# CentOS Linux Software Reviews, Demo & Pricing - 2026 > Review of CentOS Linux Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs. Source: https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Operating Systems Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/) / CentOS Linux Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. Overview [Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/reviews/)[Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/alternatives/) # CentOS Linux 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing On this page - Overview - User Interface - Popular Alternatives - Pricing and Plans - Features - User Reviews - Popular Comparisons ## Overview CentOS Linux 4.6 [(34)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/reviews/) Pricing Pricing available upon request ### About CentOS Linux CentOS Linux is an operating system (OS) that helps professionals streamline processes related to partition backups, data security management, spam filtering, kernel building, and more on a centralized platform. It enables users to eliminate bare-metal attacks against hard drives by encrypting files, archiving data and managing user passwords using the dm-crypt tool. CentOS Linux enables businesses to set up public mirror sites and create schedules for data synchronization with mirror networks. With the virtual mail backend system, users can store domain and user configurations, including LDAP, PostgreSQL and My SQL. Additionally, it lets administrators configure full-virtualization and paravirtualization utilizing KVM and Xen technologies. CentOS Linux allows individuals to migrate the system from older CentOS versions or third-party Linux distributors, such as Scientific Linux, WhiteBox and TaoLinux. It is an open-source platform that is available for free. It extends support via documentation, FAQs, discussion forums, video tutorials, email and other online measures. ## CentOS Linux User Interface ## Popular CentOS Linux Alternatives Main Product CentOS Linux 4.6 [(34)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.21Ease of use - 4.80Value for money - 4.08Customer support - 4.59Functionality Pricing Available upon request Alternative Product [Windows 11](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/windows-11-profile/) 4.4 [(102)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/windows-11-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.48Ease of use - 4.15Value for money - 4.0Customer support - 4.46Functionality Pricing Available upon request Alternative Product [Android 11](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/android-11-profile/) 4.6 [(121)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/android-11-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.65Ease of use - 4.49Value for money - 4.01Customer support - 4.53Functionality Pricing Available upon request Alternative Product [Ubuntu](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/ubuntu-profile/) 4.7 [(122)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/ubuntu-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.42Ease of use - 4.77Value for money - 4.33Customer support - 4.56Functionality Pricing Starting at $225.00 per year Alternative Product [MacOS Big Sur](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/macos-big-sur-profile/) 4.8 [(59)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/macos-big-sur-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.71Ease of use - 4.42Value for money - 4.54Customer support - 4.73Functionality Pricing Available upon request Alternative Product [iOS14](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/ios14-profile/) 4.6 [(53)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/ios14-profile/#reviews) Ratings Breakdown - 4.77Ease of use - 4.75Value for money - 4.66Customer support - 4.64Functionality Pricing Available upon request ## CentOS Linux Pricing and Plans Starting price: Pricing available upon request Free Trial Free Version Basic Pricing available upon request No plan information available ## CentOS Linux Features - Popular features found in Operating Systems App Management Data Security Kernels System Updates - More features of CentOS Linux User Interface ## CentOS Linux User Reviews Overall Rating 4.6 Ratings Breakdown 5 71% 4 24% 3 6% 2 0% 1 0% Secondary Ratings Ease of Use 4.2 Value for money 4.8 Customer support 4.1 Functionality 4.6 Angus M. Verified reviewer Logistics and Supply Chain 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed August 2022 My Favourite Linux Distro Great Security And Great For Web Hosting 5 CentOS has improved my knowledge of Linux greatly and helps me in my day to day business life whether it's for web hosting, or getting a new project set up online. Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: My favourite thing about CentOS is how great the security is. There is barely ever any exploits for CentOS compared to other operating systems, the firewall is great and new patches are always secure. Cons: The only slight gripe that I have with CentOS is that not all packages which you can get on other distros are available out of the box. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Hospital & Health Care 10000+ employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed July 2021 Open source version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 We use CentOS in mostly three environments: 1) application test environments where we don't need 24/7 support and can afford to do things ourselves; 2) internal IT utilities like firewalls, DNS, backup proxies, management servers where we have multiple servers doing the same job or doing things that only affect IT admins and don't require 24/7 support; 3) embedded in supported vendor turnkey solutions. If we need to run Linux in a production application/database environment, we run Red Hat and pay for support. Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Functionality Pros: It is free. You get the same binaries as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, except for the Red Hat Network portion, and it is usually available a few weeks after a given Red Hat release. It is more secure and stable than Windows. Since it is widely adopted, there are lots of web sites for software and knowledge bases. Cons: It is an unsupported release, although you can buy third-party support. I have not done this. It is less widely adopted and somewhat more difficult to use than Windows, but is not a problem for a skilled Unix administrator. Read More Emiliano Ariel V. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed June 2021 CentOS Linux now is a rolling relaase 5 It's one of the most used OS in servers arround the world. The free version of REHL. Great community support. Now some users move to Rocky Linux the fork of this. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 4 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: This is a great software for most of uses. I use this on several servers. Has a lot of documentation, great comunity support. Cons: This OS change your release type. Will be a rolling release and i don't like it. You need to move to RedHat Enterprise o another distro like Debian or Ubuntu if you need stability in your environment. Reasons for choosing CentOS Linux Some features on CentOS are very robust. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Information Technology and Services 10000+ employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed November 2022 CentOS Honest Review 4 When I started my career as infrastructure engineer, my almost work is related to Linux, at my early stage it was difficult for me to learn and understand Linux but centOS solves the problem to learn linux. Now I can easily understand Linux and can do my daily tasks more efficiently and perfectly. Also almost every organisation has adapted cloud so it is easy to move from CentOS to Amazon cloud Linux. I would say if you are at your learning phase then CentOS is the best. Also if have small or medium enterprise then there is nothing better than CentOS. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 4 Value for money 4 Customer support 4 Functionality Pros: CentOS is an open source operating system, it's easy to use and features are awesome.i like the security feature the most.CentOS graphical user interface is fantastic, nowadays every organisation needs Linux at any point of time, I would say CentOS is best OS for beginners you can easily learn and understand Linux . Cons: CentOS is little bit outdated than other OS like windows and Mac. I would if UI of CentOS can be enhanced and some new features will be added then it will be great.Installing the new packages is not easy in CentOS as compare to other OS. Reasons for switching to CentOS Linux Installing the packages easier on windows than CentOS. Windows UI is better than centOS. Read More NK Nishant K. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services 10000+ employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed October 2022 CentOS user review 4 Overall, it has been a good experience along with working on ubuntu, fedora, suse for different work purpose Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 4 Value for money 2 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Centos runs only the most stable version of codes and integrates it as well.The CLI works buttery smooth and is superfast Cons: CentOS has a small database and still emerging and developing.So not much updates.. Overall its great. Read More IB Ian B. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services 11-50 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed June 2023 A Great Alternative to Windows 4 We have had a very reliable experience with CentOS. Applications run well on it and we are able to secure our backups more using that operating system. We have had some difficulty getting users up to speed on how to properly navigate the OS. Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 4 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Have a Linux based operating system has made it helpful for our engineers to use for certain projects. User interface for CentOS is setup for administrators to access tools efficiently. The applications in CentOS are more secure than our Windows machines. Cons: There are only specific application that are compatible with CentOS. The support for Linux is hard to find that is able to resolve issues at a good price. There are less engineers that are able to use and manage CentOS. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Libraries 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed November 2021 CentOS is an excellent Linux OS for servers but its future is now very unsure 5 My overall experience with CentOS is good, it was a very reliable and stable distribution, it was free and yet it contained everything you would get with the paid RHEL version. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Functionality Pros: CentOS is a very stable and reliable Linux distribution that I have used in various organisations as a server OS. It works well, has good package management and can be quite easily secured. Works well with products like cPanel. Cons: The problem with CentOS now is that its future is unknown. Red Hat has stated it won't be continuing this distribution - which is probably related to the acquisition of Red Hat by Big Blue (IBM). It's a real shame to see such a monument of open-source like CentOS being discontinued. I only hope this is not the first nail in the coffin for open-source as a whole. Read More Armando I. Verified reviewer Computer Software 11-50 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed December 2021 Security, scalability and speed for your networks. 5 In General CentOS it allows me to optimize my hardware resources, deploy through enbedded tools, virtual machines and containers. Segment my services. If you are an advanced Linux user, there are few limits that you will find. Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Functionality Pros: CentOS is my preferred distro for servers. From application services to virtualizations. It is very stable, weekly updates, a well documented CLI easy to use. Cons: I have no problems with CentOS, if something doesn't work, searching the community for the answer is likely to be solved. Read More Jose J G. Verified reviewer Market Research 2-10 employees Used weekly for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed November 2022 Strong Linux Operating System for Business Servers 4 It has been a great operating system for our cloud server and containers. Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 2 Customer support 4 Functionality Pros: I like that CentOS doesn't use a lot of memory resources to run fast our server. Cons: I don't like the recent changes and discontinuity of CentOS 7 and 8. It's confusing how to upgrade to CentOS RHEL version without affecting our actual server functions. Read More Ronald C. Verified reviewer Hospital & Health Care 1001-5000 employees Used daily for less than 2 years Review source Reviewed July 2022 Excellent distro for developer environment 4 I have had a good experience with this distro. It is easy to set up developer environment like databases, docker container and others. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 4 Customer support 4 Functionality Pros: I like how easy it is to use and how fast it is. It also performs well and helps me integrate with other technologies. Cons: At the moment I have not found any weakness in the product. Read More Showing 1 - 10 of 34 Reviews [See All Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/reviews/) ## CentOS Linux Popular Comparisons [Windows 11 vs CentOS Linux](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/vs/windows-11/)[MacOS Big Sur vs CentOS Linux](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/vs/macos-big-sur/)[Linux Mint vs CentOS Linux](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/vs/linux-mint/)[Debian vs CentOS Linux](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/vs/debian/) [Compare All Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/operating-systems/centos-linux-profile/alternatives/) ## See what companies are saying about Software Advice