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Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Citrix DaaS (formerly Citri...
Ranking in Application Virtualization
1st
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (5th), Desktop as a Service (DaaS) (1st)
Parallels Remote Applicatio...
Ranking in Application Virtualization
4th
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Virtualization category, the mindshare of Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) is 27.0%, down from 29.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) is 16.3%, up from 14.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Virtualization
 

Featured Reviews

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.
JohanSkibdahl - PeerSpot reviewer
Secure access across devices with cost-effective seamless integration
One valuable feature is the ability to securely use a wide range of devices to access the company's infrastructure. The inclusion of all necessary components, such as load balancer and gateways, in a monthly fee is also beneficial. In terms of Parallels Desktop, the coherence mode that allows Mac and Windows applications to run seamlessly side by side is highly regarded.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"First of all, the manageability of the applications for publishing is valuable. Second, it is about being able to run the applications on all main platforms. Third, its licensing is valuable. You can either switch to the cloud and keep on-prem. You can work with this hybrid scenario."
"The app protection feature is one of the most valuable because it provides good security, as nobody is going to be able to look into your screen while you are sharing the screen. And if someone has installed a keylogger in your system, your keystrokes will be jumbled up and they would not make any sense to the keylogger. App protection is one of the coolest security features that I have encountered on any platform."
"It is user-friendly and easy to use."
"Relative to other solutions, Citrix has fewer conditions and fewer parameters. Citrix also provides some flexibility because it can be used on any device."
"The remote desktop feature allows employees to work from home."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless application edition with the low-level network bandwidth because we have between 10 and 15 sites in France with a low level of communication needs. We need to deploy our main application, the ERP system, and we needed an efficient solution to provide a solution to the remote sites, with very small links between the data center and the remote site."
"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops is a stable solution."
"Citrix Virtual Apps is the most valuable feature. Many customers use this feature to publish only applications, and not the full desktop. They can publish the internal resource or allow the end-user to reach a site or an application without having the full desktop. That's why they love this feature. It helps them save on resources."
"It permits us to control the applications that our users are able to get to, in a seamless manner. We're able to distribute applications to users' desktops, just like those applications are on each user's computer, but they're not."
"You have the opportunity to virtualize applications in different locations. Everything is in one pane or one window, which is quite good."
"The solution is powerful, and it has good speed and performance."
"Client compatibility with many systems makes it very versatile. The reporting that is included is awesome."
"It is robust. We have some 75 users using it and it doesn't lag. It's very speedy."
"The stability is ok - once I finished the setup, the system was quite stable."
"Setup was straightforward. Our particular use case involved an Active Directory forest involving two data centers and three domains. User authentication against Active Directory was the easiest to set up and validate of any application installed in the last three years."
"It has allowed us to centralize the software location so we don't have to update the software client on 70 computers."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is very complex."
"We encounter compatibility issues related to hardware, scanners, and other devices."
"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."
"Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops are not easy to set up. However, I have the experience and I can do it easily. It could be easier to set up."
"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 solution's technical support is not so good."
"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."
"For us, pricing is the most important feature to improve."
"A web-based management interface for administration and reporting would be nice, instead of needing to log into a remote server."
"The main issue we have with all of our users is printing. Randomly, a printer will disconnect or someone won't connect to it and I will have to reset the print service and then nobody can print. That's the big headache we've had over the course of the five years."
"The customization of the web interface could possibly use some improvement. Little things, like being able to place a background image instead of just choosing from a palette of colors, would be nice."
"We would like the ability to provide a popup message, such as a maintenance notification. That same notification on the Parallels client would be awesome."
"We have had significant, ongoing issues with printing. It would be great to have a best practice for dealing with printing that we can offer to our customers."
"The product does not utilize SQL for reporting purposes. Also, it does not support some hypervisors similar to Citrix. These particular areas need improvement."
"Opening a ticket should be available from the actual RAS console. It is cumbersome to go to a portal, hunt around for five minutes for a link to open a ticket, answer questions meant to direct you towards FAQs instead of live support, then fill out information (license #, version #, etc.) which could more easily be supplied by sending a ticket straight from the console with all of that information automatically specified."
"It would be great if there were more sophisticated GPO templates/options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't quite remember the specifics of what we had. I believe we had a 25-user license, and I don't recall it being overly expensive."
"The licensing of Citrix Workspace is worth it. However, it is expensive. Citrix is probably more competitive now than VMware, but it is still a costly solution."
"In the past, the prices of the product were great. With the acquisition of Citrix by your company, the prices have drastically increased. For my company, it has become a bit of a problem to sell products from Citrix."
"If you look at cost, then you must look at the number of users that you are covering. If you are only using it for some users, then it is very expensive. However, if you have a massive amount of users, then it begins to be interesting to use Citrix. Because once you are managing thousands of servers with one guy, your maintenance costs decrease per user."
"The purchase price was around $300,000 USD and then the maintenance fees were 20%. There are no other additional fees."
"The product, XenServer, is free to use, and XenApp has a one month free license."
"The licensing, in general, is expensive. A lot of customers battle to pay the amount. It's very difficult to ensure that your solution provides the business value that the customer is after."
"In terms of pricing with the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, I think it has gotten better over the years. Citrix has found more dynamic ways to be able to revive licensing models that fit many different scenarios that organizations have. We have been able to evolve our own licensing over the years to accommodate our situations between concurrent versus user device licenses. Now, when we move into the Citrix Workspace realm, we definitely have some awesome options there."
"We currently use Parallels side-by-side with an Azure cloud-hosted solution. This may be from a lack of product knowledge on my part, but we still need to work out the most effective way to shut down servers outside of hours, thereby reduce hosting costs. I am not entirely convinced Parallels does this well yet."
"It is not that high. It is in the medium range. Of course, it could be lower, but the price is not the issue."
"It is very affordable."
"Pricing is a little steep."
"It is inexpensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It justifies the price. In terms of licensing, initially when we got the product it was an unlimited licensing strategy. We knew would grow in the coming years. So initially, we took a plan which had no limit. After a year or so the strategy changed and we were being limited to 105 licenses, that was the minimum... If there was flexibility for increasing the number of licenses that would be great because you never know how much you are going to grow in the next year."
"Parallels is a cost effective alternative to Citrix."
"I don't like the subscription model because it feels like I have to pay every month. If Parallels could go back to the professional license, it would be much better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS)?
The solution is powerful, and it has good speed and performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS)?
The pricing for Parallels RAS is straightforward with a monthly fee for a minimum of 15 licenses. For Parallels Desktop, it is a yearly cost of a couple of hundred euros. No additional fees for mai...
What needs improvement with Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS)?
A potential improvement could be reducing the dependency on Microsoft solutions for Parallels RAS. As for Parallels Desktop, there is nothing specific that needs improvement.
 

Also Known As

XenDesktop, XenApp (Citrix Virtual Apps), Citrix Workspace
Parallels RAS
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Exelon, Aeronamic, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Alameda County Medical Center, Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Aloysius Stichting, Amarchand Mangaldas, AmBev, Amnet Technology Solutions, Arval
Arsari Group _ PT Netmarks Indonesia, Izhevsk Elektromekhanicheskiy Zavod (IEMZ) _ Kupol, Abilene Diagnostic Clinic, Fylde Borough Council, YARSTROYREZE LLC, VSK Insurance House, Melenkovsky District of Vladimirskaya Oblast, Sofrigam SA, Antenna International, KingsGate Community Church, Norwegian American Hospital, Island Hotels Group, Medway Council, Medway Council, Voices of September 11th, MacDonald Training Center, Kansas Childrenês Service League, Scope,Next Generation Clubs, WTC Communications, Opera Australia, HSE Integrated, Danier, Bridgwater College, Kern County Mental Health, Tony Tiendas, Spears Manufacturing, Managed Insurance Services Inc., Intuitive Medical Software, M.J. Soffe, Mazda Motors, Israel Military Industries (IMI), Telfair, Upic Solutions, Teleflora, Fisher & Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Citrix DaaS (formerly Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service) vs. Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.