--- title: VMware Workstation Pro Reviews meta_title: 'VMware Workstation Pro Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 139 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how VMware Workstation Pro works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 139 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-17' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure --- # VMware Workstation Pro Reviews **Vendor:** Broadcom **Category:** [Server Virtualization Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/server-virtualization) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 139 ## About VMware Workstation Pro VMware Workstation Pro is a desktop hypervisor that enables users to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single Windows or Linux PC. Designed for IT professionals, developers, and educators, it provides a robust platform for developing, testing, and deploying applications across diverse environments without the need for additional hardware. Key Features and Functionality: - Multiple OS Support: Run a wide range of operating systems, including various versions of Windows, Linux, BSD, and MS-DOS, on virtual machines. - Snapshot Capability: Save the state of a virtual machine at any point in time, allowing for easy rollback to a previous state, which is invaluable for testing and development purposes. - Virtual Networking: Create complex network configurations with support for bridging existing host network adapters and sharing physical disk drives and USB devices with virtual machines. - High-Performance Graphics: Support for DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 enables running 3D applications and games within virtual machines. - Remote vSphere Integration: Connect to remote vSphere environments to manage virtual machines and data centers directly from the Workstation Pro interface. Primary Value and User Solutions: VMware Workstation Pro addresses the complexities of managing multi-OS operations by providing isolated, secure environments for development, testing, and learning. It allows users to streamline workflows by running multiple operating systems on a single machine without rebooting, facilitating efficient software development and testing across different platforms. Additionally, its integration with remote vSphere setups ensures seamless management of virtual infrastructures, making it an essential tool for professionals seeking flexibility and control in their virtualization needs. ## VMware Workstation Pro Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **seamless integration** with systems like vSphere/ESXi, enhancing their virtualization capabilities remarkably. (2 reviews) - Users value the **Snapshot and Clone Features** of VMware Workstation Pro for easy machine virtualization and efficiency. (2 reviews) - Users value the **robust virtualization capabilities** of VMware Workstation Pro, enabling efficient management of multiple VMs. (2 reviews) - Users find VMware Workstation Pro's **ease of setup** enhances their experience, especially compared to alternatives like VirtualBox. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **extensive features and capabilities** of VMware Workstation Pro, enhancing their virtual environment experience. (1 reviews) - Setup Ease (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users often face **complex billing issues** with VMware Workstation Pro, complicating the licensing and activation process. (1 reviews) - Users find the **difficult configuration** of VMware Workstation Pro challenging, especially without a background in networking. (1 reviews) - Users find the product's **high cost** a barrier, particularly for small teams or individual developers. (1 reviews) - Users find the **high licensing cost** of VMware Workstation Pro a barrier compared to free alternatives. (1 reviews) - Users face **complex licensing and activation issues** that create challenges, particularly in corporate environments. (1 reviews) - Users experience **performance issues** with VMware Workstation Pro, including slow startup times and occasional UI lag. (1 reviews) - Users report **poor customer support** following Broadcom's acquisition, leading to dissatisfaction with VMware Workstation Pro. (1 reviews) - Required Expertise (1 reviews) - Steep Learning Curve (1 reviews) - System Instability (1 reviews) ## VMware Workstation Pro Reviews ### 1. High performance, High price **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kyle R. | Senior Full Stack Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 14, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware Workstation is much faster and more stable than free alternatives such as VirtualBox. I have also been able to run OS X guests, albeit with poor performance, whereas other software was unable to run OS X guests. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Although your virtual machines can run almost any operating system you could want, the host is not cross-platform. If you spend any time working in an OS X environment, it is hard to justify the high price of this software. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** I would recommend VMware Workstation if you are already working in a Windows or Linux environment and need more performant virtual machines or have had stability issues with other virtualization software. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Running headless linux virtual machines for software development in a Windows environment. ### 2. Handy little sandbox to use on a workstation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew S. | Senior System Administrator, Publishing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** You can quickly setup a new virtual machine on your desktop PC to play around with a new operating system without having to reformat your desktop. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Its a great product, hard to find anything wrong with it, but maybe the price. I feel like there should be a free option for administrators who use the higher end products a lot and want another sandbox on their desktop. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am testing out new operating systems without having to have a new server in house. it is saving me lots of money on new hardware that used to be under utilized. ### 3. the benchmark for desktop virtualization **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Flavio S. | Cyber Security, Government Administration, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 05, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** is the most popular software, the management of virtual machines is simple. effortlessly you can create complex virtual structures on your desktop. vmware always offers reliable products, it integrates very well with esx. in my team I always use. with this software we can pass the virtual machines without having compatibility problems. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** the cost is a bit 'high. on the market there are also open source products that have similar functions. Vmware is better but if you do not want to spend much money you can look for other software. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** this software for each version is always more powerful and functional. the latest version is the 12. And 'much improved graphic interface and system stability. compared to similar products such as virtual box it has many more features. especially in business environments is the best solution. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** It integrates seamlessly with esxi. very often I have to do testing before moving virtual machines on ESX. It is the perfect tool. the operation is very advanced, there are all the main functions for managing virtual machines. I use it a lot. perfect tool. ### 4. Good Virtualization Tool for Windows Server **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMWare Workstation makes the process of creating and configuring new VMs quick and simple. We use the tool primarily for creating development environments to test upgrade scenarios for our stage and production level VMs. The ability to create snapshots is very useful for simultaneously testing multiple scenarios on a single VM. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** It is hard to find a negative about the product. One thing that we consistently struggle with is resources on the host machine. This is aside from allocating memory/CPU to the VM from the host. In general, just running Workstation significantly impacts performance on the host machine. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use the tool for creating development/test environments for testing upgrades and configuration changes to our stage and production environments. This allows us to perform significant testing prior to have any impact to any users. ### 5. How I used Linux while using Windows **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jose E. | Software Developer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I really loved how I was able to have multiple machines on a single one. All you needed was an OS iso, and then VMware Workstation would do the rest for you. It takes care of memory management(no RAM leaking) and was very efficient. My processor(intel core i5) performed perfectly. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** There was sometimes that it didn't launch quickly. Perhaps newer versions fix that, but the one I currently use suffers from that problem. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Don't think twice when deciding between this and VirtualBox. This is mucn better. Performance-wise and OS-Compatibility-wise is outstanding. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** As an OS reviewer, I had a machine where I installed my operative systems, but it was very unproductive to do it. i decided to do everything on my machine. At the beginning was hard to understand all the Virtualization concept, but it was amazing how I could have multiple computers on a single one. Very enriching experience. ### 6. A great tool for alternative OS **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harish S. | Student, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware workstation is a best tool to install alternative operating system. We can install any OS on this. It provides great performance by less utilizing resources. For debugging purpose or for testing software VMware provides great platform. We can install any number of OS in VMware workstaion. The interface is simple and easy to use. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** The main dislike is, it is not free and open source. Some times system crashes due to excessive use of resources. We can't run high graphics software, it hangs out. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** If you are looking for virtual software to install alternative Operatin system, VMware workstaion is a best one. I recommend that you can go for this. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using VMware workstaion in my Linux platform to install windows on it. I do test many software on both platform (Linux and windows). Sometimes i just shifts form linux to VMware windows. ### 7. Easy to use Desktop Virtualization Software **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Accounting | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 28, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Easy to use and intuitive GUI. Ability to perform memory snapshots and revert as necessary is a major plus. Stable and largely issue free with great userbase for support. Complete suite of tools and packages for all common guest platforms. Flexible networking capabilities and ability to leverage virtualization capabilities of the hardware layer. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** License cost is a bit on the high side. Free License for home use greatly handicaps the software's capability. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Expensive for the home user but relatively cheap for a business. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Necessity to test software on multiple platforms. Sandboxing of environments when performing testing and evaluation of software. Ability to run multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux) within an environment without having to reboot. ### 8. End user and IT professional **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin M. | IT Systems Team Lead, Entertainment, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 07, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Incredibly easy to setup and install. Wide support for Windows, Mac and Liunx. The unity mode is amazing for running virtual applications inside of Windows without needing to have the full blown guest operating system showing up. Easy to move the guest operating system around to a new computer if need be **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Price, the software can be a little expensive compared to other free alternatives. Virtual machines are also slow when using videos inside of them. The support for Linux could also be improved. The virtual networking can also be a little confusing to set up especially if you have a firewall in place. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Great product and incredibly easy to deploy. We use it for some older software that needs to run in older operating systems **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reducing number of desktops needed for supporting legacy applications. ### 9. Very pleasing, and impressive. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Corbin M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I like VMWare best due to it's ability to keep a solid containment of systems, being a someone who tests operating systems and develops them. It's nice to have containment systems to keep my native system safe. One of the best features of VMWare is the portability of the VMs. If I'm going from location to location, I can just move the VM to a portable media and then stick it into the system and away I go. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I haven't found anything in VMWare I don't like to be honest... I've liked everything about it. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** I would definitely make use of creating one system with many OSs on it, then using one computer to act as an access point and just RDP into them. I've found that having a form of terminal for everything is a great way to really keep my workflow fast. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm solving the fact that sometimes my VM's don't like connecting to my file server but I'm building a bridge program in C to solve this. I've realized the benefits of running a VM to be very engaging and helpful to my experience and workflow. ### 10. Great software indeed with only a few flaws. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Wensheng T. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** As VMware Workstation updates, I can always test latest Operating Systems without installing on a real machine. Using multi-devices to debug is no longer needed since you can switch from one OS to another fluently. Besides, I think it's the best virtual machine on Windows, comparing to the performance of Hyper-V and VirtualBox. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Bad simulation in GPU, especially when you run OS X in the VMWare, Graphics rendering slowly so that it is no a good idea to doing Mac / iOS development using VMWare. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** The latest OS like Windows 10, Ubuntu 15.10 and even Arch Linux works like a charm. If you are developing App on cross platform, I recommend VMware Workstation 12 Pro without hesitation. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I uses the software both at school and company. Our curriculum provides a lab for students to develop on ARM devices and the desktop OS is Windows. We use Red Hat on VMWare to connect to the ARM devices because some relevant softwares are Windows only. And as a software engineer in the company I use VMWare to check if my program runs correctly on all kind of platforms. There are some OS related issues must be resolved so that VMWare provides good debugging environment. ### 11. Workstation Pro lets me develop easily on other platforms **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kyle M. | IT Architect, Facilities Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware's Workstation 12 Pro is the VM solution I use to develop on other platforms. It makes it very easy to install an OS and get it up and running without having to worry about drivers for different components of the physical computer. It doesn't take up very many resources when the VM's are sitting unattended either. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I dislike that I can't run Apple's OS X on a Windows installation of Workstation. (This appears to be Apple's fault though). Easier access to the Virtual Appliance repository would also be nice. It would be nice to be able to access the Virtual Appliance repository from inside Workstation 12 Pro. Something akin to a package manager like npm would be awesome. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** VMware Workstation 12 Pro works great for our business use case. It easily let's us manage multiple VM containers. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am solving development hurdles for developing for different OS's. With Workstation 12 Pro, I can easily install these OS's and use them to do development work. I don't have to worry about the infrastructure that these containers are installed in. Workstation 12 Pro let's us easily move these containers between installations also. ### 12. Great tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex P. | Senior Javascript / NodeJS Developer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** - VMware ACE - I think it is bundled with VMware Workstation pro. It allows you to create portable VM's - The stability - The VMware workstation player. This offers you the ability to easily deploy "read only" VMs - The fact that you can save snapshots - The range of operating systems which are supported as guests - Hardware devices compatibility - The hardware emulation capabilities - The VMware viewer (player) - The support - The security of the VM's, and the ease with which they can be encrypted / decrypted. - Windows 10 support is better than the alternatives. - The MAC OS support is decent as well. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** - The VM's become unstable pretty easily - The relatively small size of the community (There are far less people using VMware openly and sharing experiences than there are users using other alternatives) - The process of finding out how to do something on your own can be quite tedious. However, the support is great. - There is most definitely room for improvement in the guest OS support area. - The network configuration definitely needs some improvement, as it can be dificult. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Always use the support rather than trying to figure something trickier out yourselves. It is great, and the VMware support guys know their stuff. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Configuration management - Sandboxing (Specifically to test malware behavior) - Providing people I work with with a portable, uniform development environments (Vagrant) ### 13. Probably the best **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Roberto B. | End Users Services & Support, Financial Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 03, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware offers various solutions for virtualization, the workstation version is rofrse easier and allows you to create virtual machines even on your own workstation. Obviously you will need to have an adequately powerful hw to host virtual machines. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Hw limitation, doesn't use real machine hw power (Like Parallel) too many service in background on windows machine. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** VMware is the most successful among the virtualization software. It has many different solutions of which a fee or complicated for use quotidianno. vm workstation offers an easy solution for everyone, allows you to create test VMs or just plain curiosity with a few clicks. paid software. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** create always available machine where i put different console. Possibility to create snapshot to roll back after modification. ### 14. easiest, fastest and most reliable way to evaluate new OSes, software apps and patches **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** 亚东 . | Software Engineer, Semiconductors, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware Workstation 12 Pro is the easiest, fastest and most reliable way to evaluate new operating systems, software applications and patches, and reference architectures in an isolated and safe virtualized environment. No other desktop virtualization software offers the performance, reliability, and cutting edge features of Workstation Pro. VMware Workstation Pro transforms the way technical professionals develop, test, demonstrate and deploy software by running multiple x86-based operating systems simultaneously on the same PC. Built on 15 years of virtualization excellence and winner of more than 50 industry awards, VMware Workstation Pro takes desktop virtualization to the next level by giving users an unmatched operating system support, rich user experience and incredible performance. VMware Workstation Pro takes advantage of the latest hardware to replicate server, desktop and tablet environments in a virtual machine. Run applications on a breadth of operating systems including Linux, Windows and more at the same time on the same PC without rebooting. VMware Workstation Pro makes it really easy to evaluate new operating systems like Windows 10, test software applications and patches, and reference architectures in an isolated and safe environment. No other desktop virtualization software offers the performance, reliability and cutting edge features of Workstation Pro. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware Workstation pro is not free and not open source. It is a little expensive vs other vitualization product such as VirtualBox. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Strongly recommended. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Try new OS such as Win 10. Debug software applications and patches. ### 15. Great tool for extending the life of legacy systems **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Charles H. | IT Systems Administrator, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware Workstation is great for extending the life of legacy systems. I've been able to run DOS based systems,linux based systems, and Windows 98 based systems. VMware Workstation is very versatile and handling the gamut of old operating systems. Being able to quickly clone an existing legacy virtual machine makes us an easy product to rollout. This is a huge timesaver when dealing with quirky things like getting Windows 98 to communicate with domain join file servers. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I would like to see support for CPU speed limiting for some niche systems that have timing tied to the CPU speed. I would like to see the issue with adding parallel ports after VMware workstation is installed fixed. This is a very confusing problem the first time you run into it. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** If you're looking to support a legacy system that only needs USB, parallel, or serial interfaces been this is the way to go. Things get a little dicey when you start looking at add on cards. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Supporting legacy systems. The computer is usually not the big budgetary item when it comes to maintaining legacy systems in manufacturing. The big thing is the equipment that is attached to. This could be a press, an autoclave, CNC machine, etc. In any case the attached equipment usually cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to update or replace. If I can buy my company and an additional 5 to 10 years of use from this equipment for the relatively low cost of a VMware Workstation license I think I've made a good investment. ### 16. Been using VM Workstation for our development team for testing environments. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amit M. | Sr. PHP Programmer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** The snapshot features in VMware Workstation allow you to roll back any changes that have made to installations. Great product wouldn’t be with out it. Apart from this, it's easy to install and easy to manage. When it comes to other virtualization tools, this should be your first go-to software. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** The only thing I ever have issues with is keyboard shortcut forwarding. I've looked into the settings quite a bit, but often enough it's fairly intermittent. Not too big of a deal though, just more of an inconvenience. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have a VM to test Windows Updates against RollBack Rx and Drive Vaccine (two crucial programs in my employment). I have many more uses, and will continue to find some. I think this program helps me in ways I would've never thought before, and I'm glad to have it in my repertoire of software. ### 17. Pricey, but flexible and high-performing virtualization for learning or productivity. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew G. | Site Reliability Engineer, Internet, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I liked the strong integration the best. VMware has a way with staying on top of tight hardware/host OS/guest OS integration. VMWare had a strong unity mode for Windows VMs on Linux desktop long before it showed up on free alternatives. Also, vmware tools allows for nice desktop integration between host and guest OS (keyboard/mouse/display/clipboard/file drag-and-drop). Performance was great even on lower-power procs like i5-420UM (1.2ghz) running Windows 7 on Ubuntu host. Another great feature is its integration with enterprise VMWare products, allowing you to access workstations hosted on ESX/ESXi machines in a corporate environment. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Cost and closed-source. The closed-source part is not as much of a complaint as the cost. It's extremely annoying that it costs $150 to upgrade versions, basically turning the product into a $150/year subscription (after initial $250 investment for the first year) if you want to stay up-to-date on features and cutting-edge hardware compatibility. Additionally, when you consider the cost vs. what you are getting out of it, there's a strong possibility that you could get everything you need from an open source alternative that you'd pay nothing for and have a great experience with. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Strongly consider whether the price is worth it or not for the extra features. Keep in mind that upgrading every year has historically been the only way for Workstation Pro to maintain advantages over free open source alternatives. Do your research to see if a free open source alternative has the features you need (the performance difference is negligible and shouldn't be considered when doing this comparison in my opinion). **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits of VMWare Workstation over no desktop virtualization is the ability to have a virtual workstation other than your host for a variety of reasons. In my particular case that has amounted to running Windows for software written only for Windows (i.e. a PLC simulator) or a Linux guest on a Mac OSX host for a more friendly linux systems administration environment. The benefits of VMWare Workstation over its open source competitors don't amount to much more than slightly better performance, tight integration with other VMWare enterprise products, and a better virtual network administration tool. ### 18. High-performing virtualization for student or developing. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Antonino Francesco M. | iOS Software Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 04, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMW makes running multiple operating systems very easy. It makes it very easy to install an OS and get it up and running without having to worry about drivers. It's very easy to clone an existing VM and It doesn't take up very many resources when the VM's are sitting unattended either. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Cost and closed-source. Bad simulation in GPU, especially when you run OS X. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** This is more expensive than the free VirtualBox; but VB isn't nearly as feature complete. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using it to test our product in different OS. Our main server use VMware technology in order to run a CentOS distribution for web server purpose and git repository. ### 19. VMware Workstation Pro not working for me **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mihai G. | Change and Release Manager Domains Development, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** The ease of set up on a windows 7, and an user friendly interface that is quite intuitive. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** No help on how to do things or troubleshooting when you get stuck because of a bad setup or a bad .vmdk. It only pinpoint that you have an issue and will not work, solving it get you searching over the internet. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Try it as a side VM but don't relay on it as it has got me lots of headaches trying to mount and install machines on it. So I have dump it in the end. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Setting up a small batch of vm's in order to be able to create different environments for users. I have dumped the solution in the end and adopting something else. ### 20. We use VMware workstation to prototype linux distrubutions **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Duane B. | Independent Contractor, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 12, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** In our environment we deploy custom linux images all the time and need a way to build, test, and validate those environments when we do not necessarily have extra hardware. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I wish there was more support for the more obscure Linux distributions like Tizen. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Prototyping Linux systems when we do not necessary have hardware to install the linux OS to. ### 21. Nice virtualization tool for personal use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Valentyn B. | Delivery Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 05, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Directx support and 4K display support is main features. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** It is not free and have not so many features compared to open source Oracle VirtualBox. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** If DirectX support is important to you - Vmware Workstation is best choice. If not - it is a waste of money. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Testing developed software on another operating system. The main benefit is reducing hardware costs. ### 22. Overall a nice experience **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Iulian-Constantin M. | Web Developer, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Compared to other virtualization tools, in Linux, I had a better experience using VMware Workstation, turning out to be much more stable and easier to setup. In Windows it was behaving good, but sometimes it was buggy and unstable. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Usually I could not find informations related to problems I have encountered, because the community is not so big currently. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** VMware Workstation Pro is offering more than decent features for basic and advanced uses. It's easy to set up, in Linux provides more stability. I reccomend it to users that want to get up and running fast and need stability of their virtual machines. Overall a nice experience. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used this product for testing various Linux distributions and configurations. ### 23. VMware Workstation 10 : A review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Wireless | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** - Support for tablet sensors is a huge win. For example, using the Surface Pro's gyroscope - Good restrictions management of VM's. For example, preventing the usage of a certain VM after a certain date - Good interface. VM fills the entire screen. - Improves workflow, saves a lot of time **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** - Cost issue - Memory Ballooning - Features of Hyper-V and Virtual Box are sometimes better **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Consider the upgrade, it's worth it. There are lot of additional features in the new release that prove beneficial such as better hardware support amongst others. The new version also employs a much more user friendly interface which can make handling the software very painless. If you want to consider a cheaper alternative but not with such sophisticated features, please choose Virtual Box. VMware has great customer support as well after purchasing the product, which makes after issues much easier to solve. The main new addition is support for Windows 10 as a host and as a guest, with integration features. On the guest side, Workstation’s Auto Detect and Easy Install features now work with Windows 10. That means you can install in the Windows 10 installation disc, Workstation will recognize the new OS when booting a VM, and setup will proceed automatically. I tried this with the latest Windows 10 ISO and a brand-new VM, and installation was very easy. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Virtualization at the networking level. Handling administration of switches which are distributed in nature - Painless management of networking devices ### 24. Desktop Virtualization that just works **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** It is quite stable, reliable and just works. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** The free version is limited with restrictive usage license, but the pro version offers more feature at premium price. None of the offerings are opensource and have a future for wider adoption, as more and more stable opensource technologies are eating into the market. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I run various kinds of VMs to develop and test software I'm writing without messing up my host operating system, or manually partitioning my HDD to installing an OS on my laptop. Pro version also allows me to capture a state of the VM as a snapshot so if I'm experimenting something that fails I can always revert back. I can also export VMs to colleagues to share a common VM image that can be used as a template. Though lately I've moved to more open technologies such as KVM. ### 25. VMWare is a useful app for deploying multiple workstations on a single server **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 08, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I like the ability to control multiple Virtual Machines from the console app. Being able to restart the workstations remotely (from the console) and connect to any of the machines easily is a terrific bonus, **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I have problems getting the application to connect at times. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, I end up needing to restart my workstation. This could be caused by my many VPN connections I make in a day to other sites, so it may be unrelated to the VMWare software at all. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Using VMWare to interact with multiple workstations and/or servers is simple and convenient. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being able to monitor, connect, administer and work on multiple VMWorkstations from my desktop is a big time saver. It's very convenient and easy to use. ### 26. VMware Workstation v12 - a workhourse **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** That I can take advantage of the virtualization capabilities of the i7 Intel CPU on my Lenovo laptop computer along with lots of RAM and a 1 TB SDD. I can spin up many VM Guests to demo a complete software solution from our company without having to do a remote control session back to a Corp HQ IT infrastructure to show the demo. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** It's not as fast as a bare metal VMware ESXi hypervisor. My VM Guests do run slower under VMware Workstation v12 than on my ESXI servers in my data center. But that is asking a lot of VMware Workstation to be fast when it has to deal with an underlying OS layer in the picture. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Do a test drive of it and see how powerful it is. It's a great product for the IT Consultant on the road. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm able to show my customer base quickly and reliably our company software solutions right in front of them real time with no Internet connection involved. No remote control solution required for demos. That's the way to do it. ### 27. Great virtualization software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robin A. | Backup Technician / Service delivery agent , Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** -PC resources management and configuration -ease download and installation -ease configuration and maintenance -the stability of this software is a great point to consider -Administration of your virtual machines is simple and fast. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** -Hardware compatibility list is not big as I want, there are several important hardware parts that this tools always have trouble to manage. -Some sort of changes in the virtual machines requires the VM is turned off. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Great tool for recover machines without invert much time. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** -improve the time response when we need a server reinstalled, you can save a image and use it when you need it. ### 28. Multiple OSes on your computer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert L. | Senior Web Developer, Automotive, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Ability to run multiple operating systems on your computer without needing to have multiple computers beside you. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Network access can be tricky sometimes over VPN. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** There is the VMware Player to try for free with barebone vms to try with. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Testing websites in different browsers on different operating systems. Running vms on a single machine can speed up testing time. ### 29. Brings the latest and greatest in virtualization **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** VMware Workstation allows you to run different OSes and supports the state-of-the-art features Seamless experience between Guest and Host OS Allows high configuration VMs. Support for high resolution and ability to leverage graphics capabilities Ease of importing/exporting VMs from/to different formats Integrates well with the VMWare ecosystem **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Expensive, no free/light version available EFI, export to OVF etc. restricted features available only in Pro version **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Good for business already invested in VMWare Expensive but high performance Free and open source alternative are available. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Testing products on different OSes Reduced time to setup by creating a base image Mitigating risks due to loss of data, snapshots come in handy. Testing locally before deployment in a similar environment. ### 30. Robust, powerful, and intuitive. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Justin F. | Sr IT Operating Systems Analyst, Hospital & Health Care, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Fantastic support for 64 bit guest operating system images. I am able to seamlessly develop on Linux from a Windows machine with great integration features like drag-and-drop, directory sharing, network map configuration, and shared clipboard. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** It's heavy weight if you only need a light guest, but the bells and whistles are great if you need them. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Take advantage of 3D acceleration, streamlined installs for common OS's, and don't forget 64 bit support. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to spin up a guest OS for development, QA, and integration testing on a local machine saves time and money. ### 31. Amazing Visualization Experience ! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ishan K. | QA Automation Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Using VM, I can execute my automation scripts on various environments (Linux, Windows, Mac) and Browsers very quickly and conveniently. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Server side issues sometimes affect my work. In that case, we have to reset servers, but, that is not something which I frequently encounter. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** I highly recommend this tool !! **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I run automation scripts on various environments to test the web apps and VM ware makes my debugging and QAing 6-7 times faster with parallel scripts execution on various Browsers and OS. ### 32. Pretty Solid VM Management **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shane R. | CEO/Owner, Online Media, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I love that I can quickly spin up a clone of an existing machine and separate all of my projects environments. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** There is a bit of a learning curve to configure things. I noticed that I use VMWare less and less but that is also dependent on the projects I am doing now as well. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** This is great if you need multiple unique development environments. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I completely separate my projects environments with VMWare. ### 33. I've had very good experience with the product. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 11, 2016 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Fast and easy to set up. Reach set of features. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Password reset on the host OS is missing. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hosting of the legacy software. ### 34. Experienced user **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 16, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** The ability to virtualize different OS on a single host machine. I have tried virtual box but nothing compares to VMware Workstation Pro **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I think at times the speed is to slow when running multiple VMs despite huge amount of RAM. Also I was not able to increase the screen size for Ubuntu 15.04 **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Must use **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using it for my graduate research at Purdue University. The benefit is that I could use the VM and do not have to run two different OSs on my host machine. ### 35. Usefull tool to testing many OS saving you time. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** After proving several virtualization softwares I can say that this is one of the most powerfull in terms of performance that you can take. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** Maybe you will be lost if you never used this type of software before . **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Try the evaluation copy before. Check the community website to resolve any question. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** I like to use a Linux running on a virtual machine on Windows, allowing me work with the best of these two system without restarting my computer every time. ### 36. VMware for Windows virtualization. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I like the shared virtual machines. Being able to just use VMs created by teammates is super useful. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** I really wish there was Mac support. I know fusion exists for this, but it's not as good. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to better replicate bugs by creating a VM that emulates the users computer. Then we can share the VM and coworkers can easily investigate. ### 37. Its a great product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vishrant V. | Software Dev Intern, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** I like how it supports multiple VMs and the UI is so easy and user-friendly. **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** There is nothing really there to dislike. **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Go for it **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are building our cluster of VMs with VmWare. ### 38. VMware Workstation Pro **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 10, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Easy to install and use Good networking features (DHCP included) Good drag and drop between host and VM Good support for Cloud environment Wide compatibility with different OSes **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** No direct Linux install for Linux for vSphere Client Slow disk performance compared to Windows Hyper-V **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Manage diverse networking adapter testing environment with different version of Windows servers and Linux OSes. Ease of management of different servers with different OSes. ### 39. VMware does it again!!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 19, 2015 **What do you like best about VMware Workstation Pro?** Ability to edit and customize virtual machine settings **What do you dislike about VMware Workstation Pro?** That it is not free of charge. I wish it could / would ;-) **Recommendations to others considering VMware Workstation Pro:** Recommend that they use the stable, industry standard in virtual desktop workspace. **What problems is VMware Workstation Pro solving and how is that benefiting you?** Used to install and test applications in their native environment. ## VMware Workstation Pro Discussions - [Is VMware a workstation pro?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-vmware-a-workstation-pro) - 1 comment - [Is Workstation Pro free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-workstation-pro-free) - 2 comments - [View VMware Workstation Pro pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-workstation-pro/reviews?page=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-21+00%3A24%3A53+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=575fa8f6-b482-4903-be4e-7b99b94dfe07&secure%5Btoken%5D=aa0a1e63709831e8ed068d18566037153b32d0b9f9b0b42dd78fa7c74aa05da6&format=llm_user) ## VMware Workstation Pro 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 Workstation Pro Alternatives - [VirtualBox](https://www.g2.com/products/virtualbox/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (292 reviews) - [Azure Virtual Machines](https://www.g2.com/products/azure-virtual-machines/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (377 reviews) - [Google Compute Engine](https://www.g2.com/products/google-compute-engine/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (875 reviews)