--- title: VMware ESXi Reviews meta_title: 'VMware ESXi Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 21 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how VMware ESXi works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.7 review_count: 21 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-06-24' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # VMware ESXi Reviews **Vendor:** Broadcom **Category:** [Server Virtualization Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/server-virtualization) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 21 ## About VMware ESXi VMware ESXi is a robust, enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware, designed to deploy and manage virtual machines directly on physical servers without the need for an underlying operating system. As a bare-metal hypervisor, ESXi provides a secure and efficient virtualization platform, enabling organizations to consolidate their IT infrastructure, optimize resource utilization, and reduce operational costs. Key Features and Functionality: - Virtual Machine Management: ESXi supports the creation and operation of multiple virtual machines running various operating systems, including Windows and Linux, each capable of independently running applications. - Resource Allocation and Optimization: It offers flexible allocation of CPU, memory, storage, and network resources, allowing dynamic adjustment of resource quotas for virtual machines. ESXi also supports resource pooling and load balancing to enhance performance. - High Availability and Fault Tolerance: The hypervisor includes features like High Availability (HA) and Fault Tolerance (FT) to ensure business continuity by automatically restarting virtual machines in case of hardware failure and providing real-time redundancy for critical applications. - vMotion: ESXi supports vMotion, enabling live migration of virtual machines between hosts without service interruption, facilitating load balancing and maintenance activities. - Storage and Network Virtualization: It integrates with VMware vSAN for pooled storage resources and supports Distributed Switches to enhance network flexibility and performance. - Snapshots and Backup: ESXi provides snapshot capabilities for creating restore points and offers APIs for third-party backup solutions to ensure data protection. - Security and Isolation: The platform includes built-in virtual machine encryption, fine-grained access control, and supports hardware-based Secure Boot to maintain a secure virtualization environment. - Centralized Management Support: ESXi can be centrally managed through VMware vCenter Server, supporting automated tasks, monitoring, and resource scheduling to simplify virtualization management. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: VMware ESXi delivers a high-performance, secure, and scalable virtualization platform that enables organizations to maximize hardware utilization, reduce physical infrastructure costs, and enhance operational efficiency. By supporting advanced features like live migration, high availability, and centralized management, ESXi addresses critical business needs for reliability, flexibility, and simplified IT operations. ## VMware ESXi Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **ease of use and management** provided by VMware ESXi for virtual machine virtualization. (6 reviews) - Users find VMware ESXi to be an **intuitive and user-friendly virtualization solution** , greatly simplifying their management tasks. (4 reviews) - Users highlight the **ease of use and extensive features** of VMware ESXi for efficient server management in enterprise environments. (3 reviews) - Users value the **management ease** of VMware ESXi, appreciating its stability and capability in virtualization. (2 reviews) - Users value the **quick snapshot feature** of VMware ESXi, facilitating easy management and server migrations. (2 reviews) - Users value the **stability** of VMware ESXi, noting its reliability and compatibility in enterprise environments. (2 reviews) - Automation (1 reviews) - Cost-Effective (1 reviews) - Cost Efficiency (1 reviews) - Users praise the **helpful customer support** of VMware ESXi, ensuring reliable assistance whenever needed. (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users are frustrated by the **expensive renewal costs** of VMware ESXi, feeling they're not receiving adequate value or updates. (2 reviews) - Users find the **limited features** of VMware ESXi in standalone mode restrict their operational capabilities significantly. (1 reviews) - Users report that **migration between physical machines** can be excessively time-consuming, leading to frustration and delays. (1 reviews) - Users express concerns over **poor customer support** , complicating implementation and raising doubts about the product's stability. (1 reviews) - Users feel the **renewal costs are excessive** for VMware ESXi, offering little innovation for the price paid. (1 reviews) - Steep Learning Curve (1 reviews) - UX Improvement (1 reviews) - VM Management Issues (1 reviews) ## VMware ESXi Reviews ### 1. Bare-Metal Architecture **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Haji M. | Associate Consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** its industry-leading bare-metal architecture. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** high licensing costs, aggressive subscription changes by Broadcom, steep hardware requirements, and the paywalling of advanced features **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMware ESXi solves hardware underutilization and server sprawl by acting as a bare-metal hypervisor. It installs directly onto physical servers, dividing their processing power, memory, and storage into isolated Virtual Machines (VMs). This allows multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a single physical machine ### 2. VMWare ESXi Best Tool to Mange Your Multiple Servers effectively and efficiently **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anoop M. | IT, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 04, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** VMWare ESXi is one of the best tool to manage your servers efficiently and effectively . This will totally reduce the investment in hardware cost .it is very ease to implement and easy to use . The package is coming with lot of features through which you can manage the servers without lot of effort. ESXI flexible features allow to integrate with other applications such as backup, DR to ensure meet all the requirement for customer Using the VMWare ESXI we can totally reduce the investment in our hardware . All the servers will be available in a same console will reduce the management time and makes work easier . ESXI is much faster than other Platforms with lot of features . **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** ESXi should provide some information options while registering new VM . for ex: while adding disk there will be thin and thick options available. So fresh user should know what will be the deference between these two options . **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have lot of servers in our office and client placers. For buying hardware for each server will totally affecting on the cost . Once we started ESXI ,we have below benefits 1. Easy to use 2. Easy to Manage multiple Servers, 3. Time saving 4. Cost reduction. 5.Ease of control ### 3. Easy-to-Use VM Virtualization with Strong vSphere Integration **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jose S. | IT Sysadmin Mid, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** - Easy to use solution for VMs virtualization - Complete virtualization on Standalone node - vSPhere integration capability - Easy to implement and Manage **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** - Not Clonning Features on Standalone mode - Limited on Standalone mode, No HA, vMotion, etc **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Baremetal Hypervisor capable of Clusterization on combination with vSphere/vCenter. - All in one Virtualization features needed ### 4. Stability and reliability **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 22, 2026 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** Stability and reliability Excellent ecosystem (vCenter, vSAN, integrations) **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** Features like DRS, vMotion, Fault Tolerance, HA are tightly locked behind license tiers If the wrong license is applied, features break or generate errors (for example, FT or DRS mismatches when changing licenses) **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** Downtime during maintenance ### 5. Great Product that is now way overpriced by Broadcom **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ronny S. | Senior Manager, Infrastructure, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 25, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** ESXi is a great virtualization platform. It's stable, compatible with a wide range of hardware, and easy to manage. I've been using it since version 3/3.5 and have watched it grow. Even the 'free' version can help you do a lot. Once you add on VCenter and upgrade you license it's whole new world of reliability and functionality. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** Broadcom is quickly killing VMWare ESXi. The costs for renewals are ridiculous. The features in the newer versions are geared towards much larger customers, so you end up paying the renewal to stay on the platform, but you aren't getting a lot of new and innovated changes. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** ESXi helped us solve infrastructure challends by consolidating workloads, reducing hardware costs, and improving resource utilization. Instead of managing a number of underutilized physical servers, we're able to right size our VMs. This has reduced our spend on hardware, power, and space at the data centers. It also allows us to quickly spin up new servers to test and deploy products, helping us to stay on top of opportunities that come our way. ESXi has improved our uptime and DR strategies over the years. Features like vMotion and HA are priceless ### 6. Most Stable and Powerful Hypervisor **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jose S. | Sysadmin Mid, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 16, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** - Stability - Feature - Enterprise Environment - Easy to Use **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** - Price of the solution - Knowledge Curve **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** - More than 40 VMs - Snapshots - Stability - More than one Year without downtime ### 7. Powerful Virtualization with VMWare ESXi **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Fernando F. | CEO / Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** VMWare ESXi is the best and preferred IT industry virtualization platform. It has a lot of features and can be expanded to meet the needs of even the most demanding enterprise. It is easy to use. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** It is not an easy platform to implement and maintain. Unfortunately, ever since VMWare was purchased by Broadcom the future of the product line and the platform as well as its different product versions has been unstable. At the time of this review, its customer support is not the greatest. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** VMWare ESXi allows us to expand the use of infrastructure by virtualizing the systems and services on it and make more effecient use of hardware resources. ### 8. VMWARE BEST HYPERVISOR EVER-HONEST REVIEW **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** ayush s. | technical support head, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 05, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** we are using Vmware from very long and we are used it for cloud computing and the best part is there to take snapshot of vm before done any changes and we have got 24/7 support and its ui is very simple **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** migration between one physical machine to another took too much time **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** taking snapshot of whole VM and compatibilty with mostly machine and 24/7 supprt response ### 9. Wrok experience with VMWARE ESXI **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** sandeep m. | support HEAD, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 04, 2025 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** i am using it since 2020 to manage my all virtual machine easily and its best to take snapshot of very big server in very less time and we can migrate server in very easy way **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** according to me its Ui is littlebit tough to uderstand **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** its took snapshot of server before doing any R&D on server whoich is very usefull for me ### 10. The best hypervisor in the market **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alejandro P. | Ingeniero de planificación, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 18, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** ESXi is the best hypervisor in the market at this moment, work great, is very stable and releiviable. The installation is very intuitive and ease, you don't need to change a lot of parameters to install in your bare metal servers. The customer support is very helpful, there realy help ones you open a case. Also vmware ESXi is ease to integrate with a lot of products in the market. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** The license price is one of the point that is more painfull since vmware change the license prices and schema to license your host **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are building a private cloud to consolidate all the workloads of the company is the hypervisor chosen to do that is vmware ESXi, is used in all the host ### 11. Its best solution to manage multiple virtual machines to full fill our requirements. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lahiru S. | Engineer - System and Security, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** Take the snapshots of the VM's is the best feature. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** i think the UI needs to be implemented to user friendly. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can deploy multiple VMs with multiple OS and easily manage the VMs by using ESXI. ### 12. Best recommended for Critical IT environment with HA requirement **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** srinivas K. | GM Business Development, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** ESXi is the best among those products that provide High available virtual environment among its competetion. The level of R&D going into the product by the new Broadcom team is excellent **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** The Clock speed matching wont be acurate while you try to replicate the environemnt through SRM across sites. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** ESXi help us run a virtual environment with 4 hosts instead of traditional 9 physical hosts. It provide HA that helps us confidently run our Application with very negligible downtime during a failover. Critical environemnts can be run on FT to loose Zero data and no downtime. ### 13. VMware ESXI review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luis P. | Cert Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 11, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** The ease of use of the interface is very friendly alot´s of opcion to virtualize the management of virtual machines is very god. the migration of service is fast **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** the upgrade of the esxi sometimes fail and it´s necesary re-install the backup and try again **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** have a quick recovery of services generate quick backups for maintenance windows ### 14. VMware Administrator with extensive experience in managing and maintaining virtualized environment. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** ANSHUMAN R. | Project Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** It is simplified platform for virtualized environment. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** It has little less automation than Nutanix HCI. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing virtualized environment. ### 15. I have been working with VMWare ESXi for over 10 years **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Njabulo M. | Operational Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** The installation packages is very small and is compatible with many hardware vendors plus it is completely free. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** I do not likne tha fact that it requires a vCenter deployment for it to have high-availability features which requires costly licensing **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is providing a soltuon for creating a shared manged hosted cloud. ### 16. excellent virtualization software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** German F. | IT Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** I like the new 24/7 support, I also like the ease of installing updates **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** The cost of the subscription service is very high compared to the old plans. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** This software has the robustness to handle a large number of virtual servers with multiple connections. ### 17. A very good journey with VMware ESXi **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Muhammad N. | Cyber Security Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** Its compatibility - it support wide range of operating systems and applications **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** It gets slow if you run multiple applications or OS at the same time **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can run multiple operating systems and application on a single computer system using VMware ESXi. ### 18. excellent virtualization tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gonzalo A. | Manager of infraestructure IT, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** The best thing is the user interface, as well as the 24/7 support offered in the new licensing system. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** the new licensing is a bit expensive but very good service. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** manage virtualized servers on different sites. ### 19. Amazing client hosting platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arthur H. | Security Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 22, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** Efficiency and Performance,Reliability and Stability,Comprehensive Management Tools,Scalability and security **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** There is nothing i dislike about using VMWare ESXi. **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** Server consolidation. ### 20. ease of use and peace of mind **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anthony R. | SRE, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 06, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** it allows you to revert snapshots, very useful when doing multiple deployments and you want to go back to previous state **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** gui could be updated looks a little dated but it does the job :) **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** reducing racks for phisycal servers, easy to put more than one OS ### 21. Industry Standard Virtualization tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about VMware ESXi?** VMWare has been the greatest virtualization tool used by enterprises across the world well known to all. **What do you dislike about VMware ESXi?** handling of transition by Broadcom in terms of customer experience **What problems is VMware ESXi solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps in deploying virtualized instances of our organization products - [View VMware ESXi pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-esxi/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-26+10%3A54%3A07+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=c8904053-ee35-44a2-97ac-f9574989030d&secure%5Btoken%5D=8b7ef7159a0601b096b31515d7409667a46c994f710bd9bf6d451118cfd75088&format=llm_user) ## VMware ESXi Integrations - [Acronis Cyber Protect](https://www.g2.com/products/acronis-acronis-cyber-protect/reviews) - [Datto SIRIS](https://www.g2.com/products/kaseya-datto-siris/reviews) - [Unitrends Backup and Recovery](https://www.g2.com/products/unitrends-backup-and-recovery/reviews) - [VMware vSphere](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsphere/reviews) - [Zabbix](https://www.g2.com/products/zabbix/reviews) ## VMware ESXi Features **Performance** - Scalability - Portability - Data Recovery **Functionality** - OS Integration - Resource Saving - Performance Management - Security **Agentic AI - Server Virtualization** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making ## Top VMware ESXi Alternatives - [Proxmox VE](https://www.g2.com/products/proxmox-ve/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (36 reviews) - [Xen Project](https://www.g2.com/products/xen-project/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (5 reviews) - [XenServer](https://www.g2.com/products/xenserver/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (48 reviews)