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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on May 18, 2022

We performed a comparison between Amazon AWS and OpenShift based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: While some Amazon AWS reviewers report the initial setup to be straightforward, others feel that the setup can be complex depending on the architecture of the solution. Most OpenShift users report the initial setup to be straightforward.
  • Features: Reviewers of both products are happy with their stability and scalability. Amazon AWS users say it is high-performing, easy to use, and is, overall, a mature solution. A few users mention that its interface is a bit complex. OpenShift reviewers like its flexibility but say it lacks integration options.
  • Pricing: Most Amazon AWS reviewers feel that the product is fairly priced. OpenShift reviewers feel that it is an expensive product.
  • ROI: Users of both solutions report seeing an ROI.
  • Service and Support: All Amazon AWS and most OpenShift reviewers are satisfied with the level of support they receive.

Comparison Results: Amazon AWS comes out on top in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that Amazon AWS is a high-performing and feature-rich solution with excellent customer support. OpenShift did come out on top in the Ease of Deployment category.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon AWS vs. OpenShift Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution offers a low footprint. We don't have to come up with a data center ourselves. We basically don't have to own any hardware. We just rent a slice of their platform and we have everything we need.""Elasticity has always been AWS's mandate. The flexibility of their platform from a systems perspective lives up to its claims.""I especially like the flexibility and scalability of the solution.""The whole solution is well designed and AWS has decent documentation, which is not to be taken for granted. I've also found that AWS is easy to use.""It's quite stable and scalable. The price is good as well.""They release new solutions almost every quarter and you don't get that kind of innovation from an enterprise company.""Machine learning is a valuable feature.""The cloud storage based on S3 is one the most valuable services we have deployed since it allows us infinite scale in storage and extremely high durability."

More Amazon AWS Pros →

"OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.""The most valuable aspect of this solution is the great customer service and the ability for our team to get assistance when we need it.""In terms of implementation, OpenShift is very user-friendly, which is an advantage. We are using it along with GitLab for implementing CI/CD pipelines. That's a feature that other products also have, but in OpenShift, we find it good.""OpenShift is based on Kubernetes and we try to use all the Kubernetes objects of OpenShift. We don't use features that are specific to OpenShift, except internal certificates for the services. The one feature that is missing from Kubernetes and that is really useful in OpenShift is the lifecycle of the cluster and the ease of installation. We use VMware and VMware integration internally with the OpenShift installer, which is very good. With OpenShift it's easy to spin up or scale out a cluster.""The stability has been good.""We want to build a solution that can be deployable to any cloud because of client requirements and OpenShift allows us to do this.""Scaling and uptime of the applications are positives.""I am impressed with the product's security features."

More OpenShift Pros →

Cons
"Its interface could be better because there are so many services right now in the product that it is quite difficult to navigate around in this. Its interface could be a subject of improvement.""Some services which were easy to use through shortcuts are now more complicated to use.""It has the technical support features, but they need to be improved. It has lots of users, but they need to be managed accordingly.""AWS support could be better.""There have been some issues in the past when it comes to file integrations in AWS's cloud products. However, there are now alternative solutions out there that are helping to integrate them all.""Recently we had a long conversation about functionality that is missing in Alexa — in Mexico, specifically. Alexa for Business is a service and platform that Americans can use to make a call to an Amazon Echo device or a telephone via the app. But in Mexico, we are not allowed to use that technology. This is a significant disadvantage of AWS for those living in Mexico.""The price could be better. Support for data analytics could be better. I don't see much support for data analytics. They have a lot of support in Azure, but I don't see a lot of innovation on the data analytics side in AWS.""Customer access to APIs is limited so that logs cannot be checked properly."

More Amazon AWS Cons →

"I want easier node management and more user-friendly scripts for installing master and worker nodes.""One of the features that I've observed in Tanzu Mission Control is that I can manage multiple Kubernetes environments. For instance, one of my lines of business is using OpenShift OKD; another one wants to use Google Anthos, and somebody else wants to use VMware Tanzu. If I have to manage all these, Tanzu Mission Control is giving me the opportunity to completely manage all of my Kubernetes clusters, whereas, with OpenShift, I can only manage a particular area. I can't manage other Kubernetes clusters. I would like to have the option to manage all Kubernetes clusters with OpenShift.""The interface could be simplified a bit more.""It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too.""OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network.""Latency and performance are two areas of concern in OpenShift where improvements are required.""One area for improvement is the documentation. They need to make it a little bit more user-friendly. Also, if you compare certain features and the installation process with Rancher, Rancher is simpler.""We need some kind of a multi-cluster management solution from the Red Hat site."

More OpenShift Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Be careful with your consumption, especially when you are testing things. Costs can creep up on you relatively fast, without even noticing."
  • "AWS is scalable depending on your needs so pricing is dependant on what you use."
  • "It is decently priced. The competition is also bringing its own cloud offerings, such as from Oracle."
  • "When we shifted the load to AWS we paid a high cost as the mail stores were hosted on EBS. The storage cost drastically reduced after moving to S3."
  • "If you can plan capacity for one or three years, you can use the upfront payment option which allows you to save up to 50%."
  • "One of the best thing in Amazon AWS is you are billed for the service you use."
  • "We are reducing costs year-over-year."
  • "Much faster than other solutions at a super low cost."
  • More Amazon AWS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
  • "We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO."
  • "Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
  • "Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."
  • "We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
  • "The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
  • "This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
  • "The model of pricing and buying licences is quite rigid. We are in the process of negotiating on demand pricing which will help us take advantage of the cloud as a whole."
  • More OpenShift Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    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 alluring IT customers. This article give brief history of these cloud hosting service providers and compares the cloud services provided by them. -- Amazon Web Services -- It's hard to find someone who doesn't agree that Amazon Web Services is the market leader in IaaS cloud computing. The company has one of the widest breadths of cloud services - including compute, storage, networking, databases, load balancers, applications and application development platforms all delivered as a cloud service. Amazon has dropped its prices 21 times since it debuted its cloud six years ago and fairly consistently fills whatever gaps it has in the size of virtual machine instances on its platform - the company recently rolled out new high-memory instances, for example. There are some cautions for Amazon though. Namely, its cloud has experienced three major outages in two years. One analyst, Jillian Mirandi of Technology Business Researcher, has suggested that continued outages could eventually start hindering businesses' willingness to invest in Amazon infrastructure. That sentiment gets to a larger point about AWS though - the service seems to be popular in the startup community, providing the IT… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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 is… more »
    Top Answer: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 be… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database… more »
    Top Answer:OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
    Top Answer:There are challenges related to additional security layers, connectivity compliance for endpoints, and integration. Additionally, it needs a little training to understand the process.
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 33 in PaaS Clouds
    Views
    31,029
    Comparisons
    26,409
    Reviews
    25
    Average Words per Review
    531
    Rating
    7.8
    4th
    out of 33 in PaaS Clouds
    Views
    16,712
    Comparisons
    13,265
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    679
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Amazon Web Services, AWS
    Learn More
    Overview

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an adopted cloud platform that offers more than 200 fully featured services from data centers located across the globe. This is a scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that is utilized by thousands of businesses of different sizes around the world. The product offers a wide variety of solutions for its customers, which allows them to launch applications regardless of their industry.

    The most common use cases for AWS are:

    • Application hosting: Clients can take advantage of on-demand infrastructure to power their applications. The product supports multiple types of apps, varying from hosted internal applications to software as a service (SaaS) offerings.

    • Websites: With AWS, clients can satisfy their web hosting needs through a scalable platform for their websites.

    • Backup and storage: AWS offers reliable data storage services, which allow clients to store their data and build dependable backups for all of their valuable information.

    • Enterprise IT: The product allows companies to host internal- or external-facing IT applications in a highly secure environment.

    • Content delivery: Users who want to distribute content to end users worldwide can do so quickly and easily through the high data transfer speeds of this solution.

    • Databases: AWS offers a variety of database solutions, which include hosted enterprise database software as well as non-relational database solutions.

    Amazon AWS supports a global cloud infrastructure with AWS Region and Availability Zone models, which contribute to the high availability of enterprise applications running on the solution. Amazon AWS has an extensive array of products that serve different purposes, including:

    • Analytics
    • Application integration
    • Blockchain
    • Business applications
    • Cloud financial management
    • Compute
    • Contact center
    • Containers
    • Database
    • Developer tools
    • End-user computing
    • Front-end web and mobile
    • Games
    • Internet of Things (IoT)
    • Machine learning
    • Management and governance
    • Quantum technologies
    • Robotics
    • Satellite
    • Security, identity and compliance, and others

    The products and services that Amazon AWS delivers to these sectors provide a large computing capacity which is quicker and cheaper compared to building a physical server farm. Among the most popular services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2," and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3."

    Amazon AWS Features

    The wide array of products that Amazon AWS offers consist of different functions that utilize cloud computing across different sectors. The features of this solution can be categorized in the following ways:

    • Data and relationship management: With Amazon AWS, companies can manage multiple hierarchies of directory data, they can define attributes for objects and relationships, set custom inheritance rules for directories, and create multiple schemas.

    • Schema management: This group of features allows users to extend their directory schema according to their needs. They can extend it through multiple applications that share a single directory while avoiding duplication of data.

    • Fully managed infrastructure: This feature decreases time and costs for administrative tasks for companies regarding scaling infrastructure and managing servers.

    • Searching feature: The Cloud Directory feature of AWS offers built-in search capabilities which can cover sets of highly connected data and eliminate the need of creating nested queries.

    • Built-in data encryption: Users can benefit from high levels of protection of their data with AWS's products. The data in the cloud is automatically encrypted at rest and in transit through 256-bit encryption keys, managed by AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

    • Object policies: This feature allows Amazon AWS users to organize objects in different hierarchies by providing a framework for applications to evaluate policy assignments.

    Amazon AWS Benefits

    This product delivers various benefits across all industries that utilize its services. The greatest advantages of using Amazon AWS include:

    • High product functionality is supported by machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), IoT, data lakes, and analytics.

    • The solution has a high level of security, which is backed by a deep set ofmore than 100 cloud security tools.

    • Amazon AWS has an easy-to-use interface that makes it possible for clients to host applications.

    • The product is very flexible in terms of which operating system, programming language, web app platform, and database clients can use.

    • AWS is a scalable and highly secure global computing infrastructure, supported by the reliability of Amazon.com.

    • Clients can utilize the Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing tools to personally scale up or down applications, depending on their demand.

    • Users can choose from an array of payment options, including paying for only the services they need, as well as a free trial to select the ones most useful for them.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Greg G., a chief executive officer at a tech services company, ranks Amazon AWS highly, as he states that the solution is flexible, scales well, and offers good stability.

    A technology manager technology at a computer software company values Amazon AWS because it is extremely cost-efficient, easy to upgrade and expand storage with greatly improved interfaces.

    OpenShift is Red Hat's Kubernetes platform that provides a cloud environment for development, hosting, and scaling applications. The solution enables a cloud-like experience regardless of the location where it has been deployed, including in the cloud, on premises, or at the edge. It allows developers to select where to build, deploy, and run applications through a consistent experience, supported by full-stack automated operations, and self-service provisioning.

    OpenShift employs an open hybrid cloud strategy which is built on the foundation of technologies including Linux, containers, and automation. This approach provides clients with a flexible selection of where to run their applications. Applications can be built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and are automatically compatible with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. OpenShift enables automation inside and outside clients' Kubernetes clusters.

    The solution works with traditional, modernized, and cloud-native applications. It supports a wide variety of workloads, including Java, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), and databases. Due to the vast ecosystem of technology partners that OpenShift supports, clients can benefit from automated deployment and life-cycle management. This product improves the security of the full application life cycle by decreasing operational risk. This is achieved by shifting security left and automating development, security, and operations (DevSecOps).

    OpenShift Features

    OpenShift facilitates clients’ application-running processes through various features. Some of the product’s features include:

    • Backup and recovery: This feature ensures logical and physical protection through containers, Kubernetes, and serverless present opportunities. It is used to meet recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO).

    • CI/CD pipelines: This feature of OpenShift automates the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, accelerating the time for application development.

    • GitOps: The GitOps feature increases security and reliability for applications through tools like Git repositories, Kubernetes, and CI/CD. The product includes this feature to allow developers more freedom in app development through tracing and accounting for the application life cycle in the Git repository.

    • Helm: Helm is a package and installs manager that simplifies the deployment of containerized apps. It is included in the features of OpenShift to assist users with interoperability and support cloud-native applications from independent software vendors (ISVs).

    • Sandboxed containers: OpenShift offers sandboxed containers based on Kata Containers to provide an additional layer of isolation for applications while meeting high-security requirements.

    • Windows containers: The product offers this feature to facilitate users when running their Windows applications by providing them a scheduled, orchestrated, and managed environment.

    • Security: OpenShift offers various operations through which clients can ensure the safety of their data and applications. They include container host and platform multitenancy, security and trusted content sources, security of the container registry, the build pipeline, and data, managing security container deployments, and more.

    • Service Mesh: This feature provides a uniform way for clients to connect, manage, and observe microservices-based applications. It also provides detailed behavioral insight.

    • Operators: This feature automates the development, configuration, and management of Kubernetes-native applications.

    • Virtualization: OpenShift allows users to run and manage virtual machine (VM) and container workloads side by side.

    OpenShift Benefits

    OpenShift provides the companies and users utilizing it with various benefits. These benefits include the following:

    • OpenShift provides scalability for applications, allowing them to run across hundreds of nodes in seconds.

    • The product offers flexibility by simplifying the deployment and management of hybrid infrastructure and providing self-managed or fully-managed service.

    • OpenShift incorporates open-source technologies alongside its native components and features.

    • The product enhances the developer experience by offering a variety of tools, multi language support, and integrated development environment (IDE) integrations.

    • The solution supports automated installation and over-the-air platform upgrades in the cloud with Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, as well as various on-premise platforms.

    • OpenShift includes streamlined and automated container and app builds, as well as health management and scaling.

    • The solution enhances the support of smaller-footprint topologies in edge scenarios.

    • OpenShift provides easy multiple cluster management through Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.

    • The product has enhanced security capabilities that include access controls, an enterprise registry with a built-in scanner, and networking.

    • The solution supports a wide spectrum of enterprise storage solutions for running stateful as well as stateless apps.

    Reviews from Real Users

    An executive head of department - M-PESA Tech at a comms service provider gives OpenShift a high rating because its automation can go a long way in reducing time to market and the time required to fix issues that arise from deployment.

    Vikram C., head of infrastructure & cloud ops at a comms service provider, rates highly three qualities of OpenShift, summarizing them to mature, seamless integration, and easy setup.

    Sample Customers
    Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
    UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company31%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Educational Organization6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm32%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Insurance Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise56%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise79%
    Buyer's Guide
    Amazon AWS vs. OpenShift
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Amazon AWS is ranked 2nd in PaaS Clouds with 250 reviews while OpenShift is ranked 4th in PaaS Clouds with 53 reviews. Amazon AWS is rated 8.4, while OpenShift is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon AWS writes "Reliable with good security but is difficult to set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OpenShift writes "Provides us with the flexibility and efficiency of cloud-native stacks while enabling us to meet regulatory constraints". Amazon AWS is most compared with Linode, Microsoft Azure, SAP Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Pivotal Cloud Foundry, whereas OpenShift is most compared with Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). See our Amazon AWS vs. OpenShift report.

    See our list of best PaaS Clouds vendors.

    We monitor all PaaS Clouds reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.