Essentials Plus existed to serve small deployments at small-deployment prices. Nothing in the current portfolio does that job. The capability you get now is greater — but the pricing model that made three-host clusters affordable did not survive the catalogue consolidation, and that is the actual problem most people arrive here with.
This covers what happened, what the replacement really costs a small estate, and the four options that are genuinely open to you.
What Happened to It
Broadcom collapsed a catalogue of more than 160 VMware products into a handful of subscription bundles. Essentials and Essentials Plus were among the SKUs that did not survive.
If you hold Essentials Plus today you can keep running it under your existing entitlement — but it is not renewable as the same product, and there is no version 9 of it. Like vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus, the line stops at 8 Update 3 with an end-of-life date in October 2027, which we cover in vSphere 8 end of life.
So the runway is real but finite, and the destination is VVF or VCF.
Why the Replacement Costs So Much More
This is the part that catches small estates, and it is not really about the per-core rate. It is about the minimums.
16-core minimum per CPU socket. A socket with 8 physical cores licenses as 16. Small business hardware tends to use lower-core CPUs, so this gap is proportionally worst for exactly the estates Essentials Plus used to serve.
72-core minimum per order, introduced in April 2025. Below that threshold you license 72 cores regardless of what you own. In our own 2026 quotes, two of three VVF deals landed at exactly 72 cores — that was the minimum binding, not a description of their hardware.
Work a typical Essentials Plus deployment through it: three hosts, two 8-core CPUs each. That is 48 physical cores. The socket minimum takes it to 96 licensed cores. A tier designed for a maximum of three hosts now licenses like a mid-sized estate.
Budget at least $10,000 a year for a 72-core VVF subscription. Real quotes have come in modestly under that — $119.08 and $126.29 per core on three-year terms — but $10,000 is the planning figure that will not embarrass you before a quote exists. Full pricing detail is in how VMware licensing cost actually works.
The Four Options
1. Move to VVF and accept the minimums. The supported path, and the right one if VMware capability genuinely matters to you — you gain vSAN, Kubernetes and operations tooling that Essentials Plus never had. You are paying enterprise-shaped pricing for a small estate, and for plenty of organisations that is still the correct trade.
2. Consolidate onto fewer, denser hosts. If you are licensing 72 or 96 cores regardless, you may as well use them. Two hosts with high-core CPUs can carry more workload for the same licence count than three hosts with low-core CPUs. This turns a hardware refresh into a licensing decision, and it is worth modelling before you buy servers rather than after.
3. Push non-production onto free ESXi. The free hypervisor is back, and for labs, test and disposable workloads it is genuinely useful — single host, no vCenter, 8 vCPUs per VM, no support. Shrinking the production footprint that needs licensing is legitimate and often overlooked. Details in ESXi licensing explained.
4. Move off VMware. For a three-host estate this is a far smaller project than it is for an enterprise — fewer workloads, simpler networking, less integration. It is the option most often dismissed reflexively and it deserves an honest costing. If the licensed minimum is several times what the workload justifies, that arithmetic sometimes settles it.
What We Would Tell You
If VMware is load-bearing for you — production workloads, real availability requirements, a team that knows the tooling — move to VVF, consolidate hosts so the minimum is not pure waste, and take a three-year term for the rate protection.
If VMware was simply what you happened to buy for three modest hosts, and the licensed minimum now costs multiples of what the workload is worth, that is a legitimate reason to look elsewhere and we will say so.
What we would not recommend is drifting to October 2027 on an unsupported, unpatched Essentials Plus estate because the decision felt too expensive to make. That is the most expensive option of the four, it just does not arrive as an invoice.
If you want the core-count arithmetic run against your actual hosts before you commit either way, talk to AceMQ.
FAQ
Is vSphere Essentials Plus still available?
No. It was removed in the catalogue consolidation. You can run it under an existing entitlement, but it is not renewable as the same product and there is no version 9. The path forward is VVF, or VCF if you need the full stack.
What replaces vSphere Essentials Plus?
VVF in capability terms — more than Essentials Plus ever included. In commercial terms nothing replaces it, because Essentials Plus was priced for three-host deployments and VVF is priced per core with a 72-core order minimum.
Why is my small deployment so expensive now?
The 72-core order minimum plus the 16-core per socket minimum. Three hosts with two 8-core CPUs each is 48 physical cores but licenses as 96. Essentials Plus existed to serve deployments below that threshold.
What does a small VMware deployment cost now?
Budget at least $10,000 a year for a 72-core VVF subscription. Real 2026 quotes came in a little under at $119.08 and $126.29 per core on three-year terms, but $10,000 is the safe planning figure.
What are the options for a small estate?
Move to VVF and accept the minimums; consolidate onto fewer denser hosts so licensed cores are used; push non-production onto free ESXi; or move small workloads off VMware, which is a much smaller project at three-host scale.
Can I keep running Essentials Plus?
Through your current entitlement, yes — but the line stops at vSphere 8 Update 3 with end of life in October 2027. It is a runway, not a destination. Perpetual licences with lapsed support carry further constraints on which builds you may run.
