Name: vSphere
Rating: 4.3 (1940 reviews)

Overview

Overall experience with vSphere

Business Systems Analyst It

50M - 250M USD, Banking

FAVORABLE

“VMware vSphere Facilitates Administration Yet Relies Heavily on Hosting VM Performance”

4.0

Feb 2, 2026

vSphere is essential in how we administer our VMWare virtual environment. It's a centralized tool that allows administrators full control over snapshots, backups, VM administration and migration. Features are intuitive and robust with options for monitoring, configuring, setting permissions, allocating datastores and networks, snapshots and updates. Features a status bar at the bottom to see what active tasks that are queued up. When you perform a task, like deleting a snapshot, you can see its progress. Integrating vSphere locally with SaaS Cloud assets is seamless and not too difficult to configure. Overall, it's an essential companion when managing multiple ESXi hosts and virtual workloads.

It Manager

<50M USD, Energy and Utilities

CRITICAL

“vSphere Maintains Stability And Features, But Pricing And Licensing Raise Concerns”

3.0

Feb 19, 2026

Broadcom has changed their licensing model significantly and in my experience is not willing to negotiate pricing or amend any of their pre-packaged licensing bundles.

About Company

Company Details

Year Founded

1998

Head office location

California, United States

Number of employees

10001+

Website

https://www.vmware.com/

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Key Insights

A Snapshot of What Matters - Based on Validated User Reviews

User Sentiment About vSphere

Reviewer Insights for: vSphere

Performance of vSphere Across Market Features

vSphere Likes & Dislikes

The HTML5 UI is clean and easy to work with and manage the entire Data Center with. VMs are neatly shown on the left side menu. VM options for each VM are displayed on the right. You can easily view the VM Status, I/O or network information in the summary. Most frequently used tools such as Start/Stop (shutdown), launch Console, edit Settings, and take snapshot are listed front and center for quick management. You can view all the VM performance by navigating to Monitor > Performance Overview. If a VM is abusing too many resources, vSphere indicates the issue with a notification icon to easily spot the VMs causing resource problems.

The product itself is still best of breed in the virtualization landscape. It is feature-rich with virtualization technologies that just work, such as snapshots, vMotion (Live Migration), rapid cloning of virtual machines, and High Availability. vSphere also offers advanced features that many other virtualization technologies do not such as vSAN for hyperconverged storage and NSX, their advanced networking technology that allows the creation of firewalls and network segmentation within the virtual environment itself. Finally, vSphere is quite stable and is able to manage a large number of VMs without significant performance issues. My team rarely has to open a support ticket for this product.

Exceptional stability and reliability, centralized management via vCenter, vMotion live migration and flexible resource allocation.

vSphere operates independently as just another VM in your ESXi cluster. If for whatever reason the VM freezes, or stops, or slows down due to resource limitations then users won't be able to manage their environment. Typically, this means needing to reset the VM on the ESXi host that hosts it. Administrators need to be aware of what this host it runs on and be actively maintaining the VM for it to continue to be an effective tool for VM administration.

The primary issue with this product is the pricing. Since Broadcom purchased this software, the cost has increased substantially. Many organizations were not prepared for the significant price increases that were quoted to them when they were looking to renew their support. If you are looking to add advanced features like vSan or NSX, the pricing increases even more substantially. The second issue is the licensing bundles that they offer. In my experience, Broadcom has several pre-packaged licensing bundles, but only the more expensive ones give any sort of financial flexibility. For example, the least expensive bundles require a three-year commitment, which must be purchased up front, rather than billed annually. If an organization is looking to make annual payments, they must choose one of the more expensive bundles. Finally, the movement toward multi-year agreements makes it difficult to move away from this product. Many organizations have already experienced vendor lock in with this product, but the lack of feasible year to year contracts makes it more difficult to move away from this technology.

Extremely high licensing costs, steep learning curve and complex upgrade and compatibility management.

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Peer Discussions

vSphere Reviews and Ratings

4.3

(1940 Ratings)

Rating Distribution

5 Star: 59%
4 Star: 37%
3 Star: 4%
2 Star: 1%
1 Star: 0%

Customer Experience

Evaluation & Contracting

4.2

Integration & Deployment

4.6

Service & Support

4.4

Product Capabilities

4.7

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Business Systems Analyst It
50M-1B USD
Banking
Review Source
VMware vSphere Facilitates Administration Yet Relies Heavily on Hosting VM Performance
4.0
Feb 2, 2026
vSphere is essential in how we administer our VMWare virtual environment. It's a centralized tool that allows administrators full control over snapshots, backups, VM administration and migration. Features are intuitive and robust with options for monitoring, configuring, setting permissions, allocating datastores and networks, snapshots and updates. Features a status bar at the bottom to see what active tasks that are queued up. When you perform a task, like deleting a snapshot, you can see its progress. Integrating vSphere locally with SaaS Cloud assets is seamless and not too difficult to configure. Overall, it's an essential companion when managing multiple ESXi hosts and virtual workloads.
Lead Automation Qa Engineer
10B+ USD
Software
Review Source
VMware vSphere Delivers Stability and Efficiency Amid Rising Licensing Costs
4.0
Feb 11, 2026
VMware vSphere has been a reliable and stable virtualization platform for managing our virtual infrastructure. The ability to manage all VMs, virtual networks, and physical hosts from a single console has significantly improved operational efficiency. The initial setup was straightforward with good documentation, and day to day management has been smooth. However, the recent licensing changes under Broadcom have made the platform considerably more expensive, which impact its overall value proposition. Despite the cost concerns, the platform's stability, feature set, and maturity make it a solid choice for enterprise virtualization needs.
It Manager
<50M USD
Energy and Utilities
Review Source
vSphere Maintains Stability And Features, But Pricing And Licensing Raise Concerns
3.0
Feb 19, 2026
Broadcom has changed their licensing model significantly and in my experience is not willing to negotiate pricing or amend any of their pre-packaged licensing bundles.
IT Services Associate
<50M USD
IT Services
Review Source
High Reliability and Performance Balance Out Setup Difficulties and Cost Concerns
4.0
May 5, 2026
My overall experience with vSphere has been quite positive. It's very stable and does a good job handling virtual machines without issues. I like how reliable it feels for day to day use. At the same time, the setup and initial learning can be a bit confusing if you're new to it. Once you spend some time with it, though, it becomes much easier to work with.
END USER VIRTUALIZATION ENGINEER
50M-1B USD
Healthcare and Biotech
Review Source
vSphere Delivers Consistent Performance While Licensing and Future Remain Unclear
4.0
Feb 2, 2026
vSphere has been a good product overall. It has years of experience in the industry and has been battle tested time and time again. when it comes to reliability and overall performance, it's hard to beat vSphere for our virtualization needs. I have been in this space for over a decade now and it's probably the only hyper visor I have worked with that needs the least amount of attention when it comes to stability and ability to handle large loads of Vm's across the cluster.

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vSphere

Overview

Overall experience with vSphere

“VMware vSphere Facilitates Administration Yet Relies Heavily on Hosting VM Performance”

“vSphere Maintains Stability And Features, But Pricing And Licensing Raise Concerns”

About Company

Company Details

Key Insights

A Snapshot of What Matters - Based on Validated User Reviews

User Sentiment About vSphere

Reviewer Insights for: vSphere

Performance of vSphere Across Market Features

vSphere Likes & Dislikes

Top vSphere Alternatives

1. Hyper-V

2. Nutanix Cloud Platform

3. HPE Zerto Software

Peer Discussions

vSphere Reviews and Ratings

4.3

(1940 Ratings)

Rating Distribution

Customer Experience

Product Capabilities

VMware vSphere Facilitates Administration Yet Relies Heavily on Hosting VM Performance

VMware vSphere Delivers Stability and Efficiency Amid Rising Licensing Costs

vSphere Maintains Stability And Features, But Pricing And Licensing Raise Concerns

High Reliability and Performance Balance Out Setup Difficulties and Cost Concerns

vSphere Delivers Consistent Performance While Licensing and Future Remain Unclear

Recommended Gartner Insights

User Sentiment About vSphere

Reviewer Insights for: vSphere

Performance of vSphere Across Market Features

vSphere Likes & Dislikes