VMware ESXI Alternatives in 2026

May 13, 2026
360 Networks
Hardware, VMWare

Since VMware ESXI licensing has skyrocketed in cost (usually between 2-10x increase) your business may be looking into alternatives. Below we have listed a few alternatives to VMware ESXI and benefits of each platform.

Cloud Options

360 Cloud

360 Cloud is our Private Cloud offering hosted in our datacenters. 360 Cloud is highly reliable and extremely performant. We provide support from real humans in the USA unlike every other cloud offering. You can run your entire company infrastructure from the 360 Cloud including VMs, NVME Storage, Backups, Kubernetes and anything else you need for your business. When you need help, our team is here for you 24×7. Not to mention upfront pricing. Your pricing for each service is clearly displayed in the 360 Cloud. There are no hidden or impossible to calculate fees like every other cloud.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is a great place for hosting your VMs for your business. Azure is highly reliable, performant and saves your company the upfront cost of purchasing new hardware when the time comes. With all this being said, the gotcha is the price. Azure is not the most budget friendly option once you add up the costs. Ingress, Egress, Power on Hours, Reservations, etc. There are tons of ways your Azure bill will and can creep up over time if not maintained properly. Not to mention Azure needs to be secured and monitored properly as there are many services and options always changing in the platform.

On Prem Options

Microsoft Hyper-V

A popular choice from a well-known company

Hyper-V has been around for long time now and has become extremely stable over the past few years. It is well supported by 3rd party backup Vendors like Veeam, Altaro and N-Able. Here at 360 Networks we’ve been running Hyper-V with many clients over the years with no issues.

Proxmox

The new kid on the block

Proxmox is an up and coming challenger in the hypervisor space. Proxmox has received a ton of credit from the home lab and hobbyist communities. So much so that Proxmox has worked its way into the enterprise in the last few years (with a little help from VMWare and their pricing). Proxmox is extremely stable, as its underlying technologies have been battle tested for years. Proxmox runs on Debian under the hood for the OS and uses QEMU and KVM for its hypervisor technology. In the past few years Proxmox received official support from Veeam for backups which was one of the last remaining pieces of the puzzle for Proxmox to break into the mainstream Enterprise market.

What should you do?

If you are a business running VMware ESXI you need to plan your VMware exodus today. It’s only a matter of time before your VMware infrastructure has an issue and then your company will be dead in the water.

Migrating away from VMware is not as difficult as you may think. If done properly, there will be minimal downtime due to the migration. Here at 360 Networks we have migrated many customers off of VMware to Hyper-V and Proxmox as either of those hypervisors are very solid choices at this time.

Remember to always have tested working backups before attempting an infrastructure migration.

If your business is looking for help with migrating off of VMware please reach out to us we’d love to help!

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