Amazon AWS Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

reviewer1558359

Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

May 4, 2021

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Meets our needs in terms of features, good pricing, and reliable

Pros and Cons

"It is enough for us in terms of features. We don't have too many transactions, and it is sufficient for our current needs."

"Our API Management solution is integrated with Lambda, and last year, we had an issue while upgrading Lambda from version 8.0 to version 10. It seemed like Lambda runtime was changed by AWS, and there was a bug that caused the downtime. The loading of the dashboard is slow. It could be because I am located in China."

What is our primary use case?

We need to do the ticket exchange with external customers for the ITSM domain. There is an exchange of the service requests between our customer and our company.

What is most valuable?

It is enough for us in terms of features. We don't have too many transactions, and it is sufficient for our current needs.

What needs improvement?

Our API Management solution is integrated with Lambda, and last year, we had an issue while upgrading Lambda from version 8.0 to version 10. It seemed like Lambda runtime was changed by AWS, and there was a bug that caused the downtime.

The loading of the dashboard is slow. It could be because I am located in China.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for about two years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is reliable. We had a downtime only once. The issue was not with the production environment. It was with the lower environment.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are a lot of people who are using this solution in our organization. There are not many transactions between the customers and our internal system, and we don't have a high workload.

How are customer service and support?

I had contacted them for another solution, and they got back just in a day.

How was the initial setup?

It was easy for us.

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

It is subscription-based, and we are happy with its pricing.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

Karima Mechergui

Devops engineer with 1-10 employees

Apr 24, 2021

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Easy to use, flexible, stable, and has good IAM functionality

Pros and Cons

"I like that is very easy to use and that it's flexible."

"The price needs improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for the EC2, and IAM Management, and Lambda. I am using this solution to gain more knowledge, to educate myself.

What is most valuable?

I like that is very easy to use and that it's flexible.

What needs improvement?

The price needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for one month.

We are using the latest version.

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. I am the only user of this solution.

We plan to continue using this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

I am a beginner, I am satisfied with the support.

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

I did not use any other solution.

How was the initial setup?

There is no installation, it's a cloud solution.

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

It's expensive.

It should be cheaper.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Amazon AWS a nine 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.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS

April 2024

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Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.

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reviewer1474095

Software Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 31, 2021

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Scales well with an easy initial setup and good technical support

Pros and Cons

"The solution can scale quite well."

"The pricing of the solution could be better. It's a little pricey."

What is our primary use case?

We are a hospital system provider. We use the solution in order to provide provisions to the hospital. The client didn't want to host on-premises, and therefore we are using this product.

What is most valuable?

If there are issues, I come and check on them, however, I rarely use the solution, which suggests it's pretty problem-free. It works pretty seamlessly.

The initial setup is very straightforward and I didn't have any issues with configuring the solution.

The solution can scale quite well.

Technical support is pretty decent so far.

What needs improvement?

The pricing of the solution could be better. It's a little pricey.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with the solution for the past two years or so.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I haven't seen anything that would make me assume that solution can't scale as much as you need it to. It seems to be pretty scalable. There are no limitations.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've found the technical support to be pretty decent overall. You do need to give them some time, however, largely we are satisfied with their level of helpfulness.

How was the initial setup?

I am not extensively using the solution and I didn't do any work on the AWS; there's a DevOps team who will do the configuration.

That said, it's very straightforward. I didn't face any complexity in configuring AWS, for example.

What about the implementation team?

As integrators, we can implement the solution for our clients.

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

It would be ideal if the solution cost the customer less. It's expensive right now.

What other advice do I have?

We're integrators and service providers. We offer services to our clients.

We use a private VPN for the solution.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations, so long as the company doesn't care about the pricing.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten, simply due to the fact that the cost is high. They lose points there.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator

it_user1107327

Associate Director at Microland Limited

Jun 4, 2019

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Helps us to provide clients with a cost-effective, end-to-end solution

Pros and Cons

"As a service vendor, we have helped clients to achieve faster "go to market" on their products, and have provided highly flexible cost-effective system management solutions."

"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is an end-to-end cloud solution and design.

How has it helped my organization?

As a service vendor, we have helped clients to achieve faster "go to market" on their products, and have provided highly flexible cost-effective system management solutions.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of this solution are Compute, Security, Database, Media, Management, and Governance.

What needs improvement?

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management.

For how long have I used the solution?

Seven years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user717240

Director of IT Projects - AngularJS developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 13, 2017

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Makes Maintenance And Creation Of New Clone Environments Easier

What is most valuable?

AWS provides a lot of solutions to design secure, elastic and serverless software architectures.

How has it helped my organization?

More than 30 BBVA Group web pages are working without servers, saving costs and reducing security problems, with AWS services like CloudFront, WAF, S3, Lambda, SQS, and API Gateway.

All our infrastructure is defined in JSON files, thanks to CloudFormation, which makes maintenance and creation of new clone environments easier.

What needs improvement?

Lambda@Edge, for example, it's new and has a lot of room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

Four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is usual with new functionalities, but AWS does resolve stability issues quickly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With CloudSearch; the service finally autoscales but in excessive time. You never lose information, but you can't access new data when there are peaks of requests for creation of new documents.

How are customer service and technical support?

Seven out of 10.

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

Yes, I used OVH and other cloud providers like Azure or Google. AWS is much better. It is a complete platform.

How was the initial setup?

Required some service, but in general there is a lot of documentation and there are training courses.

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

AWS is appropriate for professional solutions. For other types of projects it's a bit expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Azure, Google Cloud. AWS is years ahead of its rivals.

What other advice do I have?

Think "serverless". With AWS you can design your architecture, thinking distinct and oriented to events, decoupling processes, solving possible errors, multi-region or Multi-AZ.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Gurudeva Kalledevarpurada BIT Solution Architect at HCS

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Jul 4, 2018

AWS is a great Infra Solution. Need more adoption by businesses.

it_user234747

Practice Manager - Cloud, Automation & DevOps at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Jun 30, 2015

It has a massive library of services for you to use in developing cloud-based solutions.

Originally posted at https://vcdx133.com/2015/06/12/tech101-amazon-web-services

As part of my NPX preparation (AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional is one of the recommended qualifications) and my RapidMatter GitHub project (will run from AWS), I have been delving into the world of Amazon Web Services. One statement: “Wow!” I can see why they are the world leader in Public Cloud services.

Here is the cool thing, as an Enterprise/Cloud Architect you have a MASSIVE library of services (40+ at time of writing) that you can use to develop Cloud-based solutions for your customers. As you read through the list below, you will see the fundamental building blocks for every solution. By having this service matrix, you do not have to reinvent the wheel; it already exists and is ready to go. Thus, you can focus on making sure your customer requirements are being met with elegant and innovative designs.

Getting Started (takes 5 minutes)

You have a PC with a responsive and usable Internet connection
Create an AWS account
Provide a valid Credit Card
Provide a valid phone number that must be verified
Start using AWS immediately – there is a free tier (1 year trial period) for some services in some regions (micro instances)
The UI is very intuitive and easy to use
WARNING: You can spin-up most of the service catalogue. Do not forget and leave them running, your credit card will be charged

Core Services of AWS

EC2 – Elastic Cloud Compute – Virtual Machines you can provision (Instances) from a massive library of templates (AMI – Amazon Machine Images free and paid from the AWS Community/Marketplace) no
EBS – Elastic Block Store – Persistent Virtual Disks for your VMs (Instances)
S3 – Simple Storage Service – Scalable, Object-based Storage in the Cloud
Glacier – Archive Storage in the Cloud

Under The Hood: AWS uses a heavily customised version of Xen as its hypervisor.

Pricing Models

On-Demand – Pay-as-you-go
Reserved Instances – Pay up front
Spot Requests – Bid for excess AWS resources against other AWS users

Compute

EC2 Container Service – Run and Manage Docker Containers
Lambda – Run Code in Response to Events

Storage & Content Delivery

Storage Gateway – Integrates On-Premises IT Environments with Cloud Storage
Elastic File System – Fully Managed File System for EC2

Edge Services (to be close to all of your customers around the world)

Route53 – Scalable DNS and Domain Name Registration
CloudFront – Global Content Delivery Network – Caches static content regionally

Simple Micro-services that just work

SQS – Simple Message Queue Service
SES – Simple Email Service
SWF – Simple Workflow Service
AppStream – Low Latency Application Streaming
Elastic Transcoder – Easy-to-use Scalable Media Transcoding
CloudSearch – Managed Search Service

Databases

RDS – Relational Database Service – MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server & Amazon Aurora
DynamoDB – Predictable and Scalable NoSQL Data Store
ElastiCache – In-Memory Cache
Redshift – Managed Petabyte-Scale Data Warehouse Service

Networking

VPC – Virtual Private Cloud – Isolated Cloud Resources
Direct Connect – Dedicated Network Connection to AWS

Administration & Security

Directory Service – Managed Directory Services in the cloud
Identity & Access Management – Access Control and Key Management
Trusted Advisor – AWS Cloud Optimisation Expert
CloudTrail – User Activity and Change Tracking
Config – Resource Configurations and Inventory
CloudWatch – Resource and Application Monitoring

Deployment & Management

CloudFormation – Templated AWS Resource Creation (for Sysadmins)
Elastic Beanstalk – AWS Application Container (for Developers)
OpsWorks – DevOps Application Management Service
CodeDeploy – Automated Deployments

Analytics

EMR – Managed Hadoop Framework
Kinesis – Real-time Processing of Streaming Big Data
Data Pipeline – Orchestration for Data-Driven Workflows
Machine Learning – Build Smart Applications Quickly and Easily

Mobile Services

Cognito – User Identity and App Data Synchronisation
Mobile Analytics – Understand App Usage Data at Scale
SNS – Simple Notification Service – Push Notification Service

Enterprise Applications

WorkSpaces – Desktops in the Cloud (VDI)
WorkDocs – Secure Enterprise Storage and Sharing
WorkMail – Secure Email and Calendaring Service

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8928

Owner at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Aug 24, 2013

Amazon EC2 monthly price tables for SaaS-relevant configurations, in euros

EC2 is Amazon’s cloud service for flexible use of virtual machines. One of the big advantages of this service is that Amazon’s hourly prices also include the cost for the Windows and/or SQL Server license. Amazon has just announced lower prices for Windows EC2 instances.

It’s not always easy to calculate total monthly costs for various configurations, so in this post I will try to give an indication of montly costs for configurations that would be relevant for SaaS applications with 1,000 – 50,000 customers.
Note: In the monthly prices below I have incorporated the upfront costs for 1- and 3-year contracts in the monthly prices (spread out over the full term).
All prices are calculated for the EU region (Ireland).

Windows web server. No additional storage.

Configuration	Resources	On-demand (hourly) p/m	1-year term p/m	3-year term p/m
M1 large instance	2 cores, 7.6 GB memory	€200	€131	€99
M1 extra large instance	4 cores, 15 GB memory	€400	€262	€198
M3 double extra large instance	8 “second-generation” cores, 30 GB memory	€859	€554	€419

Traffic out (to the internet) is an additional €92 per TB.

Load-balanced high-activity Windows web server.

Amazon Elastic Load Balancer
3 M3 double extra large EC2 instance on 3-year terms
5 TB of internet traffic per month
Total cost per month = €1763

Database server, EC2 instance with Windows server 2008/2012 and SQL Server Web Edition 2008/2012.

Prices below include 1TB of database storage on EBS (Elastic Block Storage, Amazon’s virtual drives). For instances without guaranteed I/O I have included 500 million I/O requests per months. Upfront costs have been spread over the months of the term.

Configuration	Resources	Guaranteed I/O	On-demand (hourly) p/m	1-year term p/m	3-year term p/m
High-memory extra-large instance	2 cores, 17 GB memory	(no guaranteed I/O)	€463	€292	€249
High-memory double extra-large instance	4 cores, 34 GB memory	500 Mbps	€798	€467	€384
High-memory quadruple extra-large instance	8 cores, 68 GB memory	1000 Mbps	€1491	€829	€666

Note that you would also need additional storage for database backups, which could add €100-500 per month, depending on backup methods and backup retention.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.