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CloudStack vs Cloudify comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

Cloudify
Ranking in Cloud Management
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cloudify is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 4.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mark Wittling - PeerSpot reviewer
Works very well for advanced service chaining requirements and has extremely advanced engineers for support
We had a manager who thought that Cloudify could be used as a replacement for Horizon in OpenStack, but we found that Cloudify lacked the user interface or GUI for doing multitenancy and basic platform management tasks. Cloudify was really good at launching, for example, firewalls and configuring them and doing service chaining and rather advanced things like that, but it didn't meet the requirements for a basic platform management solution. It is something that seems to work better as a bolt-on or an augmented solution. It is a bit mis-marketed as a Cloud Management solution. It is not that. It is more of a service orchestration and automation tool. It is very good at doing that, but it fails to meet basic platform management requirements. Once you have it running, you can't really do anything with it without writing code and scripts. It requires a full-time DevOps person to use it. We deployed a Palo Alto firewall with it. That's basically what the project was for us, and it worked flawlessly once we got it finished, but it took another 12 weeks to get all of the automation and everything else coded, tested, and working. There is certainly a place for this technology, but when we got rid of OpenStack and moved to VMware, we either had to go with the vRealize Automation Suite to do this kind of automation, or we had to find an alternative solution to manage the private cloud. So, we put Cloudify in, but we really couldn't find it useful for basic platform administration tasks.
Nelson Marcos - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easier to provision VMs than other solutions and you can customize it to integrate with load balancers
My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudify provides the infrastructure-as-code, as well as operational action capabilities (orchestrated startups or upgrades, and more)."
"It enables a single platform to communicate with the entire infrastructure."
"Valuable features are auto-scaling and load balancing."
"You can use only what you need. You can remove certain Cloudify functions from the framework to create a "minified" version of what you need. This might only consist of the messaging delivery system, and the orchestration functions."
"Product has given us the ability to catch early scaling issues that many companies hit on with private clouds."
"The solution includes the option to run background scripts and processes from a connected API."
"TOSCA model allows modeling the application rather than the automation. It is a machine-readable representation of the application and its infrastructure, which can be used for other things too, not just for the orchestration (e.g. enterprise architecture big picture, who connects to whom)."
"Extensible internal functions and plugins. Can implement custom plugins to fit your scenario. Python based plugins."
"We like the virtualization capabilities."
"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."
"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."
"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."
"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."
"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."
"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."
"The most valuable feature from my point of view is access to environment via console through separate browser window."
 

Cons

"It lacked the user interface for multitenancy and basic platform management tasks. It is a leader in the niche area that they like to perform in, but it only does about 30% of top-tier advanced functions of platform management. It doesn't meet about 70% of what you need to manage a private cloud platform."
"Install of the product itself could be improved and I would like to see better event monitoring."
"Error handling could be improved; GUI is lacking with respect to user privileges and connectivity."
"Unlike the Docker environment, Cloudify takes time for configuration and its learning curve."
"The solution is a bit of a headache because mistakes happen in the blueprint every time we deploy and they require modifications."
"Certainly the UI could use some intensive work, but nevertheless, overall, it’s a complete product with its 3.4 version and much better features are available with 4.0."
"The upgrading process could be simplified."
"I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved."
"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."
"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."
"Lack of support for third-party software vendors such as Veeam and Zerto creates limitations on comprehensive offerings which would include backup and disaster recovery."
"VPN P2S is cutting all connections except the CloudStack environment for the user when he is connected. I would like to have VPN like Cisco's AnyConnect."
"Companies need to be knowledgeable about cloud technology. It's not for novice users."
"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."
"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wasn't involved in the pricing of it because we were just doing prototype work with it, but I was told by the upper management team that it was quite expensive. That was another reason we switched to Morpheus."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about CloudStack?
The initial implementation process was quite good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product. Additionally, more themes and drag-and-drop interfaces could enhance the user experience. Improved document...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vmops, Cloud.com
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Proximus Partner Communications (Israel) VMware NTT Data Metaswitch Spirent Communications Lumina Networks Atos Fortinet
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. Cloudify and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.