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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
6th
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
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (33rd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (16th), Public Cloud Storage Services (15th), File and Object Storage (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 5.7%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.7%, up from 0.2% 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

"The product is easy and quick to set up."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to have standard operating systems along with the Windows, Linux operating systems, and their maintenance-free structure, which we prefer."
"The product is very mature and organized."
"EC2 has the typical advantages of using the cloud. It's easy to provision and set up."
"The most valuable feature is autoscaling."
"All of my lower maintenance overheads are taken care of. I don't have to worry about it."
"EC2 is secure and stable, and we have no complaints about it on AWS."
"I use it for NextCloud and for developer purposes."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."
"The processing is much faster with this product."
"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."
"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."
"I find Zadara's user-friendliness from both the customer and engineering perspectives highly appreciated."
"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."
 

Cons

"Amazon EC2 could improve by reducing the price."
"Accessibility must be improved."
"I would like to see as much automation for data validation as possible in the future."
"Regional acceleration could improve. If I am hosting a website and I want the experience to be faster they should have this feature to allow for increased speeds."
"Regarding availability, a noticeable improvement would be the possibility of more load balancing configurations and the deployment of more datacenters, mainly in Latin America."
"In terms of improvement, they could build some client-side desktop tools that provide easier connectivity to Amazon."
"Amazon EC2 could improve the stability."
"Amazon EC2's pricing could be better."
"Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market."
"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."
"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."
"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."
"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."
"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 initial setup of the solution is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is not cheap."
"When we did the deployment of Amazon EC2 we found it to be less expensive than other solutions."
"It has helped to reduce costs with infrastructure."
"Amazon EC2 is a very expensive solution."
"The licensing of Amazon EC2 is expensive. Microsoft Windows Servers are expensive to license."
"The solution has different pricing models, and its cost differs when you purchase it for one year or three years."
"There is a license required to use this solution and we pay on a monthly basis."
"The license fee for Amazon EC2 is higher than its competitors."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
6%
 

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: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.