Founder & Managing Director Digital Solutions at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Good support, impressive technology, and beneficial service portfolio
Pros and Cons
  • "Amazon AWS has a better portfolio. They have an impressive technology and service portfolio."
  • "The invoicing procedure of Amazon AWS needs to be improved. It can be difficult to manage."

What is most valuable?

Amazon AWS has a better portfolio. They have an impressive technology and service portfolio.

What needs improvement?

The invoicing procedure of Amazon AWS needs to be improved. It can be difficult to manage.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Amazon AWS within the last 12 months.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support of Amazon AWS is good.

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Amazon AWS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Oracle previously, and I don't see any difference between Amazon AWS and Oracle from the stability and availability point of view.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Amazon AWS is a bit more expensive than Oracle.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Highly available, good documentation, and comprehensive APIs
Pros and Cons
  • "The documentation is very good."
  • "Not all of the functionality is available in Europe and our customers in France want to be able to use features that are only available in the US."

What is our primary use case?

We use AWS for the development of applications and websites for our customers. We produce web applications.

What is most valuable?

This is a highly available solution with a good API.

The documentation is very good.

What needs improvement?

Not all of the functionality is available in Europe and our customers in France want to be able to use features that are only available in the US. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Amazon AWS for six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is scalable. We develop projects for our clients, so the number of users grows each easy client. At this point, there are several hundred users and we plan to continue increasing our usage.

How are customer service and support?

We don't use technical support very much, so I can't properly evaluate them. What I can say about Amazon is that they do not have a larger support team in Europe or even France. If we compare them to others, for example, Google has more support in our country.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

AWS is the first cloud provider that we used.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very complex.

The first time we deployed this product, it was long. It took several weeks. Now that we have deployed it for several clients and have more experience, it only takes a couple of days.

What about the implementation team?

We completed the deployment ourselves but there is a lot of documentation so it's possible, but it's better to have a consultant because it's difficult to know how to do it well the first time.

No staff is required for maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We pay monthly licensing fees.

Pricing is an area that can be improved because it is very complicated. It considers the number of processes, bandwidth, and different kinds of usage. This makes it difficult to predict. When we receive an invoice, there are always surprises. Now that we have used it for a long time, we have more information and are better able to estimate it.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to have a strategy for calculating or monitoring the price. For example, have some alerts set up.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Devops at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Easy deployment and integration with good pricing
Pros and Cons
  • "Easy to deploy through the channel model for serverless architecture and easy to integrate through the organization model."
  • "Some services which were easy to use through shortcuts are now more complicated to use."

What is our primary use case?

I've used it to create some internal projects for my organization, particularly for designing the infrastructure of those projects.

What is most valuable?

One feature I find most valuable is the easy deployment by using the channel model for  serverless architecture. Another feature I find valuable is the versatility of the service S3 because it allows you to give permissions to describe the users from their own accounts, from external users, or external accounts.

What needs improvement?

On the console, they used to have some shortcuts making this solution easier to work with, but now we have been dealing with so many problems on the console, and some of the options are not very useful in my perspective, so they should bring back those options that make things easier to run some of the services.

Most of the time the options are pre-selected, or you have to go with the default settings, but from my perspective, there are some services which are now more complicated to use than before.

An additional feature I'd like to see in the future is more integration with public repositories, though some use their own repositories for security purposes, but I think it'll be easier to deploy services through public repositories.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for almost four years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is stable. I've been using it for a long time and have only seen an outage in one of the regions. It's a good solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of this solution is good.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support of AWS is very good. When I need something, they reach out to me fast.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. The complexity of the setup will depend on the number of services e.g. it's something that involves a lot of services, it could get complex, but for a complex setup, you could use things like transformation or Terraform because they will enable you to use infrastructure as a code to make it easier. There's a lot of things to configure.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing of this solution is paid on a yearly basis.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated Microsoft Azure.

What other advice do I have?

This was deployed on the cloud. I don't remember which version because I didn't deploy it. I was not the person running the project of implementing AWS, but I know the client used it, but I don't know which version.

It's not so difficult to use because there's a lot of tutorials.

I'm not completely sure about the number of AWS users in our organization. We have a partnership with them so we have some accounts, but we don't completely have our load on AWS. We are mostly on Azure. Our main server is on Azure. On AWS, we mostly have some internal projects and services, but most of the main load is on Azure.

We have a small workload on AWS. Sometimes we use it to deploy some of our best projects. We use it on some internal projects. It's a random thing so it could be 1,000 users or 50 users. I'll say approximately 200 to 500 users.

We don't require too many people for deploying this solution because our projects are proof of concepts. Up to ten people from different departments would be needed for deployment if it's a business requirement e.g. people from Approvals and Projects, etc.

As for increasing AWS usage, the organization sometimes thinks of moving some of the load to AWS because of good pricing, because currently, our main streams are on Azure, but it's not a sure thing.

I'm unsure if there's any additional cost aside from the need to pay the license annually because I don't directly manage it.

My advice to organizations looking into implementing AWS, especially if they're going to use it on a big scale, is to take advantage of AWS' organization model to make integration with their policies easier. It will also make administration easier for the different accounts, departments, and structure of the organizations thinking of moving to AWS.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Head of Data Projects at Cognitivo
Real User
An on-demand cloud computing platform that has a lot of specific solutions for different use cases
Pros and Cons
  • "I like that the products are specific and objective. We can resolve a problem using a simple configuration. It's so easy to implement a solution and solve a problem using AWS solutions. AWS has a lot of specific solutions for different use cases. I think that this is the most important thing that made us consider using AWS."
  • "It would be better if there was a way to see which components were still on. We have some situations where I forget that some components are turned on. We forget some components are on, and we only see that these components are on when we see the bill at the end of the month. It would also be better if AWS had specialized firewalls or integrations with leading products. For example, a specialized firewall with content filtering. We were looking for some firewall tools, and we saw that AWS doesn't have any specialized firewall tools in its services portfolio. So, we are looking for other tools like FortKnox, Forcepoint, and Check Point because we didn't find the solutions in AWS services."

What is our primary use case?

We usually use Amazon AWS to implement data lake solutions. We extract data from an AWS project that we implement, or we extract data from databases and centralize them with AWS components in AWS services. So, we create an infrastructure for our clients to consume their data. I like the components we use, like Amazon DMS or Database Migration Services, F3, and Amazon Athena. I think that these are the main components or the main services that we use.

What is most valuable?

I like that the products are specific and objective. We can resolve a problem using a simple configuration. It's so easy to implement a solution and solve a problem using AWS solutions. AWS has a lot of specific solutions for different use cases. I think that this is the most important thing that made us consider using AWS.

What needs improvement?

It would be better if there was a way to see which components were still on. We have some situations where I forget that some components are turned on. We forget some components are on, and we only see that these components are on when we see the bill at the end of the month.

It would also be better if AWS had specialized firewalls or integrations with leading products. For example, a specialized firewall with content filtering. We were looking for some firewall tools, and we saw that AWS doesn't have any specialized firewall tools in its services portfolio. So, we are looking for other tools like FortKnox, Forcepoint, and Check Point because we didn't find the solutions in AWS services.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for about three years.

What other advice do I have?

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Amazon AWS a nine.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Chief Executive Officer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Flexible, scales well, and offers good stability
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution scales very nicely."
  • "The pricing is something you have to watch. You really have to constantly optimize your costs for instances and things like that. That can become a job in itself to manage just from a budgeting standpoint."

What is our primary use case?

Customers can use it for the web-based management of the product. We also store and retrieve data for their network connections. Also, we use the AI/ML portion called SageMaker to calibrate the algorithms and basically drive automation into the customer's use case. Typically our use cases are in hotels, public transportation, convention centers - anywhere where you are sharing internet connections. For example, hotels, conventions centers - anything where you might have people jockeying for a shared internet connection with possible oversubscription or network congestion. We also have enterprise Work-From-Home users due to the pandemic and they need to continue to provide access to those remotely into their own data center, corporate network, and public cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

Flexible fast way to bring up servers and network infrastructure with variable costs.

What is most valuable?

We use the AI/ML Sagemaker to help us build models. 

We use several feature services on AWS, including Lambda, S3 database, RDS database, Alexa Voice Services and Cognito Gateway. They are all excellent in terms of offering great functionality.

They're pretty good about taking customer feedback and are generally able to productize the requested feature.

The initial setup is straightforward, especially if using Lightsail to start.

The solution scales very nicely.

The stability is good with a large number of Availability Zones WW.

Technical support is helpful and responsive but you must pay for a tiered support plan to ensure response.

What needs improvement?

The pricing is something you have to watch. You really have to constantly optimize your costs for instance, storage, IP's and things like that. That can become a job in itself to manage just from a budgeting standpoint if you are a moderate to heavy user. However, that's true for Azure or GCP as well. 

If they did more automation on alerting you to cheaper pricing or automated volume pricing based on time/use or even porting you on to on-demand instances automatically, that would be kind of cool. That's something that I haven't seen yet. They could just automatically optimize for your workflow and put you onto a lower-priced instance to save you money.  you Maybe allow you to pick an economy setting, or a performance setting, by time of day etc. something like that. That would be great. Then you don't have to think about it as much as you do in the current iteration.

It would be interesting to have a cost optimized accounting service so that they would come in and help remediate and give suggestions on how to cut costs. I know it's probably antithetical to their bottom line, but that said, obviously, if you take the high road there, you're going to probably keep people, and keep people from switching for lower costs. A lot of times, they can architect a better solution or a similar solution for lower cost and that would lead to customer retention--or maybe a longer term retention discount if youve stayed with them for awhile. That would be helpful if they had that. They have solutions architects, to consult however, they're usually just trying to design the best technical solution as opposed to the most cost-optimized solution. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using the solution for about four years at this point.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Services are pretty good stability-wise. They've got great redundancy. The one thing I would tweak them is when you're within the region or zone, they make it more difficult for you to do redundant zones, without carrying the IP addresses over seamlessly. That is a little bit of a sticking point, so you could have remote redundancy with the addressing there with it even outside of the AZ's. That would be a lot easier than having to go through the programming of it. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is great. You can go from one small instance to GPU, very powerful instances, clusters. There is not any problem with scaling if you can afford it. If you've got the volume, you certainly can scale.

We have maybe a dozen or so customers that will use the product and then access the UI and the management system through the cloud. Then, of course, as developers, we have about 10 to 25 employees that have to use it to varying degrees to support the customers and do development.

How are customer service and technical support?

I like the tech support. It varies by level in that you've got to pay more to get the immediate response time. Generally, I'd say it's pretty good. Literally phone rings minutes after you log a trouble ticket. They're usually pretty good about escalations and helping. Out of AWS, Azure, and GCP, I'd give them the number two ranking. Azure has good support, however, it's expensive. GCP probably is number three I'd say, of the top three.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also occasionally use the Google Cloud Platform and Azure, although we tend to use AWS the most. GCP is a little bit cheaper overall, however, then you've got the cost of management that is typically a person so you do need to invest in that. 

We started with Amazon and we've pretty much stayed with them. We've switched to Google and done some work on Azure that was customer driven, however, pretty much our prime public cloud has been AWS.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. 

It's pretty easy to get started. However, you do have to make an investment and learn the different cloud platform's nomenclature. Most of our guys now are cloud practitioners and architects now that they've taken the training. We had to bite the bullet even though we've been users for four years. There is an investment that you have to make on the OPEX side. That's the case for any of the public clouds. Although once you know one, you can pretty much pick up the other ones pretty quickly.

What about the implementation team?

In-house

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Have to watch price/billing creep, but there are tools to watch and monitor your usage and billing.  

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Azure. GCP

What other advice do I have?


We're a software development group building specialty LAN/WAN optimization solutions, so we don't use a lot of canned products per se.

We do tend to sue reasonably new software versions of the OS...whatever is the latest LTS selections.

If you already have your workload ready, that's helpful, as you can actually trial it under a free tier and then see what the cost is, and extrapolate what the ongoing cost is. In the end, that's what gets you. Being able to do some benchmark testing on how much it's going to cost for your particular workflow across the three public clouds is definitely something you probably want to do. Especially if you're going to scale, as, obviously, it can suddenly creep up to not just tens or hundreds of dollars a month, but thousands a month, depending upon what you're doing. I definitely would recommend doing some reference testing of your workflows before deciding on a solution.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. They're pretty solid. You've got all the services that you can imagine, and then some. There's a very broad breadth of products and services. We haven't had too many SLA issues for recovery or downtime. Maybe we've just been lucky or good so far...

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user

I recently started using Amazon AWS for my business and I have to say I'm impressed! The platform is incredibly user-friendly, even for someone who isn't very tech-savvy like myself. The range of services and features available is quite extensive, and I found everything I needed to build and run my application.


One of the things I appreciated the most about AWS is the level of security they provide. The platform is built with security in mind, and they offer a variety of tools and features to keep my data and applications safe. I also liked the pay-as-you-go pricing model, which meant I only paid for what I used, and I didn't have to worry about any hidden fees or unexpected costs.


Overall, I would definitely recommend Amazon AWS to anyone looking for a reliable and secure cloud computing platform. The level of support and resources available is top-notch, and the platform has been a game-changer for my business.

See all 3 comments
Sr. System Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to install and has good storage, gateway, and documentation
Pros and Cons
  • "The storage is most valuable. The gateway and documentation are also quite good."
  • "Its price should be lower. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage."

What is our primary use case?

We have just started to use this solution. We are using it for Amazon S3 Bucket.

What is most valuable?

The storage is most valuable. The gateway and documentation are also quite good.

What needs improvement?

Its price should be lower. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for around a month.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I didn't use any other solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

It was easy to install.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its price should be lower. Currently, the price is the same if you are working in-house or in production. If you have to do internal testing or you are checking if things are working in-house, you need to pay for that, and the price is the same. The price for in-house usage should be different from production usage.

What other advice do I have?

It is a good solution. I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Director of Technology at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Stable, flexible, always up to date, and works well as long-term or short-term storage
Pros and Cons
  • "It's a flexible solution."
  • "The interface is relatively complex."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for everything. It's our infrastructure. You can have long-term or short-term storage. You can have elastic servers, analytical AI, machine learning services, and API services.

What is most valuable?

It's a flexible solution.

What needs improvement?

The interface is relatively complex. It's not complex when you compare it to Azure, but with some other competitors, it is a little complex.

The interface could be simplified. It's an area that needs improvement, as well as the price.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five years.

We are using the latest version. It's always kept up-to-date by Amazon.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable product. Everyone in our organization is using this solution. We have 100 users.

We are not sure if we are going to continue using this product. We may move to Azure or GCP. We haven't made that decision.

How are customer service and technical support?

You have support but not very much. It's all do-it-yourself and you figure it out for the most part.

You have outside consulting firms that provide the support. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We use Azure, just for backups.

How was the initial setup?

There is nothing to install, it's cloud. It's easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The prices are a bit high. But they are the first ones on the market to really do this and they have a monopoly on it.

Depending on what you get, you will have to pay for a license. For example, if you get SQL Server, which is a Microsoft product, you need to pay for a license. If you get other products, you may have to get a license. They will provide that or they will sell it to you.

In some instances, it may be, that you bring your own licenses.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Azure has better services for some aspects, and Google GCP has obviously got some competing products. I think each provider has its benefits, advantages, and disadvantages.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Cloud Expert | DevOps | Oracle Consultant at confidential
Consultant
It provides full IaaS and PaaS for any company with a perfect price

What is our primary use case?

Hands-on experience with more than five implementation projects, working on different projects that are related to cloud with different vendors. AWS features exist to make your life easier.

How has it helped my organization?

AWS provides full IaaS and PaaS for any company with a perfect price, with features that exist in this vendor I don't see in any other vendor.

What is most valuable?

  • Lambda.
  • Alex development edge.
  • CloudFormation.

All of these features I've used heavily provide the best solution for any client.

What needs improvement?

  • I would like to see Lambda (code storage management), which means being able to increase our code storage limit through support.
  • Another example which is Simple Queue Service (SQS) event for Lambda: to be able to see support for SQS message events with Lambda.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Regarding to my work i am dealing with different cloud vendor all the time, but i never switch one solution to another.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

AWS pricing Reasonable & affordable by any business size, Small, Medium or large. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

None

What other advice do I have?

None

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Koenig Solutions - PeerSpot reviewer
Koenig SolutionsIT Training and Certification for Professionals at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
User

Amazon Web Services is a very helpful platform because of its attractive interface that allows me to obtain and configure capacity information, with minimal friction, that perfectly suits our company. Moreover, it helps me to take complete control of my computer resources and helps to reduce the time required to obtain and to boot new servers, as well. Apart from this, it provides tools to be build-failure resilient applications and to isolate them from common failure scenarios, in a very efficient manner.

Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.