Here is a useful review and breakdown of the pricing structure for VMware ESXi 6.5.
| Feature | Value Proposition | | :--- | :--- | | | 10/10 (Excellent). Extremely cheap on the used market or free if you can find the ISO. | | Features per Dollar | 8/10. ESXi is rock solid. Even 6.5 has features (snapshots, resource pools) that beat many paid competitors. | | Longevity | 2/10 (Poor). It is dead. No updates, no support, fading hardware support. | | Management | 9/10. Many users prefer the 6.5 interface over the slower, heavier HTML5 interface of version 7 and 8. | vmware esxi 6.5 price