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Amazon EC2 vs Zadara comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zadara
Ranking in Compute Service
11th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (32nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (17th), Public Cloud Storage Services (15th), File and Object Storage (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 6.3%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

KatlegoMabila - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers customization and flexibility with great support
Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.
Kirubel Behailu - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage.  I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"EC2 provides a lot of flexibility. If you don't want to have a separate on-premise database, you can put it on the cloud with EC2. You can adjust the instance type according to your needs. You select a size and get a certain amount of specific memory, CPUs, etc. You set the redirect limit, and from there, you install the software, database servers, application servers, and whatever you want."
"The flexibility of the security features is what is interesting."
"We don't have to worry about scalability issues or maintenance or security. It's all taken care of."
"I like the AMI-related features. A very good feature of this solution is the customizable AMI. It is a very good feature provided by Amazon. The encryption technologies are also very good. We are using KMS, etc."
"I like EC2 because of its simple workload and the ability to configure VPCs and security groups."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon EC2 is the computing capacity."
"EC2 has the typical advantages of using the cloud. It's easy to provision and set up."
"Amazon EC2's flexibility and ease of configuration were found to be very valuable."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"I find Zadara's user-friendliness from both the customer and engineering perspectives highly appreciated."
"The processing is much faster with this product."
"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."
"Being able to scale on demand, and being able to get out of our security operation center, and not having to purchase hardware upfront, has drastically reduced the overhead that was required to maintain our information. We have also gained additional capabilities in terms of speed of replicating that information."
"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."
 

Cons

"Amazon EC2 could improve the stability."
"It is a little too expensive."
"The ease of migrating applications could be improved."
"My impression is that the scalability of this product could be improved. My opinion is that, for example, the Lambda solution is much more scalable than EC2."
"An area for improvement in Amazon EC2 is the cost because it's a bit higher than competitor pricing."
"Amazon EC2 could improve the console view. The ability to see the console view directly would be helpful, similar to what VMware has. Additionally, when the system is rebooting we are able to see a screenshot of the UI, but it would be a lot better if we could interact directly with the console level."
"Built-in and/or integration with other services to proactively identify potential failures before they occur."
"am concerned about the tool's data security."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."
"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."
"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."
"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."
"The cost is not favorable as Zadara does not provide competitive rates for regions like South Africa and Ethiopia."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has different pricing models, and its cost differs when you purchase it for one year or three years."
"Pricing appears to be cheap, however, it is extremely difficult in calculating what something will cost."
"It has helped to reduce costs with infrastructure."
"The price of Amazon EC2 could improve. The Google Cloud Platform is more cost-effective."
"When we did the deployment of Amazon EC2 we found it to be less expensive than other solutions."
"The licensing of Amazon EC2 is expensive. Microsoft Windows Servers are expensive to license."
"It's expensive, and it could be cheaper."
"We are paying about $1,500 a month for one of the services."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Retailer
6%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
I'm going to mention again that there is quite a bit of complexity within the pricing of EC2 instances. I'm just going to give it six out of ten since there are various standards, upfront and commi...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
There is not much to be improved or enhanced. One of the things that need to be looked into is the complex pricing, which is rather intense. Sometimes, clients don't understand the structures. Thes...
What needs improvement with Zadara?
There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive. Adding AI capabilities could enhance the offering as well.
What is your primary use case for Zadara?
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage. I typica...
What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?
If companies have the budget, I recommend Zadara for small business classes due to its robust performance and user-friendliness. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EC2 vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.