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Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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)
IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (8th)
 

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 IBM Public Cloud is 3.1%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS13.0%
IBM Public Cloud3.1%
Other83.9%
PaaS Clouds
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Oct 16, 2021
 

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…
Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The environment is a rich playground, and if you tried to do the same things on-premises that you do on AWS, it would be a lot more challenging to execute. You can open up a virtual machine on AWS, run some experiments, and be done with it. It's much easier than buying new servers, provisioning them, etc"
"I like the storage, all the codes like Lambda and Amazon EMR."
"Amazon AWS is good in terms of deployment and user experience. Their certificate management and load balancer are also good features."
"Our primary use case is to use the solution for running many relatively small instances for back office applications and various other business important applications."
"Amazon AWS has improved a lot on security and is very good. Additionally, You can integrate your own security into their AWS platform."
"There is no downtime. The solution is reliable."
"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."
"The beauty of cloud service providers, especially public cloud service providers, is that they are scalable every time when you need them because their payment model is pay-as-you-go."
"The price of IBM Cloud is most valuable for us. The service is personable and gives us a good rapport. I can't say it's the best, but it was enough for our needs."
"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."
"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."
"It is easy to deploy what you need for the initial setup"
"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."
 

Cons

"Price is an area with a shortcoming in the solution that has a scope for improvement"
"The networking is overly complex."
"The interface needs a bit of work. It's not intuitive."
"The invoicing procedure of Amazon AWS needs to be improved. It can be difficult to manage."
"I'm not an expert on the product, but if I had to suggest one improvement, I know a feature that would allow a person to backup his on-premise solution to the cloud directly with one click would be useful. This solution should be agnostic because sometimes a product that was backed up with Veeam is highly compatible with Commvault. I think it would be better if these backup features were agnostic. Viewing a build could also be improved. It's not easy to follow up on your consumption and see how much you're paying and how much you will be paying. Viewing the build could be more clear."
"The price could be better."
"We would like the system documentation for configuring this solution to be improved, in order to provide better process clarity."
"As a result of the competency, I believe that most people are now leaning toward Azure rather than AWS."
"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."
"The initial setup and the pricing are areas that need improvement."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"It could be more secure."
"Support could be improved."
"Recently, we just faced some issues with the operating system due to the end of life of CentOS 6...So, then the client wanted to try it out under AWS instead of IBM. In short, it has some complexities."
"Maybe performance enhancers and reports could be better improved. If they do so, it would be better. Of all the drawbacks I saw, this would be the biggest enhancement."
"The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Reasonably priced and comparable to similar services."
"This solution offers good pricing."
"I find Amazon AWS very expensive compare to Microsoft Azure."
"It's not very pricey, but it could be cheaper."
"If I was going to compare the cost of Amazon AWS to Microsoft Azure, they are approximately the same."
"It can get quite pricey at times."
"This is not an expensive product but it would be an improvement if the price were cheaper."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Oct 16, 2021
Oct 16, 2021
I agree with Vik and Marcelo. AWS cloud is more matured, but you would like to run some specific IBM business tools like document management, IBM Watson for AI, SPSS analytics then IBM Cloud should be preferred.
2 out of 3 answers
VD
Oct 12, 2021
Amazon AWS is superior to IBM public for several reasons.  The most important reason is the diversity of software tools, the geographic diversity and availability, lower operating costs and excellent customer service. All cloud companies are simply playing catch-up to AWS. 
MJ
Oct 14, 2021
AWS, the main reason is the number of DC distributed arround the world
 

Top Industries

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

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 Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud?
The front end is not pervasive, so it is very difficult get the status of your current services or account from a mobile device.
What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?
The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
IBM Bluemix
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. IBM Public Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.