AWS, Azure, and GCP. It saved us the effort of doing that work ourselves."
"It supports many features, and it also supports some of the automation that Cloudify supports. So, in addition to just giving you basic platform management—such as the ability to deploy virtual machines and have multitenancy to log in and perform all of your basic platform management tasks—it also supports automation. You can, for example, spin up three virtual machines, and you can have each virtual machine configure each other. You can do service chaining with it. You can run scripts in Dash and Python, or you can use tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef. All of this is just built into the tool. It is a very powerful tool."
"The user interface of the application is exceptional."
"It's extremely convenient to be able to spin something up and be able to work on other things, because it's already done it, making my workload lighter."
"Currently, the primary feature we're using in VMware Aria Automation is its ability to execute tasks quickly. However, we haven't explored other features like workload management or the full stack yet. So it's hard to make comparisons or fully utilize its potential until we expand our usage."
"usability; It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it."
"In terms of scalability, vRA has connections to a lot of different systems. It's very flexible and an impressive product."
"Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."
"It provides velocity both from management and customer perspectives, from ingesting new catalog items, developing new workflows for additional features, and/or allowing customer access to multiple guest OS instances at scale in a shorter time frame."
"Our customers don't have to manage HVAC and space and cooling and all of those things that they used to have to do. Today, all they have to do is provision a server and manage their users."
"The most valuable features are the Catalog View and the access control business group. Access provisioning is probably the main use case for us, so we can separate access to different Catalog items among the different business groups and have that tied back to our AD LDAP systems."
 

Cons

"We've been facing some challenges with Morpheus due to its design for public cloud usage."
"We had to put in much effort ourselves since Morpheus's support wasn't always available to help us."
"The solution's pricing and customization need to improve."
"I faced a few problems while deploying."
"The service is limited and somewhat lacking."
"There is room for enhancement in integrating Morpheus with other solutions."
"The product has become overly complex. The biggest problem is that we find a bug, they fix the bug, but then another one pops up. We can never really deliver on the vision we had using Morpheus."
"Morpheus is working hard on creating an integration framework due for release in Q2 2021 which will allow clients to create their own interfaces and integrations into any 3rd party product that has a full-function API. Morpheus is also heavily focussed on enhancing the container management side to compete head-to-head with Openshift and CloudForms in Q3 2021."
"Upgrades are always a pain."
"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."
"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."
"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people. I would like to see the ability to customize that and maybe provide them with helpful guides to what subscriptions they have. Sometimes, I find that I have to do more explanation to people who do approvals. I would really like to customize the display to the terms they use in their particular business unit. So a little bit more of a nod to the customization of the UI for non-technical users would be helpful."
"I don't think it's intuitive or user-friendly. I think it's a good tool. Any automation tool, these days, the learning curve is kind of high. You're teaching sysadmins who never developed stuff. Maybe they modified a little bit of code and now you tell them, "Hey, here's the tool, use it." But you have to know a little bit of DevOps. So you have to train them how to do the scripting."
"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective. Today, for us, SRM doesn't scale because each of our customers has a local vCenter environment as well as the vCenter in our environment. So we can't get SRM to scale to the point to which we need. From an integration perspective, DR inside of that would be good."
"I have not found this solution to be user-friendly. It's really complicated. The demo shows that you can automate anything but they only show basic scenarios. If you want to do anything more complicated than that, it becomes very complicated to set up."
"I would like to see support for Google Cloud and Azure. Because they don't support Google and Azure today, we need something that's cohesive with our entire landscape. There is a gap right now with VMware. If you want support for these environments, you have to go elsewhere right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is on an annual basis, and it is upfront for the year. There is no extra cost unless you want additional support or specific deployment packs."
"The license is based on the number of virtual machines that Morpheus is managing. So, it is a pay-as-you-grow model."
"Morpheus doesn't directly support cost optimization, but its API integration can facilitate resource optimization. It doesn't dynamically optimize resources like an aeronautic system would; it operates step by step."
"The solution is cheaper if you have less number of servers, but it becomes very expensive for a large number of servers."
"Initially, the license may seem like a good deal, but as we grow, it becomes costly."
"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Morpheus?
The most beneficial features for us were the API integrations with various cloud vendors like Nutanix, VMware, AWS, Azure, and GCP. It saved us the effort of doing that work ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Morpheus?
We've been a Morpheus customer since the early days. I know what they're trying to sell now, and you'd really need a strong use case to justify the cost.
What needs improvement with Morpheus?
I think that adding artificial intelligence or a large language model inside Morpheus would be very useful for clients. I would suggest adding integrated tools such as FinOps or other management to...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

Morpheus Cloud Management Platform, Morpheus CMP
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morpheus CMP, mcdonalds, blackrock, HSBC, astrazeneca, arris, WGU, GBG, pennstate, beyondtrust
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Morpheus vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
883,011 professionals have used our research since 2012.