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Alibaba Cloud vs Amazon AWS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
7th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon AWS
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
257
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 12.0%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon AWS is 16.6%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS16.6%
Alibaba Cloud12.0%
Other71.4%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"It is easy to set up."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"Easy to deploy through the channel model for serverless architecture and easy to integrate through the organization model."
"It's very stable and the performance is good."
"It is quite easy to provision new virtual services for our use. The procedures are quite straightforward and simple as compared to other competitors, such as Microsoft or Huawei. This is what we are happy about with Amazon AWS. It is pretty mature in terms of the availability of most of the infrastructure components. If you want to deploy a server on your platform, everything is already there in terms of the operating system, network components, securities, and data encryption. It is also quite scalable and stable."
"I like the flexibility of this solution."
"The installation is quite straightforward."
"The solution scales very nicely."
"There's something called EC2, which are application servers. They are automatically scalable. They can increase, for example, during peak times."
"It is enough for us in terms of features. We don't have too many transactions, and it is sufficient for our current needs."
 

Cons

"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"The user experience must be improved."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"It is not robust."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"Price is an area with a shortcoming in the solution that has a scope for improvement"
"You'll probably experience some sticker shock with AWS. You attempt to understand the cost, but you don't realize what you're paying until you get your first bill. I don't know if Amazon does that on purpose, but costs can get out of control quickly if you don't have someone who specializes in AWS cost management."
"It's a good cloud, however, if I compare it with Azure, Azure is more of a feature-rich cloud."
"The solution could improve by being more secure."
"Its only cons are on the data warehouse side. AWS' data warehouse Redshift is not as good as it should be."
"If you have not had previous training or studied guides it will be a little difficult to use the solution. However, the difficulty also depends on what you are using the solution for. They can improve by providing more documentation, such as tutorials and videos."
"They currently have fewer regions in Asia, especially in India, China, and other places. They can maybe put more data centers in this region."
"It should be more secure and have more integrations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The product is not that expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"When it comes to professional certification in AWS, I implore others to study hard before your exams because $300 is a painful waste of money if you fail."
"Pricing is good. It's average."
"We are not happy with the general price and find most of Amazon's products to be quite expensive."
"Amazon AWS is really cost-effective."
"The price, in general, could be better."
"The price tends to be higher, but that is a usual case when prioritizing reliable backup solutions for servers and other infrastructure."
"From a cost perspective, Amazon AWS is excellent. You need to pay for a license to use AWS, and the license could be cheaper, but in each of the cases and instances I've used AWS, there has been a good chance to save money."
"As a startup business, it's very well priced, but if a number of transactions go up, clients have voiced that they are in a situation and feel a type of pressure and desire to move out of AWS."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise112
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
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Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Web Services, AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Amazon AWS and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.