Ha, nonsense. VMware products are notoriously super expensive. From discussions with people at organisation switching to alternatives, their cost are going down 30-50%, with all the added benefits of a proper modern orchestrator instead of an obsolete hardware simulator. (Stuff like having a way of securely introducing secrets or security authenticating workloads, or integrated deployments, healthchecks, etc.)
Also, "bundled" stuff constraints you. You're forced into using VMware's crap orchestrator or log management tool because it's the one that works best with the mess that is other VMware products.