CloudStack vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

Apache and Nutanix are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.2, while Nutanix is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8. Apache holds a 2.2% mindshare in CM, compared to Nutanix’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

3,161 Views
3,003 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Read 125 Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reviews

10,690 Views
5,666 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

CloudStack and Nutanix Cloud Manager compete in the cloud management category. Nutanix Cloud Manager has the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and integration capabilities, justifying its price.

Features: CloudStack provides robust APIs, an adaptable cloud architecture, and support for various hypervisors, making it suitable for large-scale cloud services. Nutanix Cloud Manager excels with advanced automation, seamless integrations, and a unified management interface, enhancing operational efficiency.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could benefit from advanced integration features and more automated processes to match higher-end capabilities found in competitive products. While its user interface is straightforward, enhancements in user experience for non-technical users could be beneficial. Nutanix Cloud Manager might improve by offering more flexible pricing options for smaller companies and expanding its open-source integrations. Increased customizability and simplification of its deep feature set could further enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack offers straightforward deployment processes, highlighting simplicity and flexibility. Nutanix Cloud Manager provides top-tier customer service, with dedicated support enhancing the deployment experience.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack’s lower initial costs are attractive for cost-sensitive businesses, potentially offering faster ROI. Nutanix Cloud Manager requires a higher financial commitment, but its enriched feature set and efficiencies justify its premium pricing, supporting longer-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

June 2026

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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

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Ranking in Cloud Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.2%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.5%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	2.5%
CloudStack	2.2%
Other	95.3%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Read full review

Phani Venkata Sai BKD

Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters

Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight

The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All our development is done on this environment because we deploy around 3,000 instances every day."

"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."

"CloudStack has reduced the time to market for the delivery of new products."

"The APIs for automation in CloudStack are excellent; everything is API-driven, and while the API is very rich and hard to learn, you can do everything you would want to do, including everything in the user interface and more."

"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."

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."

"Being able to completely virtualize a customer’s physical data center and migrate any workload into the cloud, and cover the most complex use cases - while offering high performance and true volume QoS, backed by SSD-based managed storage - is what differentiates it from other IaaS solutions."

More CloudStack pros

"It is a very stable solution."

"The convergence between the network and the storage is valuable."

"Nutanix is good when compared to its competitors."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has positively impacted my organization through cost-cutting, significantly reducing the need for manual interruptions, and allowing us to schedule VM backups during disasters."

"Cost Governance helps customers improve cloud performance and save money."

"Their technical support is very good."

"Moreover, the deployment process was so easy and smooth that post rack and stack and management IP configuration, it just took less than 2 days to configure the cluster of 40 nodes, upgrade the firmware, create file service and VM space and integrate with our infrastructure."

"IT doesn't have to be super complicated."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

Cons

"The product has evolved a lot since the first versions in which it was very complicated to do version updates, and had various problems."

"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."

"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures. Those areas needs improvement."

"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."

"More integration with third-party products (we know that OpenStack has a better level of integration)."

"With all that simplicity come limitations that need to be understood and planned for: Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."

More CloudStack cons

"We'd like the demos to be longer - maybe two to three months. Some clients need much more time for a POC."

"Compatibility with multiple clouds and a single control would help us. We are also getting onto GCP, and there is limited compatibility with GCP in the areas we need. We are using GCP primarily for data analytics."

"There's the split between Prism Central and Prism Element and having to know which interface I need to get into to do certain feature sets or just having to switch between those having all the feature sets available under for some central, area would be my biggest ask. They've been moving towards that more and more."

"Azure has a public cloud offering, and it also has a CSP model that allows Microsoft partners to provide Azure as a service to their customers. Cost Governance only works on the standard public cloud, not the CSP model. When I was at my previous company, we frequently got requests for Azure CSP support. We also got some requests for Alibaba Cloud and Oracle Cloud, but Azure CSP was the biggest one."

"Compatibility with multiple clouds and a single control would help us."

"When we tried to migrate an application from the old cluster, we couldn't run it on Nutanix’s native hypervisor."

"There have been bugs. We've seen what looked like some storage inefficiencies in reports and, when we went in to look, we found they were false alarms. That was something they corrected on the fly."

"We would like to be able to provision virtual machines at the computing level, as that would give us an added value against the competition."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"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."

"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."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"We have the ultimate license, so I don't know what it would cost individually."

"It is a nightmare to keep up with all the licensing. I would prefer everything to be in one price."

"The solution is a bit high in price for what we are receiving as features. I feel they are overcharging us at approximately 25 percent. That is something that they should change."

"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper than VMware and other products."

"The company frequently changes its prices, and it is not clear how the subscription-based model works."

"It is an expensive solution, but one has to make the trade-off between what you want to achieve and what you are willing to pay."

"I rate Cost Governance an eight out of 10 for pricing. There are different plans, so you can pay monthly or yearly. You can also sign a three-year contract. It's quite flexible. I can't give it a perfect 10, because customers always want a cheaper solution."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Construction Company

Marketing Services Firm

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	26
Large Enterprise	75

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?

For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...

See all answers

Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?

When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...

See all answers

Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?

Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 12% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

VMware Aria Operations vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Data Security Fabric vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 4% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

June 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

June 2026

Download Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central, Nutanix Software Subscription

Overview

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

Nutanix Cloud Manager streamlines hybrid cloud management by offering centralized control, automation, and workload optimization across platforms. It improves operational efficiency while reducing IT management complexity.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is designed for comprehensive hybrid cloud governance, providing tools for virtualization, resource allocation, and compliance. Its features include one-click upgrades, dynamic dashboards, and the seamless automation of tasks through X-Play. Users can efficiently manage virtual machines, ensure secure storage, and enhance productivity with predictive monitoring. Self-service capabilities allow users to reserve resources easily, while central management via Prism Pro and automated reports enhance oversight and decision-making. Challenges include UI simplicity, pricing transparency, and licensing efficiency, with users seeking improvements in VM organization, blueprint customization, and collaborative support for hybrid environments.

What important features define Nutanix Cloud Manager?

One-click Upgrades: Simplifies the process of updating and maintaining systems.
Intuitive Interface: Offers a user-friendly experience with a low learning curve.
Prism Pro: Central management for streamlined control over environments.
Dynamic Dashboards: Provides real-time insights and monitoring capabilities.
X-Play Automation: Facilitates seamless and efficient task automation.
Capacity Planning: Assists in optimal resource allocation and future growth planning.
Compliance Monitoring: Ensures adherence to industry standards and policies.
Efficient VM Management: Enhances control and monitoring of virtual machines.
Self-service Capabilities: Empowers users to manage and allocate resources independently.
Cost Governance: Allows organizations to maintain budgetary control and efficiency.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Nutanix Cloud Manager?

Enhanced Productivity: Streamlines tasks and improves efficiency through automation.
Predictive Monitoring: Proactively addresses potential issues before they impact operations.
Robust Disaster Recovery: Provides reliable solutions to recover data and maintain continuity.
Automated Reports: Generates timely insights for informed decision-making.
Unified Cloud Management: Offers comprehensive control across multiple environments.

Nutanix Cloud Manager finds utility in industries requiring robust hybrid cloud strategies like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. It excels in centralizing management for secure and compliant operations, optimizing workloads, and providing scalable solutions for resource allocation and compliance monitoring, thus enhancing cloud operations in diverse markets.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

June 2026

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