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Amazon EC2 vs Zadara comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 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 EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zadara
Ranking in Compute Service
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (33rd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (18th), Public Cloud Storage Services (15th), File and Object Storage (20th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 5.4%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

KatlegoMabila - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers customization and flexibility with great support
Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.
Kirubel Behailu - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage.  I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform has been quite stable and reliable."
"We find it easy to scale."
"The tool's performance, reliability, security and flexibility are good. We can use it remotely. The autoscaling functionality of EC2 is quite good. I appreciate the DevOps suite for tracking development tasks. This functionality is important for pure software development."
"I like the AMI-related features. A very good feature of this solution is the customizable AMI. It is a very good feature provided by Amazon. The encryption technologies are also very good. We are using KMS, etc."
"My company uses the tool for cloud monitoring. We have a production, staging, deployment, and testing environment in AWS. However, we do not use the managed service of AWS yet. My team uses the required parameters for security like VPC, firewall, gates of security as well as the external layer of the app."
"The scalability of Amazon EC2 is good. However, the stability can depend on what service I am using."
"Amazon EC2 has plenty of scalability options to decrease or increase the number we need. Based on our bandwidth usage we may go for a higher or downgrade level. We can do it ourselves."
"The product is easy and quick to set up."
"Zadara Storage Cloud having 24/7 management saves me support and engineering costs because the storage and computing are managed by a third-party. We are able to focus more attention on the customer, which is truly our core business. Even at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM at night, someone will answer, which is important."
"The most valuable features of Zadara are its visibility and simplicity to use."
"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."
"Zadara saves both time and money."
"It's very easy to expand and compared to other storage systems that we've used, it's a lot more expandable and a lot more flexible in how it's deployed."
"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
"I find Zadara's user-friendliness from both the customer and engineering perspectives highly appreciated."
"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."
 

Cons

"Amazon EC2 could improve its dashboards and UI, they need to be more user-friendly."
"The initial setup could be easier because many keys are required for access."
"They have to provide clarity on pricing. It's not transparent."
"I would like to see as much automation for data validation as possible in the future."
"am concerned about the tool's data security."
"The product could benefit from offering more mixed instance types that combine features from different series to suit diverse workload requirements better."
"The customization could be simplified."
"The tool’s stability could be better."
"In the next release, there can be some improvements to the web console by adding more features because the console is simple. Additionally, the calculator could improve."
"The initial setup of the solution is complex."
"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating the CLI and searching for logs."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"Having iSCSI over the internet using a VPN, the IPSec tunnel is really the only thing that I find missing from this product."
"The range of support of VMware could be better. It can support Windows, however, it cannot support other operating systems like IBM AIX. This needs to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The clients have found the billing of Amazon EC2 good, but the price could be less high. There is a monthly subscription to use the solution."
"We are using a pay-as-you-go model."
"You pay as you use it."
"EC2 pricing is somewhat transparent, in that AWS provides pricing for all instance types. However, the number of pricing options can be confusing."
"There is a license required to use this solution and we pay on a monthly basis."
"The licensing of Amazon EC2 is expensive. Microsoft Windows Servers are expensive to license."
"For our usage, the cost is approximately $20,000 to $23,000 per month."
"Reducing the price of the solution could lead to an improvement."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
The main thing that needs improvement is the cost. Other than that, there is nothing that needs improvement.
What needs improvement with Zadara?
The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating ...
What is your primary use case for Zadara?
I use this product as storage. Specifically, I use it as big storage. That's the main use case for Zadara ( /products/zadara-reviews ).
What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?
As for the pros and cons, the main concerns are the complexity of the initial installation and the complicated maintenance due to the CLI usage. Overall, I do not have other complaints. My overall ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EC2 vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.