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Amazon Appstream vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

Amazon Appstream
Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (5th), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Desktop as a Service (DaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon Appstream is 26.4%, up from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 35.3%, up from 31.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

RH
Offers good performance, efficiency, and network
There is also a way in the tool for retaining customers' favorites, but it is not available natively. When you log in to your desktop, on the desktop or laptop that you are working on, you have your favorites, you have your document repository, like your documents, your personal documents that you have on your computer. I saw that there was no native way of retaining those in a non-persistent desktop. The end-user has to perform dual authentication. One is for AWS authentication, and the other used to be for Active Directory, so it is a little problematic for the end users, as it is a double work for them. I don't know if the tool has lately dealt with the area of dual authentication or not.
Mohd Abdul Aziz Shah Sulaiman - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivers secure and unified access to apps, desktops, and content for enhanced productivity
Citrix Workforce is good, but it needs improvement in diagnosing network issues. When errors occur, it is difficult to determine if they're due to network issues, Workspace issues, or environment issues. The error messages are too vague, just stating "connection error" without specifying if it's an IP address issue, connectivity problem, or something else related to the network. This lack of detail makes troubleshooting difficult. We often have to reinstall everything in Workspace, without knowing the root cause. Even after engaging with Citrix and sending logs, the feedback is often unsatisfactory, not meeting my expectations. This trial-and-error approach isn't effective problem-solving. While these issues aren't everyday occurrences, when they do happen, they can be catastrophic for our operations team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Some companies use applications like Word or Excel, and they can leverage cloud services to optimize their hardware consumption."
"The tool is good from a latency, efficiency, and network point of view."
"You can connect to any printer, and from anywhere you can print documents using a compressed channel. It is easy and the bandwidth is very low."
"I found the ease of deployment, scalability, and security to be to our benefit when supplying virtual applications to our clients."
"With this product, everyone can have a similar kind of desktop environment."
"I recommend Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) for companies distributed across the world because it facilitates easy configuration and deployment without extensive infrastructure."
"Citrix is used by many organizations to make it possible to streamline the way different developers work together from different locations."
"It is stable, easy to scale, and provides secure remote access."
"We've been able to scale the environment quite nicely by using the Citrix Remote PC. I can't say enough about that. And because that relies on utilizing your existing hardware resources, and making those available as a part of your Citrix farm — with a second level of authentication and security pieces around it — we added some 4,000 workstations without an additional overhead or cost."
"Security is a shining point of the Citrix Workspace. Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a very robust solution when security is a concern. Furthermore, the content collaboration data-hosting that Citrix integrates with Virtual Apps and Desktops is among the best there is."
 

Cons

"You might experience some performance issues, such as delays in data retrieval."
"The end-user has to perform dual authentication...it is a little problematic for the end users, as it is a double work for them."
"The solution's cost has almost doubled this year, and it could be made cheaper."
"The user profiles could use some improvement."
"The speed and connectivity of Citrix DaaS could be improved."
"There is room for improvement because it has a lot of dependency on Active Directory and other things. If they could come up with something similar and native, a complete solution portfolio would help."
"Citrix should consolidate the multiple tools currently required into a single platform."
"The initial setup is very complex."
"When I needed support for a couple of things, three people intervened. Each time, three people gave me a different answer. In the end, they did not manage to give the right answer. At a certain point, they stopped replying."
"Pricing and technical support need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool is expensive."
"The price of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is approximately $300 for the new version called Dash and the license is approximately $900 annually."
"We're paying for a standard license and, in my view, the price is too high. I would be satisfied with it if it were reduced by about 20-30%. Right now, I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The product, XenServer, is free to use, and XenApp has a one month free license."
"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is an expensive solution."
"Citrix is expensive."
"A perpetual enterprise license costs approximately $300 USD."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. There are different versions to their solution and the price keeps increasing."
report
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851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon Appstream?
There is also a way in the tool for retaining customers' favorites, but it is not available natively. When you log in to your desktop, on the desktop or laptop that you are working on, you have you...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Appstream?
I personally don't use the tool. I am not a consumer of it. I basically designed it. I work for an IT company and have designed and implemented Amazon Appstream and Workspace in many organizations....
What do you like most about Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
My focus has primarily been on publishing virtual applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?
I have found that Citrix DaaS is still a complex product, especially on the desktop side, which affects scalability. Although it works well on the apps side, the desktop aspect still has room for i...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Appstream 2.0, Appstream, Appstream 2.0
XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SolidWorks, EVARI, MathWorks, AVENA, Vanguard, Macquarie University
Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Appstream vs. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.