Amazon AWS Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

SathishKumar

Project Specialist at integra software

Apr 19, 2021

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Stable, flexible, and easy to configure and implement

Pros and Cons

"It is flexible. It is quite comfortable to use for organizations."

"It just needs to be improved from the security perspective."

What is our primary use case?

We are using it for File Transfer Protocol (FTP) services. We are using it for file transfers from the US to India via FTP.

What is most valuable?

It is flexible. It is quite comfortable to use for organizations.

What needs improvement?

It just needs to be improved from the security perspective.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We have 200 to 300 users currently, and we might increase its usage.

How are customer service and support?

We don't have any challenges with technical support. We are fine with it.

How was the initial setup?

There isn't much installation. It is just about hosting things, which doesn't take that much time. It was quite easy configuration-wise and implementation-wise.

What about the implementation team?

We did it ourselves.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Azure and other products.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user1107327

Associate Director at Microland Limited

Jun 4, 2019

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Helps us to provide clients with a cost-effective, end-to-end solution

Pros and Cons

"As a service vendor, we have helped clients to achieve faster "go to market" on their products, and have provided highly flexible cost-effective system management solutions."

"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is an end-to-end cloud solution and design.

How has it helped my organization?

As a service vendor, we have helped clients to achieve faster "go to market" on their products, and have provided highly flexible cost-effective system management solutions.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of this solution are Compute, Security, Database, Media, Management, and Governance.

What needs improvement?

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management.

For how long have I used the solution?

Seven years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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November 2024

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Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

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816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user717240

Director of IT Projects - AngularJS developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 13, 2017

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Makes Maintenance And Creation Of New Clone Environments Easier

What is most valuable?

AWS provides a lot of solutions to design secure, elastic and serverless software architectures.

How has it helped my organization?

More than 30 BBVA Group web pages are working without servers, saving costs and reducing security problems, with AWS services like CloudFront, WAF, S3, Lambda, SQS, and API Gateway.

All our infrastructure is defined in JSON files, thanks to CloudFormation, which makes maintenance and creation of new clone environments easier.

What needs improvement?

Lambda@Edge, for example, it's new and has a lot of room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

Four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is usual with new functionalities, but AWS does resolve stability issues quickly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With CloudSearch; the service finally autoscales but in excessive time. You never lose information, but you can't access new data when there are peaks of requests for creation of new documents.

How are customer service and technical support?

Seven out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, I used OVH and other cloud providers like Azure or Google. AWS is much better. It is a complete platform.

How was the initial setup?

Required some service, but in general there is a lot of documentation and there are training courses.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

AWS is appropriate for professional solutions. For other types of projects it's a bit expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Azure, Google Cloud. AWS is years ahead of its rivals.

What other advice do I have?

Think "serverless". With AWS you can design your architecture, thinking distinct and oriented to events, decoupling processes, solving possible errors, multi-region or Multi-AZ.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Gurudeva Kalledevarpurada BIT Solution Architect at HCS

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Jul 4, 2018

AWS is a great Infra Solution. Need more adoption by businesses.

it_user234747

Practice Manager - Cloud, Automation & DevOps at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Jun 30, 2015

It has a massive library of services for you to use in developing cloud-based solutions.

Originally posted at https://vcdx133.com/2015/06/12/tech101-amazon-web-services

As part of my NPX preparation (AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional is one of the recommended qualifications) and my RapidMatter GitHub project (will run from AWS), I have been delving into the world of Amazon Web Services. One statement: “Wow!” I can see why they are the world leader in Public Cloud services.

Here is the cool thing, as an Enterprise/Cloud Architect you have a MASSIVE library of services (40+ at time of writing) that you can use to develop Cloud-based solutions for your customers. As you read through the list below, you will see the fundamental building blocks for every solution. By having this service matrix, you do not have to reinvent the wheel; it already exists and is ready to go. Thus, you can focus on making sure your customer requirements are being met with elegant and innovative designs.

Getting Started (takes 5 minutes)

You have a PC with a responsive and usable Internet connection
Create an AWS account
Provide a valid Credit Card
Provide a valid phone number that must be verified
Start using AWS immediately – there is a free tier (1 year trial period) for some services in some regions (micro instances)
The UI is very intuitive and easy to use
WARNING: You can spin-up most of the service catalogue. Do not forget and leave them running, your credit card will be charged

Core Services of AWS

EC2 – Elastic Cloud Compute – Virtual Machines you can provision (Instances) from a massive library of templates (AMI – Amazon Machine Images free and paid from the AWS Community/Marketplace) no
EBS – Elastic Block Store – Persistent Virtual Disks for your VMs (Instances)
S3 – Simple Storage Service – Scalable, Object-based Storage in the Cloud
Glacier – Archive Storage in the Cloud

Under The Hood: AWS uses a heavily customised version of Xen as its hypervisor.

Pricing Models

On-Demand – Pay-as-you-go
Reserved Instances – Pay up front
Spot Requests – Bid for excess AWS resources against other AWS users

Compute

EC2 Container Service – Run and Manage Docker Containers
Lambda – Run Code in Response to Events

Storage & Content Delivery

Storage Gateway – Integrates On-Premises IT Environments with Cloud Storage
Elastic File System – Fully Managed File System for EC2

Edge Services (to be close to all of your customers around the world)

Route53 – Scalable DNS and Domain Name Registration
CloudFront – Global Content Delivery Network – Caches static content regionally

Simple Micro-services that just work

SQS – Simple Message Queue Service
SES – Simple Email Service
SWF – Simple Workflow Service
AppStream – Low Latency Application Streaming
Elastic Transcoder – Easy-to-use Scalable Media Transcoding
CloudSearch – Managed Search Service

Databases

RDS – Relational Database Service – MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server & Amazon Aurora
DynamoDB – Predictable and Scalable NoSQL Data Store
ElastiCache – In-Memory Cache
Redshift – Managed Petabyte-Scale Data Warehouse Service

Networking

VPC – Virtual Private Cloud – Isolated Cloud Resources
Direct Connect – Dedicated Network Connection to AWS

Administration & Security

Directory Service – Managed Directory Services in the cloud
Identity & Access Management – Access Control and Key Management
Trusted Advisor – AWS Cloud Optimisation Expert
CloudTrail – User Activity and Change Tracking
Config – Resource Configurations and Inventory
CloudWatch – Resource and Application Monitoring

Deployment & Management

CloudFormation – Templated AWS Resource Creation (for Sysadmins)
Elastic Beanstalk – AWS Application Container (for Developers)
OpsWorks – DevOps Application Management Service
CodeDeploy – Automated Deployments

Analytics

EMR – Managed Hadoop Framework
Kinesis – Real-time Processing of Streaming Big Data
Data Pipeline – Orchestration for Data-Driven Workflows
Machine Learning – Build Smart Applications Quickly and Easily

Mobile Services

Cognito – User Identity and App Data Synchronisation
Mobile Analytics – Understand App Usage Data at Scale
SNS – Simple Notification Service – Push Notification Service

Enterprise Applications

WorkSpaces – Desktops in the Cloud (VDI)
WorkDocs – Secure Enterprise Storage and Sharing
WorkMail – Secure Email and Calendaring Service

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8928

Owner at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Aug 24, 2013

Amazon EC2 monthly price tables for SaaS-relevant configurations, in euros

EC2 is Amazon’s cloud service for flexible use of virtual machines. One of the big advantages of this service is that Amazon’s hourly prices also include the cost for the Windows and/or SQL Server license. Amazon has just announced lower prices for Windows EC2 instances.

It’s not always easy to calculate total monthly costs for various configurations, so in this post I will try to give an indication of montly costs for configurations that would be relevant for SaaS applications with 1,000 – 50,000 customers.
Note: In the monthly prices below I have incorporated the upfront costs for 1- and 3-year contracts in the monthly prices (spread out over the full term).
All prices are calculated for the EU region (Ireland).

Windows web server. No additional storage.

Configuration	Resources	On-demand (hourly) p/m	1-year term p/m	3-year term p/m
M1 large instance	2 cores, 7.6 GB memory	€200	€131	€99
M1 extra large instance	4 cores, 15 GB memory	€400	€262	€198
M3 double extra large instance	8 “second-generation” cores, 30 GB memory	€859	€554	€419

Traffic out (to the internet) is an additional €92 per TB.

Load-balanced high-activity Windows web server.

Amazon Elastic Load Balancer
3 M3 double extra large EC2 instance on 3-year terms
5 TB of internet traffic per month
Total cost per month = €1763

Database server, EC2 instance with Windows server 2008/2012 and SQL Server Web Edition 2008/2012.

Prices below include 1TB of database storage on EBS (Elastic Block Storage, Amazon’s virtual drives). For instances without guaranteed I/O I have included 500 million I/O requests per months. Upfront costs have been spread over the months of the term.

Configuration	Resources	Guaranteed I/O	On-demand (hourly) p/m	1-year term p/m	3-year term p/m
High-memory extra-large instance	2 cores, 17 GB memory	(no guaranteed I/O)	€463	€292	€249
High-memory double extra-large instance	4 cores, 34 GB memory	500 Mbps	€798	€467	€384
High-memory quadruple extra-large instance	8 cores, 68 GB memory	1000 Mbps	€1491	€829	€666

Note that you would also need additional storage for database backups, which could add €100-500 per month, depending on backup methods and backup retention.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Carlos Mardinotto Junior

BI Expert at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 8, 2023

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Good for Redshift databases, but priced high

Pros and Cons

"Amazon AWS has a good Redshift database."

"Amazon AWS is a very poor product for students. Microsoft Azure is a better solution."

What is our primary use case?

I used Amazon AWS for a financial company.

What is most valuable?

Amazon AWS has a good Redshift database.

What needs improvement?

Amazon AWS is a very poor product for students and difficult find out solutions. Microsoft Azure is a better solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Amazon AWS within the past 12 months.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Microsoft Azure.

What about the implementation team?

I have implemented Amazon with the Redshift database for the ETL components.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I find Amazon AWS very expensive compare to Microsoft Azure.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated Google cloud.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

AshokPolapragada

Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Aug 24, 2021

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An on-demand cloud computing platform with a useful storage feature, but the price could be better

Pros and Cons

"I like the storage, all the codes like Lambda and Amazon EMR."

"The price could be better."

What is most valuable?

I like the storage, all the codes like Lambda and Amazon EMR.

What needs improvement?

The price could be better.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Amazon AWS for seven to eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is scalable. Scalability has been good for us.

How was the initial setup?

I didn't take part in the initial setup on a very hands-on level. However, I hear from my architects and the development team that it's straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It could be cheaper, and Amazon could also be more transparent with its pricing. I would first expect any product vendor to give me the utmost transparency on pricing information. There shouldn't be any hidden costs.

Their service offerings have a bit of segmentation, and they focus more on SMBs. They brought them onto the cloud and encouraged them to use solutions on the cloud. But strategically, they should probably improve that and offer some credits.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise potential users to use Azure if they want more stability, but I always warn about the costs. That's why I don't bring infrastructure to the business, and I find the customers with their own environment. There are multiple portions, and it's not straightforward for anybody to do. That's the bad side of it, but anybody can prepare.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Amazon AWS a seven.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Shehzad Ali

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

Aug 22, 2021

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Scalable, stable and easy to install with good tech support

Pros and Cons

"I like the technical support."

"The price of the solution is comparatively quite high in comparison with that of Azure."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for managed hosting of the connection servers of some of our clients.

What is most valuable?

The solution has a vast array of features and services. It offers many upgrades.

What needs improvement?

The price of the solution is comparatively quite high in comparison with that of Azure.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Amazon AWS for around two or three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution has good stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution has good scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

I like the technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was quite easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution could be more cost-effective.

What other advice do I have?

When it comes to cloud management, I have no complaints at present.

I am a customer of Amazon.

As we are, basically, only hosting cloud services, this is geared towards the end user. We manage two or three people.

I would recommend the solution to others.

Owing to the pricing, I rate Amazon AWS as a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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Updated: November 2024

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