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Amazon WorkSpaces vs Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Amazon WorkSpaces receives mixed ROI ratings; users praise easy setup and infrastructure but some find no financial benefits.
Sentiment score
7.0
Citrix DaaS offers cost savings and efficiency with enhanced security and remote access, benefiting larger implementations despite high initial costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.8
Amazon WorkSpaces customer support is well-rated, though response times vary; various support plans are available for different needs.
Sentiment score
6.5
Citrix DaaS customer service is generally well-rated, though technical support experiences vary based on location and individual expectations.
The first level often wastes time because I usually have to escalate to an engineer for proper support.
Citrix support is better than Microsoft support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Amazon WorkSpaces is scalable, flexible, and cost-effective, supporting various user levels with ease and a pay-as-you-go model.
Sentiment score
8.0
Citrix DaaS is highly scalable, allowing seamless deployment and integration across platforms, with efficient adaptability to increased demands.
The solution is highly scalable.
It supports over 100 apps and 20,000 users in our organization, demonstrating impressive scalability.
Citrix DaaS offers vast scalability options as workloads can be deployed across multiple data centers like Azure, Google, or AWS.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon WorkSpaces offers strong stability, reliant on connectivity, with minor issues like reconnection needed when idle, enhancing resource efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.3
Citrix DaaS is stable and reliable, excelling with proper configuration and management, ensuring minimal downtime and strong performance.
Citrix DaaS allows for satisfactory stability by facilitating workload deployment in various data centers including Azure, Google, or AWS.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon WorkSpaces needs better conferencing, app installation, VPN, pricing, support, identity management, and faster operational responses.
Citrix DaaS needs improvements in performance, user experience, integration, support, pricing flexibility, and administrative tools for better efficiency.
Citrix should have different pricing based on company size.
Creating App-V applications is not an easy task and could take from hours to weeks without success.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon WorkSpaces costs $85-$150 monthly per machine, influenced by capacity, with mixed opinions on affordability and licensing flexibility.
Citrix DaaS is premium-priced, offering robust features, but its complex, costly licensing faces competition from VMware and Microsoft.
Citrix DaaS is considered expensive, especially for companies that do not require multi-cloud.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon WorkSpaces offers mobility, strong security, fast connectivity, scalability, and easy provisioning, enhancing remote work with efficient performance.
Citrix DaaS offers seamless remote access with quick deployment, high security, and optimized management, enhancing productivity and user satisfaction.
With Citrix, all connections are outgoing, minimizing firewall vulnerability.
The scalability of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is impressive, supporting over 100 apps and a user base of 20,000 within our organization.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon WorkSpaces
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
9th
Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
Ranking in Desktop as a Service (DaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
Application Virtualization (1st), Remote Access (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Amazon WorkSpaces is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 12.8%, up from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

Bhaskar Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Management console is very easy to use, readily available infrastructure and easy to scale
It's very stable. There is a big difference between traditional physical servers and cloud servers. With physical servers, we need to plan for purchasing, procurement, capacity, storage, get quotations, and then procure them. That took some time. Maybe it would take more than one month or maybe two months to procure and then install. With AWS, it is readily available. Just pay and immediately create the VPC, network, and everything. It is very easy. Within two or three hours, we can implement any server or launch any application. Within five minutes, we can just spin up and publish our servers on the Internet.
Grant Waddell - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and easily accessible, but cost could be made cheaper
We use Citrix Workspace on Citrix Cloud. We have all of our servers on the AWS public cloud. There are a number of tools that we can implement that would save us costs. However, we've stuck to Citrix for convenience. If the prices keep increasing, we will have to consider other solutions. Users need to understand the tool's limitations correctly and what they require from a usability perspective. They should also understand the configuration of security policies. In some cases, people are unable to download or upload files onto their PCs, which is necessary for them to do their work. Users should understand the limitations of the product or the configuration options. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions are best for your needs.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon WorkSpaces?
Performance and scalability are valuable features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon WorkSpaces?
For Amazon WorkSpaces pricing, I think it is affordable; it is a final decision made through the management part. I am not satisfied with the billing part because sometimes it bills for huge usage ...
What needs improvement with Amazon WorkSpaces?
I have not integrated AWS VPN with my Amazon WorkSpaces setup. Regarding disadvantages, I feel that the product has no areas for improvement. The billing part could be improved. Some features could...
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

WorkSpaces
XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GrubHub, Endemol Shine Nederland, CMC Property Services
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 WorkSpaces vs. Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.