Oracle VirtualBox is an open source, cross-platform, virtualization software, enables developers to deliver code faster by running multiple operating systems on a single device.
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Oracle VirtualBox
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Oracle VirtualBox
Free Trial
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
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Community Pulse
Oracle VirtualBox
Considered Both Products
Oracle
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
Oracle VirtualBox is the better choice due to its cost-effectiveness, ease of use and feature set. However VMware Workstation is more suitable due to its superior performance, better features and better integration with enterprise tools. VMware Workstation also provides a …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
It always depends on the usecase which product is better suited. But generally, Oracle VM VirtualBox is very easy to set up on every operating system and is intuitive in the usage. Compared to VMware Workstation it offers less features but for a basic setup, I prefer Oracle VM …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Analista de Suporte de Sistemas in Information Technology at T-Systems do Brasil (Computer Software, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
Oracle's solution is entirely free, although a bit clumsy and visually outdated. Hyper-V can and will be a better match due to having more resources, offering full Microsoft Support, and being focused mainly on corporative uses, but for a small environment, it can be like …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior System Engineer in Information Technology at NetDocuments (Computer Software, 201-500 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CoFunder & Hardware Head in Engineering at Xavia IOT (Internet, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
While Parallels Desktop has always positioned itself better than VirtualBox, it will never be able to compete against free and open-source software. Yes, it is true that it has some extra seasonings that can make the scale move towards Parallels at the time of the election, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
VMWare Workstation required VMware Workstation Pro to create the system before we could use it. The license requirements for the latter was the issue as we needed this for dev/test environments as well as to show POC on virtualization without necessarily incurring a cost at the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Owner in Information Technology at Colorado Computer Care (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
The main benefits of Oracle VM VirtualBox are its licensing terms (it is free), its open-source nature, and its active community. However, its various competitors do a much better job when it comes to both ease of use and, most importantly, speed. For example, Parallels Desktop …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Software Engineer in Engineering at TMA - Technology Management Associates (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
Docker, and automated machine provisioning in DevOps often uses the metaphor "treat your machines like cattle, not pets." VirtualBox's intended use is definitely in the creation, management and use of "pet" machines, whereas many similar products are more in the "cattle" …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Professor at Drew University (Higher Education, 201-500 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
We've used VMware, and continue to use it for some projects. But, in my experience, the latest updates to VMware run very slowly, particularly on macOS. Many blog posts offer tweaks to help speed up VMware, but none of these tweaks make a significant difference.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Front-End Web Developer, Office of Mediated Education in Information Technology at Kansas State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
We primarily use Oracle VM VirtualBox because it's free, and it is the default provider for Vagrant, which we use for our development VMs. The user interface of VirtualBox looks a little clunky in macOS, but I actually almost never see the main VirtualBox interface because I …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
With regards to how some of the other virtualization software packages stack up again VirtualBox, I would say VirtualBox is ahead of the game especially when it comes to cost savings, as there is no ongoing cost for running the software. A big disadvantage to one of the other …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Community Manager Enable SysAdmin in Marketing at Red Hat (Computer Software, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
VirtualBox is just as robust and as functional as the VMware desktop product. It actually has more features and in some ways is easier to work with. I've also found that VirtualBox supports newer operating systems better than VMware Workstation. There's also the cost advantage …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
As I mentioned earlier, Oracle VM VirtualBox and VMware Workstation offer roughly the same type of features. One of the main differences is that VMware Workstation is a commercial product while Oracle VM VirtualBox is open-source. Resource utilization and graphics support is …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
I have used Parallels as well as VMware Workstation and have always returned to VirtualBox. VirtualBox is free which makes it easy to try. Compared to the others, it does everything I need. In +7 years I have not been able to justify the cost of a Parallels Desktop or VMware …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Software Engineer in Research & Development at PIPELEAP (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
In a Windows environment, Docker would not even be possible, to begin with. Also, on the way around, having a Linux based Machine, without Oracle VM VirtualBox, one would have to create a partitioned disk and enable it at boot time in order to be able to run Windows in such a …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior IT Support Technician in Information Technology at Global Financial Credit, LLC (Financial Services, 51-200 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
It's much more useful than VMware Workstation Player because you can't edit anything at all with that free version of vmWare. This is just about as capable as VMware Fusion and Workstation until you pay even more to use vSphere, and then you start having enterprise features.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Owner, Developer in Information Technology at Cre8tiveCoder (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
It's free, fast, and really well built. Obviously, VMware is the key competitor, but I consider that more of an enterprise app for building and managing entire networks of virtual systems, whereas VirtualBox is fantastic as a personal VM tool. What it lacks in enterprise-grade …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
We feel like we made a good decision going with Oracle VM VirtualBox because it was more enterprise ready. They had great customer success team and proper API compatibility which allowed for great integration into our legacy tools. The support we got from the development …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Oracle VirtualBox
I have used a couple of other hypervisors but those softwares are no longer operational and have became obsolete.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Key User Insights
Would buy again
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Delivers good value for the price
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Happy with the feature set
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Lived up to sales and marketing promises
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Implementation went as expected
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Features
Oracle VirtualBox
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Oracle VirtualBox
It is best suited when you want to have different operating systems on your laptop or desktop. You can easily switch between operating systems without the need to uninstall one. In another scenario, if you expect some application to damage your device, it would be best to run the application on the VM such that the damage can only be done to the virtual machine. It is less appropriate when time synchronization is very important. At times the VMs run their own times differently from the host time and this may cause some losses if what you doing is critical. Another important thing to take note of is the licensing of the application you want to run your VM. Some licenses do not allow the applications to be run on virtual servers so it is not appropriate to use the VM at this time.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have had issues in the past when it has come to resizing VM disk storage. The issue is entirely detailed here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/9103 -- the problem was caused because of having existing snapshots (which error message output was not detailing). I haven't had to deal with the issue due to my dynamic disk sizes not being small from the start anymore (this is mostly an issue for my Windows VMs where the base disk may need significant size for the OS). It looks like, for a resize, that a merge of all snapshots has to occur first -- one user on that list details a workaround to maintain snapshots by cloning the VM. (Note: 5.2 was just released a few weeks ago, and looks like it should prevent the problem happening in the future by properly informing users that it isn't possible with snapshots).
Certain scenarios, like resizing disks, required dropping into a terminal as there were no options to previously do so via the GUI. According to some recent posts, I've seen that v5.2 has added disk management stuff like that to the GUI (or will be adding it). I'm comfortable with dropping into the terminal, but in a teaching scenario or when evaluating the learnability of the tools, it complicates things.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I love using the Graphical User Interface. The VirtualBox Manager is very easy to understand and use. You can quickly create, configure and manage all your virtual machines in one window. It makes operating virtual machines easy and simple. When using VBoxManage it gives the user comprehensive control over VirtualBox so that you can use automation and scripting at the command-line interface
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
VirutalBox is very similar to using Vmware with the slight difference in appearance and what might be considered a less polished look. However, what it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for in functionality, easy of use and the wide range of operating systems and features it supports without the need of buying the full professional edition
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The only problem I have found is that the deployment is dependent and intrinsically linked to the Host OS. This is different from bare metal solutions which remove that dependency on a Host OS. The latter is more reliable and removes a layer of potential failure.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Minimal-to-no support needed from the DevOps team.
Provides a direct and an easy way to access multiple VMs inside the same machines which enables performing various testing and QA tasks without the need to switch hardware.
Automatic provisioning using tools (esp. Vagrant) which enables developing a base image once, and allows for exporting/importing anywhere across the developers team.
Very cost-effective (no fees or monthly subscriptions).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
