Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs Parallels Access comparison

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Parallels Access

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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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Remote Access category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 5.3%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Parallels Access is 1.7%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Remote Access Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	6.3%
Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)	5.3%
Parallels Access	1.7%
Other	86.7%

Remote Access

Featured Reviews

OluwashileAdeniyi

Senior Infrastructure Security Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Centralized endpoint security has improved and supports hybrid work and BYOD policies

Regarding what I dislike about Microsoft Intune and its downsides, I would say that more Mac controls are needed because we have limited Mac and Linux control. When comparing controls and policies between Windows, Mac, and Linux, Windows has almost everything you can think of, while Mac and Linux have limited types of control. You cannot implement certain things on Mac and Linux that you can on Windows. The limited controls are a major issue. Additionally, if Microsoft could find a way to embed servers into Microsoft Intune, that would be beneficial. Microsoft Intune is not really designed for servers or Windows servers. It is more tailored towards Windows 11 and Windows 10 operating systems. Windows servers are not fully supported. Enterprise organizations usually have both servers and endpoints, which are users' workstations. For servers, most people look for other solutions such as SCCM, which is Configuration Manager. However, SCCM is what Microsoft Intune is trying to replace. Both SCCM and Microsoft Intune belong to Microsoft. Microsoft is trying to transition organizations into Microsoft Intune, the native cloud solution. However, because this update is still in process, servers are not fully compatible with Microsoft Intune and cannot be managed by it. The current policy that has emerged from issues with clients is what they call co-management, which is relatively new, and I do not know if adoption is significant. Many legacy or older customers who have been using these products for decades still have SCCM. When it is time for them to manage their Windows devices, they use what is called cloud attach. Cloud attach is a term whereby your SCCM is connected to your Microsoft Intune. Most people do not know about it, but I have deployed it for several organizations. Cloud attach and co-management work together so that your device is in SCCM, but some policies are pushed from Microsoft Intune. It is like two different solutions working hand in hand. That is what they call co-management. Microsoft Intune does not bring all of your endpoint and security management tools into one place, which is the goal and how it should be. However, as I mentioned, servers are not included. If we talk about end users, Microsoft Intune does bring all your devices together. In a typical enterprise environment, you have end users with workstations, laptops, company-issued phones, and bring your own devices. You can create policies for all of these. However, for the backend, your servers do not have much coverage. Servers are not really covered by Microsoft Intune in that way.

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Sorin Neacsu

Technical Lead on Virtual Desktop at Orange

Has delivered consistent desktop experiences across remote locations and has supported multimedia workloads efficiently

I have utilized the HDX protocol for compression and audio-video capabilities. When users need to conduct meetings with customers or colleagues, they can use Teams solutions and open a bridge where video and audio are encapsulated within the ICA protocol, which is protected by SSL and certificates for security. This provides secure communication at good quality through the HDX protocol. HDX protocol has improved application performance as it is specifically designed for multimedia applications. If processing audio or video files, such as in telecom where discussions are recorded and then prepared as video or audio, this does not consume excessive bandwidth during the operation compared to a normal remote desktop connection provided by Microsoft. Everything is compressed and provides sufficient bandwidth for multiple people to perform similar tasks without interruption or session disconnection. All multimedia-related activities, such as playing content on YouTube, deliver a better experience with this protocol overall. I use multi-factor authentication for opening sessions to the data center where users access their machines or software. Multi-factor authentication has helped secure applications because users typically have two-way authentication software on their phones. They use a password first and then authenticate themselves through their mobile application to grant access to resources. This approach is effective because if a hacker attacks a user, they need more than just the password and username. They must also possess the device that provides authentication. The device typically has facial recognition, a password, and provides better security overall.

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Binish Parikh

Vice President at ARK Infosolutions Pvt Ltd

Easy-to-deploy and good for small as well as large setups

There is room for improvement in the pricing policy. The price point is pretty aggressive. Since it is not very resource hungry, it doesn't require dedicated servers like high-end solutions do, so it's easier for customers to integrate it into their own solutions. In future releases, maybe more support for Macs and Unix so that customers with setups on those platforms can also benefit from the solutions.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Intune does a great job of helping protect our environment."

"Microsoft Intune is extremely important from a security perspective to ensure devices are compliant and gives us the efficiency to deploy apps automatically to a large number of users without the need for interaction from a client side, which is always helpful."

"Using Microsoft Intune, we reduced device onboarding time by around forty to fifty percent, improved compliance visibility significantly, and reduced manual endpoint management effort through automated policy deployment and centralized administration while also helping lower security incidents related to unmanaged or non-compliant devices."

"Configuration profiles, remediation, scripts, and auto-pilot features are very good."

"Microsoft Intune scales very effectively with our growing needs."

"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."

"Its most valuable aspect is it is very connected with the Microsoft ecosystem."

"The system itself is great."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"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."

"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 improvement in scalability. Managing multiple OSs centrally doesn't reduce many problems, and the product remains almost on par with its competitors like VMware Vue."

"Citrix is not a cheap solution as it addresses a lot of the challenges that no one else can."

"The Provisioning Services are the most valuable feature. We have Premium licensing, so Provisioning Services is huge for us, along with the Virtual Apps and Desktops part. It allows us to have a vDisk for every region, one that can easily be copied between them if we need to, to limit the amount of updates we have to do."

"The tech support is fast, knowledgeable, and customer-friendly."

"Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is highly recommended due to its ability to flawlessly handle 100% of the apps it packages, compared to App-V, which struggled with 20% to 30% of apps."

"It has very good performance in delivering 3D applications over WAN."

"The solution has been in production for three years with no major problems; zero down time from the solution."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) pros

"What seems to be the most valuable from the customer side is the ease of operation, and the overall experience they have."

"The application used to publish for mobile devices is very good and the desktop publishing is very, very good."

"It's got a very easy-to-use interface."

"Parallels Access gives me full access and control of the computer, and I can do anything I want remotely."

"It's great that the total deployment can happen completely remotely."

"We don't have problems with stability. Everything is good."

"Parallels Access has flexible licensing policies, which is beneficial for customers who have intermittent usage or users who are on and off the system."

Cons

"I switched away from Microsoft Intune because it cannot manage the MacBook very well."

"I rate Microsoft support between six to eight. The support often involves third parties hired by Microsoft who are knowledgeable, but sometimes the help I receive is not adequate."

"We do not utilize Microsoft customer service and technical support since it is generally a waste of time."

"Intune lags all of its competitors in terms of report generation."

"Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view."

"I have a lot of Apple products in my environment. It would be nice to have an improved integration of Apple products with Microsoft Intune without Jam."

"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."

"Intune needs to incorporate more tools to reduce the number of third-party applications we rely on."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"The product has some bugs, making it an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Citrix has undergone significant changes, primarily due to its acquisition. This acquisition impacted Citrix's value because of increased licensing costs under the new model. As a result, many customers are now considering alternatives to Citrix."

"The Citrix technical support is not as easy as other vendors like F5 or VMware. Obtaining technical support is a little bit tough and it should be improved."

"Also, there is a lot of work in optimizing desktops so that they don't unnecessarily reduce server performance."

"I have to re-enter my user password when I am not using the tool for some time around ten minutes. I want to also improve the need to download other Citrix apps."

"There is room for improvement on the hypervisor side, providing better integration between the hypervisor and the product line."

"In the bank, a major part of all our applications is Microsoft App-V. If App-V is at end of life, then we need a new technology to replace it. As of today, I haven't seen in Citrix Studio that there is a new technology embedded directly in it to replace App-V."

"At the moment, if you want better monitoring, you need to buy a third license."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) cons

"The scalability is great for small or medium-sized businesses. However, it may not scale well for enterprise-level entities."

"When you want to transfer a file from your iPad or remote device to the computer, the copy-and-paste feature doesn't always work."

"The solution may not scale well for enterprises."

"One challenge we do notice is that the application is limited to Windows servers only. If a customer has a Linux server, things get complicated. They should open it up a bit to be more compatible with different types of servers."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing policy. The price point is pretty aggressive."

"They could improve the reporting."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs we leave up to the customer and these vary from one to another."

"The clients pay for a license and each can have a different type of license, such as an E3 or E5."

"Intune is moderately expensive. You can get the license bundled with Office 365 E3 or E5 licenses. The E5s are a bit expensive, but you get some cheaper solutions with Intune."

"The purchase of the product was handled by someone else."

"There is a license required to use this solution. However, it was part of a bundle package. Microsoft Intune is far less expensive than other solutions, such as Workspace ONE."

"If you're ever going to buy an Office 365 environment, then pricing is reasonable given all that it does, but if you're not, then you might find the pricing expensive."

"They have categorized the licenses according to the size of the business. So, if it's a smaller organization, we can choose the license accordingly. If it's a big organization, then we can choose accordingly. Everything is clearly mentioned, and we can decide. It's suitable for all kinds of infrastructure, and that's very goo"

"Previously the price was $4 per month per user. Now it's $2.25 per user per month."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The solution is affordable."

"Their licensing model used to be on a per-year basis, where you would negotiate the cost per user for a year. For instance, if you had 25,000 users, you could negotiate the cost accordingly. However, they are transitioning to a subscription-based model where the cost is incurred monthly."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. There are different versions to their solution and the price keeps increasing."

"It is a bit costly, but enterprise class features come with a cost."

"It's my understanding that the solution license fee for each user is around $300 US. If we buy a personal laptop for each employee every five years, then the total cost is five times $300 US, or $1,500 USD. So we could buy 100 personal laptops instead of the Citrix solution."

"The purchase price was around $300,000 USD and then the maintenance fees were 20%. There are no other additional fees."

"Citrix licensing is expensive."

"The product, XenServer, is free to use, and XenApp has a one month free license."

More Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) pricing and cost advice

"The licensing costs are about $100 per user."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

University

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Transportation Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	192
Midsize Enterprise	62
Large Enterprise	185

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	45
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	69

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

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. ...

What advice do you have for others considering Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops?

I rate the overall product a six out of ten.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix Workspace?

Citrix DaaS is considered expensive, especially for companies that do not require multi-cloud. Tiered pricing based o...

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Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service)

Download Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) product report

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) report

Remote Access

Download Parallels Access product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace

No data available

Interactive Demo

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Microsoft

Citrix

Demo not available

Parallels

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Citrix DaaS provides centralized administration, high security, and app and desktop flexibility, offering excellent user experience and robust remote access. It is known for low bandwidth seamless performance and ease of use, ensuring consistent experience on diverse devices.

Citrix DaaS is a comprehensive service for virtual application delivery and remote access, ideal for distributed teams and mobile workers. Its support for application virtualization, data regulation compliance, and business continuity makes it valuable in remote work environments. Organizations use it for centralized management and secure remote workflows, benefiting from low-bandwidth delivery in multi-city deployments. However, enhancements in speed, performance, and scalability are necessary, along with better monitoring and pricing improvements. Users face cloud compatibility challenges, and improvements in virtual desktop functionality and multimedia experience are desired.

What are the key features of Citrix DaaS?

Centralized Administration: Streamlined management of virtual desktops and apps from a single console.
High Security: Advanced protection features for data and applications.
Flexibility: Customizable publishing options for apps and desktops.
Robust Remote Access: Reliable performance even on low bandwidth connections.
Device Support: Broad compatibility ensures seamless deployment across devices.

What benefits should users look for?

Enhanced Business Continuity: Ensures consistent access to apps and data remotely.
Low Bandwidth Efficiency: Maintains performance in limited connectivity scenarios.
Centralized Management: Simplifies control over remote resources.
Remote Work Enablement: Facilitates secure access for distributed teams.

In healthcare, Citrix DaaS supports secure access to patient records and applications essential for telemedicine. Financial services benefit from compliance with data regulation and secure workflows. In education, virtual desktops offer accessible learning resources, aiding remote teaching initiatives. Retail uses it for streamlining operations across dispersed locations, ensuring quick access to inventory systems and data management.

Citrix

Parallels Access is a fast and reliable remote access software, enabling users to connect to computers from anywhere. It streamlines operations by allowing access to applications, files, and multiple computers seamlessly.

Parallels Access provides a stable, user-friendly platform with superior desktop and mobile capabilities. Designed for both small and large businesses, it emphasizes ease of use and secure remote access, enhancing user independence, particularly for those with physical limitations. However, it faces challenges including scalability issues for enterprises and aggressive pricing. Reporting and compatibility particularly with Linux and Unix servers need enhancement, alongside integration issues like the copy-and-paste function between iPads and computers.

What are the key features of Parallels Access?

Remote Deployment: Facilitates easy setup for businesses.
Scalability: Supports small to large business needs.
User Independence: Assists users with physical limitations through enhanced control.
Mobile Publishing: Offers superior capabilities for mobile users.
Secure Platform: Ensures high-level security for remote operations.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Operational Efficiency: Offers flexibility by controlling computers via iPads.
Centralized Management: Saves hardware resources.
Application Publishing: Allows independent application deployment.
Use Case Flexibility: Supports CAD and ERP applications.

Entities integrate Parallels Access into their services for remote application access, focusing on efficiency through centralized management. It supports industries such as engineering and education with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solutions, enabling flexibility and enhancing operational efficiency. Companies work alongside system integrators and channel partners to tailor offerings to customer needs.

Parallels

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval

Gilt Groupe K.K.

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Parallels Access