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Oracle VM VirtualBox vs VMware Workstation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Oracle VM VirtualBox
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (7th)
VMware Workstation
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. Oracle VM VirtualBox is designed for Server Virtualization Software and holds a mindshare of 7.1%, down 10.6% compared to last year.
VMware Workstation, on the other hand, focuses on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), holds 16.9% mindshare, up 13.2% since last year.
Server Virtualization Software
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Kopano  Ramaphoi - PeerSpot reviewer
A flexible and easy-to-deploy product that provides a great user experience
The product should improve its scalability. It should be more flexible to be used with desktops with different capacities. We do not have much storage on our desktops, and we must allocate a certain amount of memory to install the product. When we install a virtual machine, we have a limit that we cannot exceed 80% of RAM.
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

"It's a pretty good product in terms of monitoring."
"The flexibility as well as performance wise and as well as data volume, we have huge volume stored."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to copy bidirectionally between the desktop and the virtual machine."
"This product is extremely easy to install, use, has a great GUI and is incredibly stable."
"This is a highly scalable solution."
"The snapshot feature is very powerful; it protects us from disaster."
"I like that it is free and runs on Linux/Ubuntu - I wouldn't use any other solution. I am able to perform small developing tests."
"The product is very easy to use."
"It is much more mature compared to Nutanix or SimpliVity when it's cross-platform based."
"Great at solving connection problems."
"The most valuable feature of the VMware Workstation is the ease to create a development environment. When you have different ongoing developments, you often need to create a lot of different development environments. With this workstation solution, you can have a development environment for all the things you develop."
"I have found this product excellent for test/dev environments. This is 90% of what I use this product for."
"Technical support is very good."
"The performance is good."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the speed of access and quality of upgrade. Those are the more important and pertinent aspects as far as we were concerned. Functionality and features were relevant for the customers. What a customer chose, we had to make sure that it operated."
"VMware Workstation is great for migrating and patching operating systems."
 

Cons

"Oracle VM VirtualBox is not flexible, It's not like VMware."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"The solution should work to simplify the system. However, it should be flexible enough to allow for special cases."
"We're working with them to be able to allow the local USB ports to be ported over to the remote desktop, running VirtualBox."
"Oracle VM VirtualBox doesn't work properly with an antivirus tool."
"Having live migrations to move a running server to other hardware would be great."
"The solution is not flexible."
"The AI and the UI could be improved. The user interface is a little outdated and the AI is not very attractive."
"The product’s virtual machine data backup feature needs upgrading."
"Performance could be improved, it's somewhat clunky."
"Lacks the ability to clone onto another system rather than starting from scratch."
"The interface is a little wonky and needs to be improved."
"I have had issues with the virtual network adapters in the past that has taken some time to troubleshoot."
"My experience with Workstation is limited, so I don't know all the functionalities of this tool. Maybe Workstation could add some more compatibility with other vendors."
"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."
"There could be more integration with different tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no licensing fees."
"The product is free to use."
"It is a very cost-effective solution."
"Pricing does not apply for us, we do not have to pay for the service."
"The license I use is free."
"Available for free use"
"Price wise, Oracle VM VirtualBox is a six on a scale from one to ten."
"No licensing is required as it is open-source."
"It has the best licensing modules."
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"VMware Workstation is an expensive tool. I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low or good price."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing is almost the same as what Google Cloud, AWS, or Microsoft would charge you."
"It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does KVM compare to Oracle VM VirtualBox?
KVM is easy to use, stable and flexible. It is mature and very fast. It is an affordable open-source solution that is easy to set up and manage. It offers very good security. It has a virtual manag...
What do you like most about Oracle VM VirtualBox?
The product’s most valuable feature is the ability to manage multiple operating systems through one application.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle VM VirtualBox?
The pricing is flexible. When Oracle bought VirtualBox, they introduced some licensing issues. However, it did not affect the terms of licenses and additional costs. The price is okay. I rate the p...
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Colorado State University, SCS Africa, Wolf Medical Systems.
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