VMware ESXi vs. Vultr

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
VMware ESXi
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
Vultr
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Vultr is an independent cloud computing platform on a mission to provide businesses and developers around the world with unrivaled ease of use, price-to-performance, and global reach.
$2.50
per month
Pricing
VMware ESXiVultr
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Block Storage
$1
per month
Cloud Compute
$2.50
per month
Object Storage
$5
per month
Kubernetes Engine
$10
per month
Load Balancers
$10
per month
Managed Databases
$15
per month
Optimized Cloud Compute
$28
per month
Cloud GPU
$90
per month
Bare Metal
$120
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
VMware ESXiVultr
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is based on specifications chosen in each product category. Bandwidth is also included up to a certain amount per month.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
VMware ESXiVultr
Features
VMware ESXiVultr
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
VMware ESXi
8.2
128 Ratings
2% above category average
Vultr
-
Ratings
Virtual machine automated provisioning8.0116 Ratings00 Ratings
Management console9.0128 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup8.0112 Ratings00 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration8.0116 Ratings00 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security8.0117 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
VMware ESXi
-
Ratings
Vultr
8.4
59 Ratings
2% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings9.353 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.444 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.932 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.540 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings6.846 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.350 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.955 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.248 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.238 Ratings
Best Alternatives
VMware ESXiVultr
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
VMware ESXiVultr
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(129 ratings)
8.8
(61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(6 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(6 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(55 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
5.1
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
VMware ESXiVultr
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware by Broadcom
If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
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Vultr
I've been with Vultr over 5 years hosting multiple businesses and email related services. I never experienced a significant outage or data loss. Migration has always been successful as well. Support is top tier and IP reputation is clean. I like the choices of OS, ease of platform use and multiple hosting/ region options.
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Pros
VMware by Broadcom
  • Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
  • Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
  • VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
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Vultr
  • Good performance from servers close to me and my customers
  • Ease of spinning up new servers
  • Great service levels of servers I spin up
  • Notifications of issues or downtime come through quickly, allowing me to handle client queries with knowledge in hand.
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Cons
VMware by Broadcom
  • VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
  • VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
  • I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
Read full review
Vultr
  • The response times for support tickets is too high and a quicker response time would be appreciated
  • Availability of the VPS solution in Middle east and Africa would help
  • Abilito to connect SIP trunks would make it more easy to run active communictaion platforms on Vultr
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Likelihood to Renew
VMware by Broadcom
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
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Vultr
Just a great product with no bells and whistles, which is the advantage. We spend very little time learning and using Vultr and more time using the systems we have in Vultr to complete our tasks. Not having to worry about the IT overhead is huge and saves a great deal of time
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Usability
VMware by Broadcom
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
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Vultr
easy to use and configure. great bang for the buck. I need an affordable solution to host in the cloud data from systems installed at our client's site with the ability to drill down and change the configuration remotely. Vultr enabled us to do that in an efficient and affordable way.
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Reliability and Availability
VMware by Broadcom
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
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Vultr
No answers on this topic
Performance
VMware by Broadcom
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
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Vultr
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
VMware by Broadcom
I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
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Vultr
Vultr makes it easy to contact technical support. The techs are very competent. In a number of occasions they have bounced the responsibility back to me when they could have saved us all time and heartache by simply implementing the solution directly
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Implementation Rating
VMware by Broadcom
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
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Vultr
Vultr implementation seemed based on open-source tools and basic cloud principles - some things were more complicated to do compared with more developed cloud providers, but on the other hand it was more extensible by open-source tools.
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Alternatives Considered
VMware by Broadcom
As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
Read full review
Vultr
Linode is a more old-school offering. Linode pricing model and infrastructure rely on classic Virtual Machines. What we like about Vultr is that they offer the same at the front, but in the back, the machines are much more flexible and can be tailor-made to our needs, which of course also impacts the costs of running the infrastructure.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
VMware by Broadcom
it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
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Vultr
Pricing is fair and did not increase
Read full review
Scalability
VMware by Broadcom
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
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Vultr
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
VMware by Broadcom
  • VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
  • VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
  • As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
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Vultr
  • We have experienced a 200% return on using Vultr products with a 100% Customer Satisfaction rating.
  • Vultr gives us the regions to deploy where our small business customers are located.
  • Vultr has helped us scale up our company and our cloud solutions.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Vultr Screenshots

Screenshot of Vultr's control panel helps users spend less time managing infrastructure.Screenshot of Vultr's services offer additional configuration and inside of the simplified control panel.Screenshot of a display of when peak activity happens on an application. The server health graphs provide insight from the moment the server is created.Screenshot of Vultr's interface, which allows users to deploy high performance servers worldwide from any device.Screenshot of how to reach the 24/7/365 technical support team that is available through Vultr's ticketing system.