Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon AWS
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
255
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (2nd)
IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.2%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Oct 16, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.
Shivakumar Kuppannan - PeerSpot reviewer
No hidden charges, 100% stable, and allows us to have bare metal servers for dedicated workload
It pretty much has all the features. There are many applications and features, and because of that, we need to walk through or study all the material and do hands-on. We need clear documentation or support for using IBM Public Cloud. The UI is fine, and everything else in terms of usability and configuring the cloud is also fine. The only thing is that when we're stuck or get an error, we need some technical support. Normally, for any cloud, we get a lot of information on the web, but that is missing in the case of IBM Public Cloud. We need some technical support documents. That is the only thing missing in IBM Public Cloud.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Almost everything is good. It is a whole ecosystem. It is not only the storage, computing, or networking. It is interesting in the way all things are combined to form this ecosystem. It is a very well-built and logical ecosystem that has some small building blocks. These building blocks can be used in the right way to build a much bigger ecosystem that is robust, secure, scalable."
"There is no downtime. The solution is reliable."
"Amazon AWS has improved a lot on security and is very good. Additionally, You can integrate your own security into their AWS platform."
"It has a dynamic scaling capacity which is very helpful."
"User friendly solution."
"The solution can scale well."
"The interface of the solution is good."
"The solution also helps organizations to move applications to a containerized platform."
"The availability is second to none. Customer support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"It is easy to deploy what you need for the initial setup"
"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."
"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"For non-complex applications, the IBM Cloud works fine and the price is much lower than the competitors."
"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."
 

Cons

"A person with no AWS experience might find it overwhelming at first."
"Amazon AWS could improve on security."
"Monitoring still needs to be improved."
"One area that could be improved is in data management. They could improve on the data side. For example, I see others with better cloud services and larger data computing capabilities."
"You'll probably experience some sticker shock with AWS. You attempt to understand the cost, but you don't realize what you're paying until you get your first bill. I don't know if Amazon does that on purpose, but costs can get out of control quickly if you don't have someone who specializes in AWS cost management."
"The price could be better."
"AWS has room for improvement on the Kubernetes side. I would like to go a little deeper into the Kubernetes target, Elastic, inner system, and all that. The EKS, target, and all these areas need to be improved, but that is not my key area because I am mostly working on the application side."
"The pricing is reasonable but there is always room to be better."
"While they have about 99% of what we need, the only exception, perhaps, was the push notification feature that was discontinued. They delayed the replacement product."
"The initial setup and the pricing are areas that need improvement."
"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."
"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"Recently, we just faced some issues with the operating system due to the end of life of CentOS 6...So, then the client wanted to try it out under AWS instead of IBM. In short, it has some complexities."
"Support could be improved."
"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."
"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud. It could have a better interface as well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Amazon is higher than that of SalesForce."
"This is a subscription-based service and there are licensing fees."
"Much faster than other solutions at a super low cost."
"They have different pricing models for each suite of services."
"The pricing depends on the workload. For example, if your workload involves Windows technologies, AWS may not be the most cost-effective option. In that case, you might be better off with Azure."
"The price of the Virtual Desktop service from Amazon AWS could improve, it is more expensive than competitors. The pricing model we are using is pay-as-you-go. You only pay for what you use."
"We need to pay for everything. If someone is a personal user, they get one year free. But if you are using this as a professional or enterprise solution, then your company has to pay. The license pricing is comparable to that of competitors'."
"One of the best thing in Amazon AWS is you are billed for the service you use."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
842,145 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Oct 16, 2021
Oct 16, 2021
I agree with Vik and Marcelo. AWS cloud is more matured, but you would like to run some specific IBM business tools like document management, IBM Watson for AI, SPSS analytics then IBM Cloud should be preferred.
2 out of 3 answers
VD
Oct 12, 2021
Amazon AWS is superior to IBM public for several reasons.  The most important reason is the diversity of software tools, the geographic diversity and availability, lower operating costs and excellent customer service. All cloud companies are simply playing catch-up to AWS. 
MJ
Oct 14, 2021
AWS, the main reason is the number of DC distributed arround the world
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
28%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud?
The front end is not pervasive, so it is very difficult get the status of your current services or account from a mobile device.
What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?
The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
IBM Bluemix
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. IBM Public Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,145 professionals have used our research since 2012.