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Amazon AWS vs Amazon Lightsail comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 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 AWS
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
256
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (2nd)
Amazon Lightsail
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.0%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Lightsail is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS13.0%
Amazon Lightsail2.0%
Other85.0%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

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…
VictorAugusto De Souza E Silva - PeerSpot reviewer
Has simplified website migration and reduced hosting costs significantly
Amazon Lightsail should have some kind of scale service. To be more clear, if I need to scale up my instance or VPS, I need to create a snapshot and create a new instance from this snapshot with more resources, such as CPU, RAM, or disk. It would be beneficial to have a welcome instance where we can just set the instance, go there to edit and select a greater instance from large to x-large or 2x-large. I do not see the need to scale down, but it would be good too. When we are on an x-large for testing purposes and need to do a rollback to a large one, we need to scale down. We do not have this capability on Amazon Lightsail.

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 features of Amazon AWS are the high level of capabilities, cloud-native environment, developer-friendly, intuitive interface, and automation. The solution overall is easy to learn from the resources available."
"Amazon AWS contains a lot of helpful services."
"Elasticity has always been AWS's mandate. The flexibility of their platform from a systems perspective lives up to its claims."
"Cloud Trail API log storage."
"I like the storage, all the codes like Lambda and Amazon EMR."
"The solution can scale well."
"The stability is magnificent, it's spectacular."
"IaaS with easy management and rapid implementation using Python Django Mezzanine."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The intuitive management console of Amazon Lightsail is very good because it is simple; with just a few clicks, I can set a blog online, a WordPress blog online, a new e-commerce online, or just a new application with NodeJS."
"We use Amazon Lightsail for hosting security components in-house and AI modules."
"EC2 instances are pre-configured and upgraded, so you can simply select and instantly pay for an EC2 instance to set up WordPress, Node.js, or a server container using Docker."
"One of the product's most valuable features is its fixed pricing, which makes it ideal for small projects and websites that do not require scaling."
"The intuitive management console of Amazon Lightsail is very good because it is simple; with just a few clicks, I can set a blog online, a WordPress blog online, a new e-commerce online, or just a new application with NodeJS."
"Amazon Lightsail is easy to use and very cost-effective compared to other services such as Azure and Google."
"The most valuable features are the usability and customer service."
 

Cons

"There are numerous use cases, and the setup varies from complicated to very simple in some cases."
"They should have a better big data stack."
"I generally don't like the user experience of Amazon. It's not the best."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of hybrid Kubernetes management."
"I'd like the solution to be more plug-and-play."
"It could be made cheaper. I know we spend a lot of money each month on AWS."
"It would be ideal if they could provide automatic health reports. That way, I would be able to understand at a glance the state of my services at any given time."
"The customization could improve. However, it depends on the customization needed."
"When you need to add some custom rules to Amazon Lightsail, the auto scaling feature is a bit difficult."
"Amazon Lightsail should have some kind of scale service. To be more clear, if I need to scale up my instance or VPS, I need to create a snapshot and create a new instance from this snapshot with more resources, such as CPU, RAM, or disk."
"The disadvantage I see is data storage; if any data crash occurs in the cloud server, that will lead to significant losses for the customer."
"To improve, I feel the disk management is too basic. I can't easily partition the disk for the operating system. I have to follow the main configuration that is already set up in the template. To partition the disk, I would need to deploy the operating system first and then make changes, but it's not an ideal method. I would recommend improving the disk management."
"Amazon Lightsail needs more security in the networking because hackers can attack in application layers three and four."
"I don't see this solution as enterprise-ready, for bigger companies like banks."
"Currently, there is limited support available while installing or configuring it, and resources are primarily available through community-contributed articles."
"Backward compatibility and the flexibility to choose software versions while installing would be improvements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing may vary and is often influenced by marketing strategies."
"The pricing is reasonable. It's not expensive, nor will it be cheap, but the free credits initially given provide leverage for new companies to start their businesses."
"The price for AWS is good."
"It can get quite pricey at times."
"Amazon AWS could have more options and transparency in its pricing model. You need in-depth knowledge to adopt AWS. So someone without that knowledge base might not understand all of the costs associated with AWS."
"It's a pay-per-use model."
"Pricing is good. It's average."
"The pricing is fair."
"The prices are better than EC2 machines, for instance, because they are simplified management, but it works well, and I am able to run everything that I need on it."
"Lightsail is available at an affordable cost starting from five dollars per month."
"It's very cheap."
"The services that it provides are good for the price."
"A few months ago, Lightsail's pricing increased, likely due to the addition of the new VPC feature."
"The affordability of starting at five dollars makes it an attractive option for startups and medium-sized companies, aligning with budget considerations while offering essential cloud services."
"Amazon Lightsail is a bit cheaper than Amazon EC2."
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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
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
University
11%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise47
Large Enterprise112
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about Amazon Lightsail?
In Lightsail, they simplified to do it in as few clicks as possible. So, around ten clicks, I have a virtual machine deployed.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Lightsail?
Lightsail is available at an affordable cost starting from five dollars per month. This cost may increase with additional features like a static IP.
What needs improvement with Amazon Lightsail?
Amazon Lightsail needs more security in the networking because hackers can attack in application layers three and four. The networking layer is basically the hacker's target to break the network, s...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. Amazon Lightsail and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.