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Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services vs VMware Workstation comparison

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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

Dell Virtual Desktop Infras...
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Hosted Virtual Desktop Services (1st)
VMware Workstation
Ranking in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) category, the mindshare of Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Workstation is 9.1%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Workstation9.1%
Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services1.2%
Other89.7%
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
 

Featured Reviews

SA
IT Lead at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Centralized virtual desktops have boosted secure client access and daily productivity
Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services is hosted centrally in data centers where I log in to the virtual desktop interface to work on client applications. I get access to all client applications on a daily basis, including application permissions and working access, all related to client applications with the help of a VPN network. Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services has had a huge impact on getting connected to a customer's application. It provides seamless access to the client's network, and with the help of a VPN, I connect to the client system and take a remote session to work on daily tasks. It has increased productivity significantly, and Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services is stable and scalable. It has been able to grow with our needs.
GC
Director of IT at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Creating and destroying test machines has simplified our operations and reduced manual recovery time
The Snapshot feature has helped with workflows by allowing us to more easily reconstruct something if we lose it or need it. We've been making Snapshots on a consistent basis, mainly of servers. The VX Rail has worked effectively because we can create machines as we need them. It's helpful for resetting and has helped with our operations because I had set up failover servers on Vertex, but we don't have to do that anymore since VMware will just create a new machine immediately if we have a problem. We're doing our domain servers on there, and we've been very happy with that. We appreciate that we can create machines simply to test things out and then destroy them. I use it for a test machine for checking emails, so if the email has a virus in it, we can just destroy the machine and create a new one. We're slowly moving into the VMware environment, although the pricing with Broadcom has been a disaster.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dual E5-2600 v3 Xeons, DDR4 memory and the best storage potential makes the PowerEdge T630 a highly versatile server."
"It has increased productivity significantly, and Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services is stable and scalable."
"It paid for itself multiple times, especially when we had to pull in older Windows 2003 servers for disk manipulation."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Player is the ability to snapshot with or without memory."
"VMware Workstation works correctly and has more features compared to Oracle VirtualBox."
"VMware Workstation made various enhancements to the system once the deployment was completed."
"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"VMware Workstation keeps working and it makes my day every time I have to use it because it starts, it runs, and it makes my life easier."
"The most valuable features of VMware Workstation are the speed of access and quality of upgrade."
"VMware player is a very good alternative for those who want a stable and free virtualization platform that can be easily run in various Operating System platforms like Windows, Linux, Macintosh etc."
 

Cons

"The service needs to work on strong integration with the VMware ecosystem and improve vendor support."
"It's been a struggle at times to keep drive shares and video drivers working across updates."
"I have encountered stability issues with the virtual networks and have had run into issue with copying or moving VMs."
"It would be better if software updates occur automatically."
"VMware Workstation has some network limitations which could improve, it is not as flexible as VMware NSX."
"VMware Workstations is for desktop use only and is pricey."
"The problem we are facing with stability is that the network adapter causes crashes of the VM when we're using it for developing purposes."
"The product’s virtual machine data backup feature needs upgrading."
"Installing VMware Workstation isn't so easy. It's highly complex compared to Windows. I rate it four out of 10 for ease of installation. Setting up a remote desktop only takes a minute or so, but the Workstation itself takes some time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost differs depending on the customer's requirement."
"The product has a moderate price."
"The licensing costs are cheap. I pay approximately $100 per year."
"The pricing is a bit steep in my opinion for testing and there are other options."
"Licensing costs are paid on a yearly basis."
"The tool is not the cheapest."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"It has the best licensing modules."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services?
Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services can be improved by integrating more features with AI and incorporating an AI bot. Additionally, it should have strong integration with the VMware ...
What is your primary use case for Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services?
Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services functions as a peripheral for virtual desktop infrastructure that I use similarly with Citrix Virtual Desktop apps to work in a customer environme...
What advice do you have for others considering Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services?
Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services works on multifactor authentication to authenticate each user according to their MFA access, which secures registered users and gives permission t...
Which VMware solution would you go with - Workstation or vSphere?
VM Workstation’s setup is so easy, you can use it almost instantly, it works well with Windows and Linux. We like VM Workstation primarily to test environments to determine how well a solution will...
What needs improvement with VMware Player?
Here's what happened with us regarding the prices for VMware Workstation: we purchased everything through Dell, and as is common, we got busy and didn't get everything activated. By the time we tri...
What is your primary use case for VMware Player?
I have a bunch of VMware servers set up, including our domain servers, our data servers, and some test machines on VMware. We're not really using VMware Workstation as workstations. We've got a cou...
 

Also Known As

Dell Hosted Virtual Desktop Services
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Royal Opera House, University of the Sciences, Noritz America, University of the Incarnate Word (UIW), Fulton County
Akademiska Hus
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Services vs. VMware Workstation and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.