We hear it on almost every call: "VMware just works, why would we switch to something newer?" It's a fair question, but it rests on two assumptions that stopped being true a while ago. VMware hasn't "just worked" since Broadcom took over the licensing model, and Proxmox isn't new. Here's what the data actually shows.
VMware Isn't the Vendor You Signed Up With
Perpetual licenses are gone. Broadcom ended new perpetual VMware license sales in late 2023 and moved every customer onto a subscription-only model.
Contracts got longer and more expensive. Renewals now require a 3-year commitment paid upfront, replacing the annual terms most IT budgets were built around.
Core minimums keep moving. In April 2025, Broadcom floated a 72-core-per-CPU minimum before backing off under customer pressure. It landed on a 16-core minimum, which still forces smaller deployments to pay for capacity they'll never use.
The partner network shrank. Broadcom eliminated the Registered partner tier in June 2025. By January 2026, new VMware Cloud Service Provider agreements became invite-only and tied specifically to VMware Cloud Foundation.
Some customers report license cost increases as high as 300%, and a number of them are actively migrating off VMware because of it (Harvard TagTeam). If your last renewal quote looked nothing like the one before it, this is why.
Proxmox Isn't New. It's Just New to Your Shop
Twenty years of development. Proxmox Server Solutions was founded in Vienna in 2005, and Proxmox VE has been in continuous, active development since. 2025 marked its 20th year.
Running at real scale. Proxmox reports more than 1.5 million installed hosts across 140+ countries (Stackscale). That's production infrastructure, not a hobbyist project.
Growing enterprise mindshare. PeerSpot puts Proxmox at 16.1% mindshare in server virtualization, and it's the platform we hear cited most often when clients explain why they left VMware.
What You Actually Get With Proxmox
One platform, two virtualization types. KVM for full VMs and LXC containers, managed from a single web-based control plane.
Built-in HA and live migration. No add-on license required. It ships in the base product.
Integrated storage. Native ZFS and Ceph support without bolting on a third-party storage layer.
Proxmox Backup Server. Incremental, deduplicated, encrypted backups built for the platform, not stitched together after the fact.
No per-core licensing tax and no compliance audits. You license support subscriptions, not every core in the chassis.
The Real Question to Ask
The question isn't "is Proxmox risky." It's whether staying on a platform that's changed its licensing terms three times in two years, from a vendor that's said outright it's optimizing for margin over your budget, is actually the safe choice anymore.
We've migrated clients off VMware onto Proxmox with no downtime, and we can walk you through exactly what your environment would look like on the other side. Reach out and we'll run the numbers for your setup.
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Want this reviewed against your environment?
We'll walk your stack with you and tell you plainly what we'd change first.