I use this solution because I am trying to develop a fintech application.
Electrical Engineer at Strathmore University
A solution with quick deployment, but the interface could be improved
Pros and Cons
- "The IT is easy to set up, which is the best."
- "I appreciate how Amazon RDS allows me to choose the kind of database I want."
- "Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern."
- "Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
It takes off a load in setting up the VM, infrastructure, software and user accounts that go with databases.
What is most valuable?
I appreciate how Amazon RDS allows me to choose the kind of database I want. The IT is easy to set up, which is the best. It makes it easy to deploy quickly. I initially tried setting up a database on a local machine and realized that several requirements were needed. I needed to do a lot of infrastructure management.
What needs improvement?
Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern. For example, the cloud is a virtual network instead of having a dedicated VPC that handles databases, and they have it connected to the VPC that handles the main Amazon infrastructure.
If I had one that was indicated, it would make things easier because there are specific things I need when connecting to ensure accessibility. There is no need for multiple settings, considering a database cannot survive independently. Amazon RDS needs a connection to be a client, so they should tune it a bit more. In addition, uploading and having it done within a short period is challenging.
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For how long have I used the solution?
I have used this solution for the past seven months, and we use the latest version. It is deployed on the cloud, public AWS.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It has good availability, and so far, we haven't had any issues with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't reached the point where we need to scale up for performance or storage. But I don't think manually scaling the discs is easy to do, so it should be able to scale on its own. In addition, the instances can manage the traffic, and there's an option for setting each total scale. So depending on how production goes, we may scale it. We have three people using the solution, including myself. So we need only one person to maintain.
How are customer service and support?
We haven't contacted technical support because we haven't encountered any issues.
How was the initial setup?
I completed the deployment myself. We're using local databases on a local host to test and deploy it.
What was our ROI?
We do not have any return on investment because we are still testing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have specific details about the pricing, but we use the solution on demand. I rate the pricing a six out of ten, with one being the most expensive and ten being the cheapest. We have to pay extra for monitoring services.
What other advice do I have?
I rate this solution a seven out of ten. Regarding advice, learning from other good consoles and having the basics before approaching them is essential.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
CTO at Huber
Secure, robust, single instance for both direct and indirect users
Pros and Cons
- "Amazon RDS is lightweight and flexible."
- "Amazon RDS is lightweight and flexible, and it's a secure solution."
- "The security features could be improved."
- "The security features could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
Amazon RDS is custom development.
Some databases that we would like to use are lightweight and simple to integrate with the application.
What is most valuable?
Amazon RDS is lightweight and flexible.
It's a secure solution.
What needs improvement?
The security features could be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Amazon RDS for three years.
It is part of the cloud migration solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Amazon RDS is quite stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon RDS is a scalable solution.
RDS is a single instance. However, the actual users are approximately 500 people, both direct and indirect.
We have stopped using it.
How are customer service and support?
I have not contacted technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In the past, I used Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon EMR, and Amazon Redshift, but I no longer use them.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is satisfactory.
It took two weeks to complete the installation.
We have three engineers, one lead, and one manager to maintain this solution.
What about the implementation team?
With the help of our in-house staff, we completed the installation on our own.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Amazon RDS a ten out of ten because it is lightweight, and the flexibility.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Amazon RDS
April 2026
Learn what your peers think about Amazon RDS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.
886,426 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Enterprise Solutions Architect at OORWIN LABS INC
A good product that is easy to deploy, stable, and scalable
Pros and Cons
- "It is stable, scalable, and easy to deploy."
- "It's very useful to save customer's data in a secure manner, we can easily handle all the customer records with encryption mode."
- "Currently, we are using Fargate. Instead of that, we are planning to use EC2 instances, but we are facing some problems, and we are unable to enable NAT gateway for Elastic Load Balancer. When we enable auto-scaling, the instance count increases, and we get IP addresses dynamically. We need to whitelist the IPs of these instances, but there is no option to whitelist those IPs in Amazon RDS. We need one static IP that we can assign to ELB so that we can whitelist this IP."
- "When we depend on the AWS technical team, we need to pay more. For tech support, they are charging about 25% of the actual bill, which is too high for me."
What is our primary use case?
It's very useful to save customer's data in a secure manner, we can easily handle all the customer records with encryption mode.
How has it helped my organization?
Currently, we are not using RDS as, it has some limitations on DB schema creation, it allows limited tenant DB creations...expecting to release RDS custom RDS very soon
What is most valuable?
It is stable, scalable, and easy to deploy.
What needs improvement?
Expecting to have AWS RDS custom.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for almost four years.
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 more than 12,000 users who are using this solution.
How are customer service and support?
When we depend on the AWS technical team, we need to pay more. For tech support, they are charging about 25% of the actual bill, which is too high for me. If it is fixed to something like $200, I can go for that, but currently, it is too high for me.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Earlier we used Rackspace, it is very costly and more technical depedancy
How was the initial setup?
It is straightforward. It takes only a couple of minutes.
What about the implementation team?
We did it on our own.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Cost always depends on usage
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated azure, but we faced some issues with wild card domains
What other advice do I have?
The product is pretty good, but its support is very expensive.
I would rate it a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
IT Solution Architect at HCS
Helps to scale your database by providing Read Replicas, reducing transaction time
Pros and Cons
- "It makes it easy to administer the database. It helps to scale your database by providing Read Replicas, which reduce transaction time. It is highly available and durable which helps in disaster recovery and management."
- "Some thing which would have costed millions of dollars and nine DBAs could easily be replaced by Amazon RDS."
- "The Amazon RDS engine could provide features for additional databases, such as Db2. It could also provide support for other databases, such as NoSQL databases, DynamoDB, and Apache Cassandra. They could all stay under one hood."
- "The Amazon RDS engine could provide features for additional databases, such as Db2."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case is when you have to host your application on the Amazon cloud and your application uses database. Amazon RDS supports the following database engines: Amazon Aurora, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database, and SQL Server database. Amazon provides AWS Database Migration Service to migrate your existing databases to the Amazon cloud. It automates many aspects of database management viz hardware provisioning, database set up, database patching, and backups, which frees your database administrator to focus on important tasks. It also saves on the DB licencing costs.
How has it helped my organization?
It makes it easy to administer the database. It helps to scale your database by providing Read Replicas, which reduce transaction time. It is highly available and durable which helps in disaster recovery and management.
It is also secure. You can build your own VPC and host the database inside it, which will produce robust security. You still need to follow the principles of security as highlighted by Amazon.
What is most valuable?
Most useful is its availability to support multiple databases, such as Aurora, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MariaDB, and PostgresSQL. Your application can use multiple databases as required. Combine that with the Automated CI/CD tools, this makes it easy to implement the microservices architecture, which is the need of the hour for web based applications. The capability provided by the RDS to automate a portion of the RDBMS tasks, such as backups and performance tunings for multiple database engines, helps to save on DBA time and cost.
What needs improvement?
The Amazon RDS engine could provide features for additional databases, such as Db2. It could also provide support for other databases, such as NoSQL databases, DynamoDB, and Apache Cassandra. They could all stay under one hood.
Another improvement that Amazon could do is to market their product so that more customers can use it. With Microsoft having its own cloud Azure hosting SQL Server databases and Oracle coming up with its own cloud, there appears to be more competition. As more customers move to Amazon cloud, it will increase the utilization of the RDS, then more customers will be able to harness the power of Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution since 2015 on my consulting projects with a variety of clients.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This Solution is very stable, as many customers have witnessed. Responsibility to set up the Amazon VPC, servers, and RDS does take work. This requires a solid AWS (infrastructure): Administrators and networking team. They need to work with the AWS team, following the stringent security guidelines that will help to build stability for the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon Web Services is built for scalability. RDS is designed with scalability in mind.
How are customer service and technical support?
It is available. You need to negotiate and engage their services.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Earlier, we were using traditional on-prem databases. The need to switch to Amazon RDS has been due to a variety of factors. One such factor is the need to move the existing applications in our data center with variable demand utilization and pre-installed servers and databases to applications migrated to Amazon Web Services cloud. Along with migrating applications on servers, we also need to migrate databases. With the added power of supporting multiple database engines as well as automating many functions of DBAs and releasing the DBAs to focus on essential tasks, this has made it easier to switch to Amazon RDS.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup will be complex. You and your team need to understand the complexities of setting up IAM, security groups, AMIs, VPCs, autoscaling/loadbalancing, and RDS, then plan for multiple availability zones for disaster and recovery. You also need to set up an infrastructure admin and infrastructure support team who will work closely with the AWS team. You do not want your entire development to get involved with setting up the infrastructure. Your administrators and infrastructure team need to set it up, then guide the development team on how to utilize the infrastructure.
What about the implementation team?
The initial vendor team could help to set up the infrastructure, team organization, etc. Then, your in-house team can carry out the administration and support work as well as the day-to-day tasks, such as providing access, helping developers make changes, uploading to the infrastructure, performing the migration, deployment, etc. The vendor team needs to have certified, experienced consultants to set up the infrastructure.
Work with Amazon Pre-Sales team and have them present their products to your organization. They will help you to arrive at building a business case, PoCs, SLAs, contracts, etc. You will also need to set up a product support team along with the migration, deployment, and core AWS Infrastructure Administrator teams who will be essential to the success of the project.
What was our ROI?
This is where the product stands apart. You do not need to set up thousands of servers, hundreds of database, and hundreds of DBAs. You need to set up a minimal infrastructure. There is no need to pay upfront the cost of an entire data center. It is pay as-you-go. Therefore, you realize the benefits and scale up/down as needed. Amazon will provide the required capacity. This will help you to realize the ROI quickly, which helps you to keep on growing.
This has helped reduce the cost at the same time increasing the agility of the organization. Some thing which would have costed millions of dollars and nine DBAs could easily be replaced by Amazon RDS.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
By using a combination of Reserve Instances and On-Demand pricing, you can reduce the cost.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The main reason to migrate to the cloud comes from moving the underutilized. Variable demand applications moving to the cloud benefit from a cost savings as well as when they move from data center maintenance to building the core business capabilities. The application migration and database migration to AWS also provides an added advantage.
What other advice do I have?
For new/existing customers building new products, such as Ola, Uber, or Swiggy, instead of building their own data center first and launching the product which involves massive costs, AWS offers a better quality solution if they are unsure about whether their product will succeed in the market. They can build the product, start making money, and utilize the pay-as-you-go model. Then, they can scale the product depending on demand utilization. That appears to be the best business case for Amazon Web Services.
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: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Advisory and IT Transformation Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
A stable tool that is easy to deploy and integrate
Pros and Cons
- "I found it to be a stable solution."
- "I feel Amazon RDS should have a lot of functionalities to make monitoring within the database easier."
What is most valuable?
The benefits I experienced while using Amazon RDS stemmed from the fact that it provided me with the database and helped with managing searches in AWS. With Amazon RDS, you have your database without worrying about infrastructure, updates, or other things.
What needs improvement?
The shortcomings stem from not Amazon RDS as a product but are related to its monitoring capabilities. I feel Amazon RDS should have a lot of functionalities to make monitoring within the database easier. Amazon RDS should provide more granularity of log entries.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have had a few years of experience with Amazon RDS. I was a user of the solution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I found it to be a stable solution.
How are customer service and support?
I never needed the solution's technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Amazon RDS was the first tool with which I used databases or services on the cloud.
Currently, I work with Microsoft Azure SQL Database in my new company.
Speaking about Microsoft Azure SQL Database, you would always have the latest version and latest update since Microsoft is the owner of the Microsoft Stack.
How was the initial setup?
Amazon RDS is easy to deploy and integrate, but it depends on the solution. Maybe if you need to restore your database in a different region or in a different account or want to run Amazon RDS databases in multi-account environments, then it can be really hard and painful.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon RDS is an expensive solution.
What other advice do I have?
I would tell those who plan to use Amazon RDS to understand how it works and determine the pricing part before purchasing it since it is expensive.
The ease of using Amazon RDS depends on your platform, design, and software. Amazon RDS is easy to use if you have an AWS infrastructure.
With Amazon RDS, integrations with third-party solutions can be easy and beneficial for the product's monitoring part only. In general, integrating Amazon RDS with third-party solutions can be a complex process.
I rate the overall product an eight and a half out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Ensures the system is reliable and responsive for user security and convenience
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Amazon RDS are its scalability, reliability, and intelligence."
- "The only thing that needs improvement would be the pricing of the solution."
What is our primary use case?
I use Amazon RDS for my access control system, which manages permissions for users to enter places like universities, workspaces, and club team areas. Amazon RDS stores user data and keeps access permissions current, ensuring the system is reliable and responsive for user security and convenience.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Amazon RDS are its scalability, reliability, and intelligence.
What needs improvement?
The only thing that needs improvement would be the pricing of the solution. Otherwise, it works very well as it is.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon RDS for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I haven't had any issues with it so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is one of Amazon RDS's strongest points. I would rate it a nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
In 2019, we had a paid subscription for AWS technical support, not specifically for Amazon RDS. We reached out to them when we were conducting stress testing on our system and noticed a significant performance drop, but we couldn't identify the cause. AWS support was helpful. They opened a ticket, communicated with us, and worked with us to pinpoint the problem. Eventually, they helped us resolve the issue, which was valuable for our project.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have previously used another DBaaS solution apart from AWS, which was Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In GCP, we used a PostgreSQL database. One standout feature of GCP that I appreciated was its robust monitoring tools, which were helpful for analyzing performance and identifying issues. While I can't speak in depth about AWS's monitoring capabilities, based on my experience, GCP's tools were quite beneficial in this regard.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Amazon RDS is quite simple. First, you create an instance by specifying details like its name, storage preferences, and security settings. You can also choose to set up backups. After clicking "create," your RDS instance is ready within minutes. You receive connection parameters, which you use in your application to connect to the database. From there, you can start creating tables and storing data. It's a straightforward process that doesn't require much technical complexity. The deployment of Amazon RDS instance was very quick configuration took only a few minutes. It is an easy and cost-effective process, with a setup fee of around $31. Getting the connection parameters and establishing the connection to the database was seamless and efficient. Overall, it was a smooth and positive experience.
Amazon RDS requires some maintenance, but it is not complicated. You might need to update the database configuration from time to time, which can be done by modifying your RDS instance. You can also schedule regular backups and updates provided by AWS. These changes can be controlled by you, so it is an organized process that ensures your database stays in good shape without much hassle. We have approximately 10,000 users of the solution at our company.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon RDS is quite expensive.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for those starting with AWS products is to closely monitor your usage and expenses. With on-demand and pay-as-you-go services, it is easy to keep using resources without realizing the costs adding up. So, keep a close eye on your bills to control expenses, as pricing might seem small but can accumulate quickly. This is important for cost management in general, and it applies to AWS services too. Overall, I would rate Amazon RDS a nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Software Architecture Lead at SoftwareONE
Helpful support and reasonably priced
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is good for on-premise deployments."
- "The solution could improve by adding a sandbox environment and more security."
What is our primary use case?
Amazon RDS is primarily for web applications.
What is most valuable?
The solution is good for on-premise deployments.
What needs improvement?
The solution could improve by adding a sandbox environment and more security.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon RDS for approximately one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Amazon RDS a five out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I plan to increase the usage of this solution.
I rate the scalability of Amazon RDS a five out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the stability of Amazon RDS a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The setup of Amazon RDS was complex.
What was our ROI?
I have received a return on investment using the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon RDS a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Reliable with good performance and an easy setup
Pros and Cons
- "It is very easy to set up initially."
- "Technical support could be better."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for internal systems and the database.
What is most valuable?
The performance has been fine. We have no complaints in regard to the speed.
It is very easy to set up initially.
It is stable and reliable.
What needs improvement?
I do not have complaints about RDS.
The solution tends to have a lot of updates. It's a very short time before we need to update again.
Technical support could be better.
They should make it cheaper for the users.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for ten years. I've used it for quite a long time. It's been a decade or so.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It doesn't break down.
How are customer service and support?
The support is not so good. We did choose the support level that was a little cheaper, and we don't find them to be that helpful or responsive.
How was the initial setup?
The setup process is simple and straightforward. It is not overly complex.
It only takes about ten to 20 minutes to deploy the product. It's very fast.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have found the price to be a little bit too expensive.
What other advice do I have?
We're an Amazon partner.
I'm not sure which version of the solution I am using.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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Updated: April 2026
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