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Amazon EKS vs Rancher Labs comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EKS offers cost-benefits, data security, and ROI, supporting OpEx/CaPEx models, even outperforming traditional hardware investments.
Sentiment score
8.5
Rancher Labs provides efficient open-source solutions like OpenShift with significant cost savings and an eight out of ten rating.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EKS support is responsive with integration help, but faces delays and lacks depth in resolving complex issues.
Sentiment score
7.8
Rancher Labs' customer service and technical support are praised for responsiveness, with users valuing community forums for assistance.
Upon escalation, AWS helped me find the root cause.
We have a paid subscription that provides priority support.
Amazon's technical support is quite good, especially for those who purchase support services.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon EKS excels in scalability, efficiently managing workloads and meeting diverse organizational needs with ease of use and robust features.
Sentiment score
7.7
Rancher Labs offers robust scalability for small to large teams, with effective deployment and minor automation improvements suggested.
The ability to scale based on requirements by deploying additional containers is a strong point for Kubernetes.
It can scale very well according to needs, and it doesn't have any issues with scalability.
Amazon EKS is effective for scalability, providing features for upscaling and downscaling resources as needed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Amazon EKS is stable and reliable, with users praising its robustness and easy management despite rare connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
8.7
Rancher Labs is praised for its stability and reliability, though users note complexity and upgrade challenges.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EKS faces criticism for its complex setup, high costs, poor support, demanding improvements in security, documentation, and usability.
Rancher Labs needs improved stability, integrations, user-friendly features, enhanced security, multicloud support, and better community and development resources.
Simplifying these will enable more people, not just those with strong foundational knowledge, to work effectively with these services.
Currently, some third-party plugins, like certain network plugins such as CNI, Calico CNI, or Cilium, are not fully supported.
A UI could help generate config files, simplifying the process for developers who are not architects.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EKS' pay-as-you-go model varies, appealing to enterprises but may deter cost-sensitive startups due to potential expenses.
Rancher Labs provides a cost-effective open-source container orchestration with optional paid support, seen as competitively mid-range priced.
The pricing structure is beneficial for large companies who pay for what they use, but it is not affordable for startups.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EKS offers seamless scalability, security, and efficient cloud-native deployments with autoscaling and serverless options for multicloud environments.
Rancher Labs offers user-friendly Kubernetes management, seamless integrations, and supports GitOps and virtual machine management with promising potential.
The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading.
The built-in services ease management tasks, such as updates and security, leading to less manual monitoring and a more seamless deployment process.
The scalability is excellent, allowing us to efficiently handle customer experiences and improve operational efficiency.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EKS
Ranking in Container Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (13th)
Rancher Labs
Ranking in Container Management
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Data Storage for Kubernetes (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon EKS is 13.8%, up from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rancher Labs is 8.9%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Venkatramanan C.S. - PeerSpot reviewer
Amazon EKS: Why It Shines, Where It Struggles, and How It Can Improve
* EKS incurs an additional management fee ($0.10 per hour per cluster) along with EC2 or Fargate costs.May be expensive for smaller workloads compared to alternatives like AWS ECS.Requires expertise to configure and manage Kubernetes resources effectively.Networking (e.g., setting up VPCs, subnets, and service endpoints) can be complex.Simplifies managing multiple Kubernetes clusters, especially for organizations with hybrid or multi-region setups.Integrated dashboards for Kubernetes metrics, logs, and traces.Simplifies observability without needing third-party tools.
RyanVassallo - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers an open-source version along with a good UI
The product has multiple good features. One of the solution's good features is that it is the GitOps functionality known as Rancher fleet, which is used for continuous delivery. The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or on-premises, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations. The tool also has a feature that is still kind of maturing, but I think it has very good potential. This new feature is named Harvester, which is allows users to have virtual machines managed by Kubernetes engine. This is very new technology in the market. I think that Harvester needs to mature as a product, and I think that in the future, it will be very powerful. You have one tool that does many things for you.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EKS?
The product's most valuable features are scalability, observability, and performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EKS?
I do not have specific details on EKS's pricing and licensing compared to other services. However, in general, deploying in the cloud offers lower latency and high availability and reduces manual i...
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
* EKS incurs an additional management fee ($0.10 per hour per cluster) along with EC2 or Fargate costs.May be expensive for smaller workloads compared to alternatives like AWS ECS.Requires expertis...
What do you like most about Rancher Labs?
The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or the company, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rancher Labs?
The cost is reasonable since it's open-source. Rancher effectively addresses container orchestration trends, especially for those with some Kubernetes knowledge.
What needs improvement with Rancher Labs?
While Rancher Labs provides some level of security, it's not considered very robust. We found it to offer basic security features, which met some of our requirements, but we also relied on other op...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GoDaddy, Pearson, FICO, Intuit, Verizon, Honeywell, Logicworks, RetailMeNot, LogMeIn, Conde Nast, mercari, Trainline, Axway
Albert Heijn, Bell, BMC, Samsung, WindStream, Johnson & Johnson
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EKS vs. Rancher Labs and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.