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Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Elastic Container Se...
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Containers as a Service (CaaS) (1st)
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 1.7%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 24.2%, up from 20.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Horizontal scaling is streamlined when deploying modern workloads
Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously. This limitation makes it challenging to define a balanced scale-out automation since a well-written software should balance between processing and memory.
Vlado Velkovski - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime
OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Implementing the product has helped me monitor the parameters. I utilize tools like CloudWatch and AWS systems to track these parameters. If any issues arise, I alert our developer team to address and resolve them. The product helps to have a global file system. Also, it helps in data replication from region to region."
"I like the tool's availability and automated scalability. I need to define the port numbers, and when I have a large load of requests, I can get automated scalability."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service has multiple valuable features like load balancers and autoscalers."
"For me, the best feature of ECS is Fargate because I don't have to manage anything. Instead, everything is managed by AWS and all I have to do, in essence, is configure my containers and deploy them."
"We use the product for website and email database hosting."
"We primarily employ the Linux platform in terms of architecture. It utilizes its database, MySQL. Additionally, for CI/CD processes, we rely on Amazon CodeBuild. Furthermore, we use Amazon S3 storage to store specific static files. Currently, the system is running smoothly, and we don't actively perform any maintenance tasks as everything is automated."
"I like the per-second billing."
"Once you get the procedure right, and set a pattern, it just works."
"Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required."
"For us, the fully automated upgrades are valuable. We have to maintain the clusters in production. For us, it is very important that it does not take too much time to manage all the clusters and do life cycle management and upgrades."
"Openshift is a very developer-friendly product."
"OpenShift's core-based licensing model provides significant benefits regarding enterprise support and scalability."
"On OpenShift, it's easy to scale applications. We can easily scale up or scale down."
"It automates rolling out new features, packaging the code, conducting security scans, and deploying to OpenShift."
"OpenShift is a user-friendly container platform with a solid GUI that helps you follow what is going on and gives you an overview of all your clusters. It's more user-friendly than the Kubernetes itself. The interface helps you learn the platform and provides access to some features or specific comments."
"Dashboards... give us all the details we need to see about the microservices."
 

Cons

"EC2 is not self-explanatory enough."
"The user interface of ECS could be improved for better navigation and to assist in quickly setting up a deployment."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"My company has faced some stability issues with Amazon EC2 Container Service."
"Visualization is an important factor for me, and I don't think that the visuals within ECS are good enough because it doesn't show you all the details you might need to see at a glance."
"Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously."
"There is room for improvement in the licensing costs. There can be better licensing costs."
"The solution can still be expensive, even with per-second billing."
"There should be a simplification of the overall cluster environment. It should require fewer resources. Just to run a simple Hello World app, it requires about seven servers, and that's just crazy. I understand that it is fully redundant, but it's prohibitively expensive to get something simple going."
"My impression is that this solution is pretty expensive so I think the pricing plan could improve."
"I believe OpenShift Container Platform can improve in networking, architecture, and cloud areas by reducing deployment time, lowering costs, and streamlining engineer resources"
"I believe that the documentation part is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"We are not big customers of Red Hat, but sometimes, we have severe bugs. We are very innovative, and sometimes, we have to wait for a long time to get proper attention. Red Hat should improve on that."
"The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform. When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high."
"OpenShift Container Platform is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"One area for improvement is that we can't currently run Docker inside a container, as it clashes with security consents. It would be good if we could change that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of Amazon EC2 Container Service is average."
"We have to pay a monthly licensing fee for Amazon EC2 Container Service."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service is worth the money."
"Amazon Elastic Container Service's price is good."
"If you increase the sizes, you incur costs to your accounts."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"I don't know the exact amount we were charged for our use of ECS, but I do know that it can be costly, especially when there is a bug or an error caused by default configurations."
"Amazon Elastic Container Service is an expensive solution."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"It largely depends on how much money they earn from the application being deployed; you don't normally deploy an app just for the purpose of having it. You must constantly look into your revenue and how much you spend every container, minute, or hour of how much it is working."
"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."
"The product is expensive."
"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."
"OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores."
"OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced."
"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Elastic Container Service?
Implementing the product has helped me monitor the parameters. I utilize tools like CloudWatch and AWS systems to track these parameters. If any issues arise, I alert our developer team to address ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Container Service?
The solution must improve backup and compatibility around OS like Windows and Mac.
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores.
 

Also Known As

Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.