Your sales rep is on a demo call. It’s going well. Then the prospect asks the question that has quietly killed more deals than pricing ever has: “Is there a cloud version?"
If your product is a Windows® desktop application, the honest answer is usually “sort of" or “we’re working on it." Rewriting a mature desktop app for the browser can take years, and your roadmap doesn’t pause while you do it. The move from perpetual licenses to subscriptions can leave a revenue shortfall that lasts 3 to 4 years before the new model catches up.
That’s why ISV cloud hosting exists. You keep the application you already built, run it on cloud infrastructure, and give customers access from any device. No rewrite, no second codebase, no “cloud edition" missing half the features.
The short answer: Cloud hosting providers for ISVs run your existing software in the cloud and deliver it to your customers as a service. The right one depends on whether you want to manage infrastructure yourself, whether customers need a full desktop or a single app, and how you plan to bill them.
Below are seven providers worth a look, what each does well, and where each one will frustrate you.
Key Takeaways
- Hosting lets ISVs sell a cloud version of desktop software without rewriting the code.
- Managed providers handle servers, patching, and backups. Self-managed platforms leave that work to your team.
- Pricing models vary widely: per VM, per concurrent user, per external user, or pure consumption.
- Choose app-only delivery or full desktops based on how customers actually use your software.
What Is ISV Cloud Hosting?
ISV cloud hosting is infrastructure built to run an independent software vendor’s application in the cloud for that vendor’s customers. The vendor installs its software on hosted servers or virtual machines. Customers log in from a browser or a lightweight client and use the application as if it were installed locally.
If you need a refresher on the term itself, our glossary covers what an ISV is and how ISVs differ from VARs and OEMs. The short version: you build and sell software that runs on platforms someone else owns.
Hosting is different from general cloud hosting in one important way. Your customers are the end users, not your employees. That changes licensing, security boundaries, onboarding, and billing.
ISV Hosting vs. rebuilding as native SaaS
Rebuilding means rewriting the application for the web. You get a true multi-tenant product, eventually. The cost is years of engineering time and a period where you maintain two products.
Hosting means publishing the application you already have. Customers get anywhere access in weeks, not years. The trade-off is that you’re still shipping a Windows application, with everything that implies about updates and resource usage.
For most desktop ISVs, hosting is the bridge, not the destination. Plenty of vendors host for years while they rebuild selectively, module by module.
Full desktop vs. single-app delivery
Some providers stream a full Windows desktop. Others publish only your application window into a browser tab.
Full desktops suit customers who run your software alongside Excel®, a PDF printer, or a companion tool. Single-app delivery suits customers who only ever open your product and would find a desktop confusing. Know which group you serve before you compare vendors.
How We Evaluated The ISV Cloud Hosting Providers
We looked at each provider through the eyes of a software vendor with a Windows product and paying customers who want remote access. Five questions shaped the list:
- Who runs the infrastructure? A fully managed service handles servers, patching, and backups. A self-managed platform gives you software and leaves the rest to your team.
- How does pricing scale with your customers? Per VM, per concurrent user, per external user, or metered compute all behave differently at 50 customers versus 500.
- Can you separate customers cleanly? Multi-tenant isolation matters when one customer’s data must never touch another’s.
- Can you control the experience? White-labeling, SSO, and restrictions on downloads or clipboard use all affect how professional your hosted product feels.
- How long until a customer is live? Weeks of setup per customer is a hidden cost that rarely shows up in a pricing table.
Yes, we’re on this list. We tried to be fair about where we fit and where we don’t.
The 7 Best ISV Cloud Hosting Providers
1. V2 Cloud
Best for: ISVs that want a fully managed environment and customers who work in a full Windows or Linux desktop.
V2 Cloud is a managed Desktop as a Service (DaaS) platform. Through our ISV partner program, you mount your on-premise or hybrid application in our environment, and customers access it from any device. Subaccounts let you manage each customer separately, and admins can block downloads, disable screen capture, and stop USB side-loading so customer data stays in the cloud.
We handle the infrastructure: cloud desktops, cloud servers, daily backups, and 24/7 support. Our 99.95% uptime SLA works out to roughly 4.4 hours of potential downtime per year. Pricing is per virtual machine sized by workload, and multiple users can share one VM. See the plans on our pricing page.
Watch out for: Our model centers on cloud desktops. If you want to stream a single application window into a customer’s browser with no desktop around it, an app-publishing tool may fit better.
2. GO-Global with ISVHost
Best for: Windows ISVs that want app-only delivery in the browser.
GraphOn describes GO-Global as a Windows application publishing product built for independent software vendors, delivering Windows apps to users as native web apps. It replaces Microsoft®’s Remote Desktop Services (RDS) components entirely. For vendors that don’t want to run servers, ISVHost is the fully managed version, priced at $18 to $26 USD per concurrent user per month, with the rate dropping as user count grows.
Watch out for: Concurrent-user pricing is friendly when usage is spiky, but you’re paying per active user. GO-Global is also Windows-focused and app-only, so customers who need a full desktop will need something else.
3. Amazon WorkSpaces Applications (formerly AppStream 2.0)
Best for: ISVs with in-house AWS skills that want app streaming at global scale.
AWS renamed AppStream 2.0 to Amazon WorkSpaces Applications. The service streams Windows and Linux applications to any device on pay-as-you-go pricing, and AWS positions it for turning desktop applications into cloud services without code changes. Its FAQ calls it optimized for application streaming and SaaS conversion.
Watch out for: You build and run this inside your own AWS account. Instance sizing, auto-scaling rules, image management, and cost control are your team’s job. Bills vary month to month with usage.
4. Azure® Virtual Desktop with per-user access pricing
Best for: ISVs already committed to Microsoft Azure.
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) has a specific licensing path for streaming apps to people who aren’t your employees. Microsoft requires you to enroll in per-user access pricing for external users, and you pay those charges on top of VMs, storage, and other Azure services. Venn’s 2026 AVD pricing breakdown lists the external-user rates at $10 USD per user per month for desktops and apps, or $5.50 USD for apps only. Current rates for your region are on Microsoft’s AVD pricing page. You’re only charged for users who connect at least once in a billing cycle.
Watch out for: You’re paying two bills (access and infrastructure) and managing a Microsoft environment. The Microsoft Tech Community recommends a dedicated tenant and subscription for external users, which adds setup work. Budget for Azure expertise, in-house or through a partner.
5. Citrix DaaS
Best for: Larger ISVs with complex, multi-cloud requirements.
Citrix DaaS delivers virtual apps and desktops across Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and on-premises hypervisors from one control plane. Citrix offers a Citrix Managed Azure option if you’d rather not run the Azure side yourself.
Watch out for: Citrix is built for enterprise IT teams. Multiple editions, a separate cloud bill, and specialized admin skills make it heavy for a vendor serving a few hundred small customers.
6. Parallels RAS
Best for: ISVs that want to run their own hosting on any cloud or in their own data center.
Parallels runs a dedicated ISV partner program aimed at converting desktop software businesses to SaaS. Parallels Remote Application Server offers Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) licensing for ISVs and MSPs, billed per peak number of concurrent users in each period, with no upfront license fees.
Watch out for: Parallels RAS is software, not a hosted service. You still need servers, a cloud account or data center, and someone to maintain them. SPLA also assumes you’re already in Microsoft’s SPLA program.
7. Cameyo by Google
Best for: ISVs whose customers have standardized on Chrome or ChromeOS.
Google acquired Cameyo in June 2024 and relaunched it in November 2025 as a Virtual App Delivery (VAD) product. Cameyo by Google streams individual Windows and Linux apps into the Chrome browser or wraps them as progressive web apps, with no full desktop involved.
Watch out for: Cameyo is built for organizations delivering apps to their own staff inside the Google ecosystem. It can work for vendor-to-customer delivery, but that’s not the core use case, so expect to do more integration work yourself.
Still weighing managed hosting against running it yourself? Compare our per-VM plans and see what a hosted version of your software would cost.
Side-by-Side ISV Hosting Providers Comparison
| Provider | Delivery model | Who runs infrastructure | Pricing model | Best fit |
| V2 Cloud | Full cloud desktops | Fully managed | Per VM, shared by multiple users | Managed hosting, full desktop workflows |
| GO-Global / ISVHost | Single app in browser | Self-managed or fully managed | Per concurrent user, volume-tiered | App-only Windows delivery |
| Amazon WorkSpaces Applications | App streaming | You, in your AWS account | Pay-as-you-go | AWS-native teams |
| Azure Virtual Desktop | Apps or desktops | You, in your Azure tenant | Per external user plus Azure consumption | Microsoft-committed ISVs |
| Citrix DaaS | Apps or desktops | You, or Citrix Managed Azure | Edition-based licensing plus cloud costs | Large, multi-cloud vendors |
| Parallels RAS | Apps or desktops | You, on any infrastructure | SPLA, per peak concurrent user | Vendors with in-house IT |
| Cameyo by Google | Single app in browser | Public cloud, private cloud, or on-premises | Contact Google sales | Chrome-first customer bases |
How to Choose ISV Cloud Hosting for Your Software
The provider matters less than the fit. Four questions will narrow the list faster than any feature matrix.
Do your customers need a desktop or just your app?
Watch how customers actually use your product. Do they export to Excel, print to PDF, or keep a second tool open all day? Give them a desktop. Do they log in, do one job, and leave? App-only delivery will feel cleaner.
Do you have people to run infrastructure?
Self-managed platforms are cheaper on paper and more expensive in headcount. Self-managed platformsl assume someone on your team knows how to size VMs, patch images, and debug a failed login at 11 PM. If that person doesn’t exist, a managed provider costs less than hiring one.
How will you bill your own customers?
Match the provider’s pricing to yours. A per-concurrent-user model works well when usage is light and irregular. Per-VM pricing is easier to predict and to bundle into a flat subscription. Metered cloud billing gives you the least control over margins.
What do your customers’ compliance teams require?
Healthcare, legal, and financial customers will ask where data lives, who can access it, and how backups work. Check data center regions, backup retention, and audit controls before you sign. Our post on backup and recovery for ISV cloud desktops walks through the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) questions customers tend to ask.
Mistakes ISVs Make When Moving to Hosted Delivery
Hosting solves the access problem. It doesn’t solve everything.
Treating hosting as the product launch. A hosted version still needs onboarding, support scripts, and pricing that customers understand. The software is the easy part.
Ignoring version control. One of the biggest wins in hosting is running a single version for every customer. If you let customers stay on old releases in the cloud, you’ve rebuilt the fragmentation problem on someone else’s servers.
Pricing without testing. Run a pilot with 5 to 10 real customers before announcing a price. Actual concurrency is almost always different from your spreadsheet.
Confusing deployment with delivery. Getting builds onto servers is a pipeline problem. Getting your application in front of customers is a hosting problem. Our roundup of software deployment solutions covers the first half. This post covers the second.
Skipping the security review. Restricting downloads, clipboard access, and USB devices keeps customer data off personal laptops. If a customer asks, you want a clear answer. Our Advanced Security Pack and SSO and MFA integrations are two places to start.
The market is moving in your direction either way. Gartner forecast public cloud end-user spending would reach $723.4 billion USD in 2025, and in its 2024 forecast the firm pointed to ISVs modernizing applications for subscription delivery as a key driver of SaaS spending. Your customers are already buying software this way. The question is whether they buy yours.
Have a Windows application your customers keep asking to use remotely? Apply to our ISV partner program and we’ll help you get the first customers live.
ISV Cloud Hosting Frequently Asked Questions
What is ISV cloud hosting?
ISV cloud hosting is a service that runs an independent software vendor’s application on cloud infrastructure so the vendor’s customers can use it from anywhere. The vendor keeps its existing code, and customers connect through a browser or lightweight client instead of installing the software locally.
Do ISVs need to rewrite their software to offer a cloud version?
No. Hosting providers publish the existing Windows application as-is, so customers get remote access without a rewrite. Many ISVs host first and rebuild parts of the product for the web later, on their own timeline.
How much does cloud hosting for ISVs cost?
It depends on the pricing model. ISVHost lists $18 to $26 USD per concurrent user per month, Azure Virtual Desktop charges external-user access fees plus infrastructure, and we price per virtual machine. Compare total cost at your expected customer count, not the entry price.
What’s the difference between ISV hosting and SaaS?
SaaS usually means software built for the web from the start. Hosting delivers existing desktop software as a service, so customers get subscription access and remote use without the vendor re-architecting the product.
Can customers access hosted software from a Mac or tablet?
Yes. Most providers on this list support browser-based access, so customers on macOS, ChromeOS, iPads, or older PCs can run a Windows application without installing it.
Should ISVs choose managed or self-managed hosting?
Choose managed hosting if you don’t have a dedicated infrastructure team. Self-managed platforms like Parallels RAS or Azure Virtual Desktop give you more control but require staff to maintain servers, images, and security.
Learn More About Hosting
- Best Remote Desktop Hosting Providers: how raw RDP/VPS hosting differs from managed DaaS, and which fits your team.
- 7 Best ISV Cloud Hosting Providers in 2026: options for software vendors delivering Windows apps to customers without a rewrite.
- Cloud Desktops for Accountants: running QuickBooks, Drake, ProSeries, and Sage in one cloud environment.
- 6 Reasons QuickBooks Cloud Hosting Makes Sense: the practical case for moving QuickBooks Desktop off local machines.
- Top QuickBooks Cloud Hosting Providers: a comparison of hosting options for QuickBooks users.
