Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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)
8th
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
256
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 11.9%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon AWS is 16.0%, down from 20.2% 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 AWS16.0%
Alibaba Cloud11.9%
Other72.1%
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.
HarishMahanta - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable cloud service enhances ERP management with advanced security features
I use Amazon AWS for ERP implementation. My responsibility is to integrate our application into the AWS cloud and provide AI solutions to the infrastructure AWS is stable and has provided a reliable infrastructure for my organization. AWS offers add-on services such as security and automated…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"
"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"The installation is easy."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"We use the solution to run VMs."
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"The best features are flexibility and cost."
"It is easy to spin up resources."
"The most valuable feature is the backup ability. Most people are used to one type of backup solution that they're using, but most of these solutions have features that make it difficult to transfer to the cloud. I know that Veeam now gives people the opportunity to backup some on-premises solutions to the cloud. This feature is something that a lot of people are looking for."
"It scales well and is flexible."
"User friendly solution."
"The most useful feature of Amazon AWS is it can be accessed from anywhere."
"Their technical support is really good. I am very satisfied."
"The experience with Amazon AWS is error-free. That was also, of course, something that I really appreciate. That means it's really well-tested and, as published or as declared."
 

Cons

"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
"It is not robust."
"In terms of additional features we'd like to see, the one thing that comes to mind is better integration with Oracle. We have a lot of Oracle databases, and there is no other option to either migrate to PaaS, stay on-prem, or use Oracle Private Cloud."
"IAM only gives you one chance to capture your key."
"Its subscription model or pricing model is too complex, which should be improved."
"One problem is that the AWS public cloud doesn't have shared storage capabilities. The second thing is the cloud performance versus on-prem."
"The networking models used in AWS, while functional, do have room for improvement. This is especially the fact, considering that they are built/presented from a systems perspective."
"The response time of technical support could be better."
"There's a huge cost for support."
"AWS could be more scalable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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"
"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 don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The product is not that expensive."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"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."
"The solution's pricing depends on your traffic since they charge you based on the traffic, not the servers. The price can go into many, many thousands depending on the traffic."
"The price of the Virtual Desktop service from Amazon AWS could improve, it is more expensive than competitors. The pricing model we are using is pay-as-you-go. You only pay for what you use."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six to seven out of ten."
"It's a pay-per-use model."
"The cost is on a monthly basis."
"The pricing may vary and is often influenced by marketing strategies."
"It is comparable if you add in the price structure to an on-prem solution."
"Amazon AWS has pay-as-you-go options available."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
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 Enterprise47
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?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
 

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.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.