CloudStack vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

Apache and Nutanix are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Nutanix is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Apache holds a 2.6% mindshare in CM, compared to Nutanix’s 3.4% 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

2,115 Views
1,946 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Read 112 Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reviews

7,162 Views
4,154 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 10, 2025

CloudStack and Nutanix Cloud Manager compete in cloud management. Nutanix Cloud Manager is perceived as having the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and advanced capabilities, justifying its higher price for those needing robust functionality.

Features: CloudStack offers scalability, ease of integration with various cloud environments, and essential automation capabilities. Nutanix Cloud Manager provides powerful automation, efficient orchestration, and seamless multicloud integration, making it suitable for complex environments with an advanced toolkit.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could benefit from enhancements in user interface and documentation, as well as more robust networking features. Nutanix Cloud Manager might improve by simplifying certain complex configurations, optimizing resource utilization, and streamlining pricing models to increase accessibility for smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack is straightforward to deploy with accessible customer support, easing the initial setup. Nutanix Cloud Manager's deployment reflects its sophisticated capabilities, with customer service known for providing comprehensive guidance, supporting its feature-rich environment.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack is noted for its low setup cost and favorable ROI for budget-conscious customers. Nutanix Cloud Manager requires a higher initial investment but offers significant ROI through enhanced operational capabilities and long-term strategic advantages, appealing to those seeking high-value solutions.

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

February 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

7th

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

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

112

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 3.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	3.4%
CloudStack	2.6%
Other	94.0%

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.

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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

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs."

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."

"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."

"The initial implementation process was quite good."

"It gives us the ability to manage and segregate a guest network with openvSwitch and VLAN IDs."

More CloudStack pros

"What I appreciate about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it gives us a good, simple view that really plays effectively when we're trying to talk to other teams to show them their VM has too many resources."

"The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything."

"Compared to other cloud management solutions such as VMware, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) offers a single pane of glass where a single service can manage everything, thanks to Prism Central and Prism Element metrics."

"Its resilience and performance are excellent."

"There is less management for the team than before, so there is a complete gain of time. It freed up our staff's time for other work. This is something that is important for our company."

"The administration components are the most useful since, with them, we have been able to win and perform preventive measures in the administration of the hyper-converged Nutanix infrastructure."

"The stability and reliability of the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) platform have been excellent, as we have had zero outages."

"The solution's most valuable features revolve around the single pane of glass it provides, which helps me see all my infrastructure and quickly manage VM operations without having to go to individual clusters."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

Cons

"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."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"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."

"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."

"The absence of the feature, deploy an instance from a snapshot, is the weak point of the platform. It is a feature that everyone needs nowadays."

"The installation of CloudStack can be quite challenging because you need a good understanding of the product before starting."

"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

More CloudStack cons

"I do, however, wish that the cluster would come preinstalled with the OS, as ours did not, and it took quite a bit of tinkering, trial and error, calls to Nutanix support, and an ample amount of time to figure out how to get everything up and running."

"Considering the shortcomings where improvements are needed, I would say that the tool should have a cheap hardware model that can be used to manage the proof of concept phase."

"If they integrated more with GPT, that would be ideal."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager could partner with more partners to bring technologies that align with the area's policies and business needs."

"Nutanix, as of today, they do not have many of the features that VMware hypervisor provides, such as the memory layer."

"The flow and management capabilities of the platform could be improved to handle additional features and functionalities, especially since the company currently uses some other solutions from a competitor."

"I would appreciate seeing more in-depth features in the Intelligent Operations piece."

"The time between the solution's production and delivery is too short. We see several bugs. Many tests are not done before delivery. They need to test it more and for a longer time."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

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

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

"Nutanix is really smart to understand that the most important fact is the value to the customer, not the price tag. While you do get some sticker shock sometimes, as soon as you show this and you prove the value, all of a sudden, it looks exceptionally affordable."

"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 tool is expensive."

"Don't unlicense your Prism licensing. Pro is the strict minimum for real infrastructure. Go with at least Pro and not with the starter. Ultimate was the best choice for me."

"The solution’s pricing is not outrageous like other products."

"Nutanix has good central management tools where one guy can manage the entire system. Looking at other systems, I need a guy to manage the servers and another guy to manage the cell network and storage. I need a bigger team for other solutions compared to Nutanix where I can use a small team and reduce my operations to manage the cluster. Sometimes what you hear with this solution is, "It is so expensive," but the cost and benefits that Nutanix has inside are really good."

"Its licensing is cheaper than VMware. However, the price for certain licenses or use cases is not clearly indicated. For example, replication of the cluster to switch from one VM to another when one is down is not included in the standard price. It requires an additional license, but it is not clearly indicated."

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

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

17%

Marketing Services Firm

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing 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	26
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	66

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 38% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

HPE OneSphere vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

VMware Cloud Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 8% of the time

Morpheus vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 8% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

January 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

January 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

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

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)

February 2026

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