Microsoft Remote Desktop Services Reviews

My main use case for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is to connect to servers from laptops, and sometimes it's even Mac macOS laptops.

For example, in my company, we have MacBook Pro as work computers, and most of our clients have Windows servers, so the best way to connect to the Windows servers is through RDP clients.

The best features Microsoft Remote Desktop Services offers include the fact that it's multi-platform and it's easy to connect from any operating system to a Windows server or a Windows computer.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services has positively impacted my organization because it's the only way to connect to some servers we have, as we don't have other options; for example, if they were Linux servers, we would just SSH, but on Microsoft, we have to use RDP.

Using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services has helped my team save time and improve productivity because we had Microsoft servers that were impossible to connect from our MacBook Pro laptops, and once we started using RDP, we could connect and move forward to deliver the project.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services could be improved because we have keyboard compatibility issues with some platforms; on macOS, we sometimes experience keyboard connectivity issues, and it can be problematic when connecting to servers that then need to connect to other servers, as the keyboard layout doesn't match.

I have been using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for maybe one year.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is stable.

I have never personally had to contact customer support.

We previously used native AWS SSM Session Manager, but not all the clients allow it.

I have seen a return on investment from using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services; for example, it has helped in unlocking a locked situation.

By unlocking a locked situation, I mean we couldn't connect to a server in any other way, so we had to use RDP.

My advice to others looking into using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is to try it and see if it's what you need. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our main use case for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is to allow multiple users to remotely access our Windows machine, desktop, or application over the internet and our network.

The best features Microsoft Remote Desktop Services offers include the ability to work remotely or use a virtual desktop, centralized application hosting, and securing access to a machine for internal service and call center or enterprise environments.

We rely mostly on remote work and virtual desktop functionality to access the office environment remotely, along with centralized application hosting to run heavy applications on servers while users access the lightweight Windows machine in a secured way.

Centralizing management and access has helped our team by improving productivity.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services can be improved in several areas. Currently, it requires a license cost, it has performance limits on shared resources with bottlenecks, the setup is complex, and it is not ideal for graphics-heavy applications.

I have been using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for about one year.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is stable.

The scalability of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is good.

The customer support for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is good.

Using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, we are able to centralize the management of applications and desktops in one place, allowing multiple users to access the same machine. We can also implement gateway and encryption on that and integrate Active Directory.

The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing is based on licensing costs and the setup is complex.

What advice I would give to others looking into using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is to consider its features carefully. I would rate this product an 8.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

My primary use case for Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is for remote access to a work computer, which includes working from home and accessing a work computer or server management. It involves being able to remotely access the server and get to the console.

A valuable feature of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is its native integration with Microsoft platforms. It is enabled by default on any Windows product, which means it is not a third-party utility. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is available and installed by default for all Microsoft Windows products.

I think it does what it does well, so there is nothing that needs improvement. Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is very utilitarian and suits my use cases perfectly.

I have had experience with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for twenty-five years.

I rate Microsoft's customer service support a two out of ten. In general, Microsoft has poor support.

Positive

Depending on the use case and limited usage, I would rate the setup five to six out of ten. It can be somewhat complex in some cases, especially when used as an enterprise solution. Some configurations can be complex.

In limited use cases, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is free as it is defaulted by any Microsoft license. The paid version for enterprise requires RDS CALs, or client access licenses. These licenses are not cheap, as they add up in cost.

I would recommend Microsoft Remote Desktop Services, especially for general support. For accessing servers, it is an excellent solution. Overall, I rate the solution as a nine out of ten.

We use it primarily to provide virtual desktops to our end users, which allow them to access email, word processing, and other essential applications.

I like its familiarity. If you grew up Office environment, we use Outlook and software and everything, it's just familiar. Other than the initial login through the thin client, you don't even realize that you're on the virtual desktop. So it's just familiarity and ease of use.

It allows employees to log on to corporate resources remotely. But, we don't actually use the application publishing feature.

The current process I have to go through to get a Windows 11 VM up and running is difficult. Windows 10 worked a whole lot better than Windows 11.

Probably about five years in its current form.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

I've found it to be very scalable as long as took into consideration the number of users. If there is a sudden surge or drop of users, it might not scale as you like. 

If you plan for your expected user base, it is not a problem. I tend to over-engineer my servers, so I've never run into problems like resource limitations. It's been both scalable and reliable for me.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. My current setup is, again, about 10 to 15, but in my past life, I've deployed it for over 150 people.

The quality of the customer service and support depends upon what day of the week it is. They're very up and down with their support. Some days, I get really great support, and some days, it's not so great. So, on a scale of one to ten, I'd put them at a five.

It also depends upon what you're licensed for... I mean, if you're licensed for the top-level tier, which I was at my last job, the support was really great. But at this current job, we're not leveled at that level. So, I kind of know what's out there, and I'm left like the kid looking in the candy store with my nose against the window. And that's all because of budgeting and pricing. And I understand that.

Again, depending on who you get and what day you get them, you get great support. Or sometimes, if you get the summer intern, not so great support.

Neutral

I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, with ten being the easiest. You do have to have knowledge. You have to know how to apply your licenses, allocate your resources, set up your drives, and everything.

We've built around it, so it integrates very well.

Currently, it's just me, but in my past life, I had a team.

In my particular environment, dealing with classified networks, my biggest return on investment is being able to create a single image and deploy it multiple times rapidly. 

When the updates come in, I only have to deploy them once instead of having to walk around to each machine because we're using them as virtual desktops. To me, that's really valuable because if I had to walk around to everybody's machine to apply a patch, that would be extremely inefficient.

I've never had an issue with it. I've always thought the pricing for RDS was reasonable.

I would recommend it, but depending on the scale of your operation and what you have.

So, like, if you're a small shop, one to two administrators, maybe ten to fifteen users, I would absolutely recommend it. If you start getting outside of that, you might want to start looking at other things because there's just some... well, actually, with the new PowerShell tools and everything, you could probably support up to more than that. But, again, it depends upon your needs and what your environment is going to be. 

If you're going to be supporting thousands of people, I don't think I'd recommend it. But if you're just up to a hundred, I would recommend it.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We have a lot of Microsoft services configured for different applications. We use the solution to access them.

Since the tool has a graphical user interface, it's easier for us to access the server. It's easier to connect to someone and explain it to them. It is easy to share and explain the features of the solution.

We face frequent disconnections.

I have been using the solution for the past 4 years.

The product is stable enough. I rate the stability an 8 out of 10.

We are quite a large organization with 14,000 employees. Almost everyone uses the product on a daily basis.

The support team takes a long time to get back to us. The team takes almost 2 days to respond to us. The wait time is longer than that of Azure and AWS’s support teams.

The tool is the only way for us to connect to the servers. I will recommend the tool to others. If an organization has a Microsoft ecosystem, Microsoft Remote Desktop Services is the only out-of-the-box solution available. Installing anything else would be a hassle. Overall, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.

On-premises

It's helped with cutting costs and making access easier. People can work remotely using this product. For remote billing, it's working well. 

The ability to access the computer from a remote location is great. With the Windows Server as a client, we can use more than one computer at a time.

The initial setup is simple. 

It's a stable solution.

You can scale the product.

We've had issues with security breaches. The main problem is that if we are using this with the individual computer and using a remote desktop, there are some loopholes there. When I implemented this on an individual computer within two or three days it got captured.

There is a problem with the printing and sharing of this program. There is a lot of customized software leaving the market due to this. If somebody wants to run a specific program with the specific settings, they don't want full access to the computer. Then there are some problems that have to be resolved.

We'd like to have an additional control panel available in order o more easily give resources to the computers. There are a lot of restrictions and having a program panel would make things easier. It would help us set up the right access and permissions.  

We've been using the solution for 20 years. It's been a long time. 

The solution is stable. If it is configured properly, then it'll not create any problems in between. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability depends on the server size. It does not scale on a personal computer, however. 

The solution can be configured in such a way that you are able to maintain it yourself. We've never had to reach out to technical support for assistance. 

For printer redirection, we are using third-party software.

We've used Citrix and VMware in the past.

The implementation is very straightforward. If there are some problems or if clients have installation issues, that can be solved by the technician and it's very easy.

I'd rate the implementation a three out of five in terms of the ease of the process. 

It does not take too much time due to the remote desktop. You just have to do some settings on the server or computer. We only need about three people to handle deployment tasks. 

I'm a consultant and an integrator. I never call up a third party to help with implementation. 

The solution is not too expensive. It's moderately priced. I'd rate it a three out of five in terms of affordability. 

We are using this and Windows Server and Windows 10 or Windows 9, whatever is available.

Normally this is a private cloud, however, right now, a lot of our customers are on AWS and they're using it from the cloud, also.

I'd advise new users to first gather good knowledge and do some planning before the implementation. 

I'd rate the solution six out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My company uses the capabilities of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services to connect with Windows from home.

I have never faced any issues working with Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. You can say that the tool has remote access functionalities that every system or network admin uses. In some case scenarios, we also get the end user to use Microsoft Remote Desktop Services. The tool is simple to use and simple to deploy.

Microsoft improves its UI experience in every upgrade.

In the past, my company had faced some issues related to the stability of the product. The product's stability can be improved.

I have been using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for more than 10 years. I am an end-user of the tool.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an 8 out of 10.

The product's initial setup phase was easy.

I haven't done the product setup process for a long time.

For those who use Microsoft Azure service, the solution is deployed on the cloud model. If someone uses Windows Server, the solution can be deployed on an on-premises or a local cloud model.

Actually, there are many many other products that provide remote access capabilities. If we compare Microsoft Remote Desktop Services with the other products, I would recommend the virtual network console and maybe a communication application that can be used with Linux OS. If you start with Microsoft, Remote Desktop Services is a very good tool.

The remote work concept came into the picture after COVID-19. Before COVID-19, I was a network admin. Many people were using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services for remote access. In my company, if we are at home and want to check if all the backups are taken care of by automated operations and other related activities, we use Microsoft Remote Desktop Services to connect to the Windows Server.

My company uses many Microsoft products, like Office 365, Microsoft teams, MS Office, Excel and SharePoint. Every company uses Microsoft products. All the four companies I have worked at in the past use Microsoft.

I rate the tool an 8 out of 10.

I needed the solution to connect to a service. I need fixed IPs. When I'm working from home, I have a dynamic IP. One of our clients has opened a server with a fixed IP for us. We connect to the server using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services.

The solution makes remote work possible. It has made my life easier because I don't have to travel. I can use it from anywhere.

I did not face any problems with the product’s performance. It is stable. The solution is easy to use. The application publishing feature is simple. The tool establishes a simple funnel to the server.

The stability could be improved.

I have been using the solution for 1.5 years.

I rate the tool’s stability a 9 out of 10.

Scalability is not an issue.

The initial setup is easy. The deployment took 10 minutes. I can do the deployment myself. The deployment was not very hard because the tool is part of Windows. We need to set up some parameters with the remote server. They are quite simple steps. I received credentials from the server operator and used them as parameters during the setup. We can reach all the physical servers using the tool.

The tool enables me to work without traveling.

We do not have to pay for the product.

I don't know whether setting up a two-factor authentication in the product is possible. It is quite simple to access the remote server if the setup is done properly. Overall, I rate the product a 9 out of 10.

We use it for file repositories, project sharing with Teams, and most of our business intelligence work. We manage around 30 to 40 projects using these resources, mainly on SharePoint.

We use SharePoint here since we're a public university. We have access to all Microsoft platforms. Also, we use Google for email, but they're restricting access for public universities, so we're mostly migrating to Microsoft.

It works well and supports remote work. People can work from home and easily share information. The platform is robust enough for our needs.

We have research projects where students can connect to computers and remotely monitor long experiments, such as charging and recharging cycles of batteries. They don't need to be physically in the lab, which is a good benefit.

It integrates well with existing security and compliance measures

Teams component can be a bit cumbersome to use. It takes some time to get it working as expected, but it's fine once you get used to it.

It is used daily in my university. 

It's scalable enough for our needs and very reliable.

Customer service and support were available whenever we needed them. It was always there. We didn't had any issue. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy. It was easy to set up. 

I would recommend it. The core features are very effective, especially for running an organization with geographically distributed people.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use the solution for accessing services in our infrastructure, and also, since it's a remote service solution, the desktop infrastructure.

I use the solution as a necessity in order to connect to some servers or to some desktop infrastructure.

The availability is very good. 

It's easy to use. New users especially find it very simple. You just connect and go.

The solution is stable and reliable.   

You can combine the Remote Desktop Services with Citrix in some form, however, not with all of the features of both. It depends on the situation.

We'd like to see more integration with other vendors. 

The solution could offer better, easier scalability. 

Technical support response times could be better. 

We've been using the solution for more than ten years. 

The solution is stable and the performance is good. It's reliable. I haven't had issues with it. There are no bugs or glitches. 

Scalability maybe should be improved. I'm not sure, with the latest version, how scalable it is. We had issues a few years ago and I worked closely with the guys that implemented them. I know that there were better products in the market on the side of scalability. It could scale a lot easier or faster.

Right now, we have about 100 people on-premises using the solution. We are a small firm. 

I don't have much experience with Microsoft services or support.

As far as I've seen, they are there. However, they are kind of slow. That said, it's not something we can generalize and say, "Well, this is Microsoft." In our experience, they are okay. 

Neutral

We use Vendor Desktop Infrastructure. We still use Citrix and we used VMware Horizon as well. 

I wasn't a part of the initial setup and, therefore, can't speak to the process. 

That said, I do not recall the team having any major issues. 

We have a team of two engineers that can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. It's good to have a few people available in case someone goes on holidays or has a day off, et cetera. 

Our team handled the implementation in-house. 

I'm not aware of the exact costs of licensing. You might have to budget a bit for maintenance, however, it's very minimal. 

We test a lot of solutions as we use a lot of different products with clients. We must remain sharp, so we spend some time looking into many options to see what would work best for each customer. 

If it's something new appears in the market, we will install it in order to see if it's okay to recommend to our customers.

We are a Microsft partner. Microsoft product is used in over 90% of the corporate environment here.

This solution is a technology implemented in our company. My position is in the IT department; I also sometimes help troubleshoot.

We tend to use the latest version. We are using both cloud and on-premises deployments.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Private Cloud

Microsoft Azure