Amazon Lightsail vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Red Hat are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.0, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to Red Hat’s 11.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Amazon Lightsail

Read 13 Amazon Lightsail reviews

990 Views
990 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

10,785 Views
6,902 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Amazon Lightsail

Red Hat OpenShift

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Red Hat OpenShift and Amazon Lightsail compete in the cloud computing and application deployment category. Red Hat OpenShift appears to have the upper hand in terms of feature richness and scalability, making it more suitable for large-scale deployments compared to the cost-effective and user-friendly Amazon Lightsail.

Features: Red Hat OpenShift offers features like fast CI/CD, strong security, and robust pod solutions, beneficial for large-scale deployments. Its integration with Docker and Kubernetes simplifies deployments. Advanced security features and ImageStream are also advantages. Amazon Lightsail is focused on simplicity and cost-effectiveness, with pre-configured instances and ease of use appealing to less tech-savvy users. It supports applications like WordPress with minimal setup.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat OpenShift could improve its documentation and accessibility of the security model, and enhance autoscaling capabilities. More intuitive templates and better support for multi-cloud integrations are needed. Amazon Lightsail could enhance disk management, auto-scaling, and network features. Improvements in documentation and support will improve user onboarding and integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat OpenShift provides flexibility with on-premises, private, public, and hybrid cloud deployments, though it requires skilled personnel. Its technical support is varied, with some users finding it lacking. Amazon Lightsail is simpler and easier to deploy in public cloud settings, though it might not offer comprehensive technical support for complex projects.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat OpenShift has a higher price point justified by extensive features. It offers bundled pricing and support though some find it expensive compared to open-source Kubernetes solutions with ROI linked to operational efficiencies. Amazon Lightsail is praised for cost-effectiveness and predictable pricing, attracting startups and small businesses, with favorable ROI for straightforward applications but limited feature set compared to OpenShift for demanding environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Lightsail vs. Red Hat OpenShift Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail vs. Red Hat OpenShift

September 2025

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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 Lightsail

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

7th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat OpenShift

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (10th), Container Management (11th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon Lightsail is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 11.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift	11.6%
Amazon Lightsail	2.0%
Other	86.4%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

VictorAugusto De Souza E Silva

Cloud Engineer at Leek Solucoes

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.

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Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management

Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Implementations are completed with a few clicks, allowing efficient transitions to other development stages, and setup is easy whether for online support or basic business requirements."

"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."

"I find Lightsail particularly valuable for hosting WordPress as it is easier to set up than a bare metal server, which requires extensive configuration and package installations."

"The benefit of using Amazon Lightsail over the AWS console management is that it is a small platform that is easy to understand, as it has only the instance, DNS, Route 53, snapshots, backups, and load balancing network."

"In Lightsail, they simplified to do it in as few clicks as possible. So, around ten clicks, I have a virtual machine deployed."

"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 initial setup is pretty easy."

More Amazon Lightsail pros

"Red Hat OpenShift helped us with managing scaling up and scaling down."

"There is a quick deployment of the application, and we can scale out efficiently."

"Self-provisioning support saves a lot of time and unnecessary work from the system administrator who can use this time to run and monitor the infrastructure. For the developer, this means less time waiting for the provisioning and excellent flexibility for development, testing, and production. Also, in such systems it is easy for developers to monitor applications even after deployment."

"The company had a product called device financing, where the company worked as a partner with Google. It allowed customers to take mobile phones on loan or via credit. When we migrated those services to OpenShift in February last year, we were able to sell over 100,000 devices in a single day, which was very good."

"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."

"We want to build a solution that can be deployable to any cloud because of client requirements and OpenShift allows us to do this."

"It has features that enhance security, ease of deployment, and service exposure compared to Kubernetes."

"The developers seem to like the source-to-image feature. That makes it easy for them to deploy an application from code into containers, so they don't have to think about things. They take it straight from their code into a containerized application. If you don't have OpenShift, you have to build the container and then deploy the container to, say, EKS or something like that."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"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."

"The main area for improvement in Lightsail is the difficulty in scaling down resources."

"The solution could be smoother than it is."

"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."

"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."

"The product's network features need enhancement."

"Currently, there is limited support available while installing or configuring it, and resources are primarily available through community-contributed articles."

More Amazon Lightsail cons

"Some of the storage services and integrations with third-party tools should be made possible."

"The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."

"Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge."

"The solution needs to support the new features in Kubernetes more quickly."

"Its virtual upgrades are time-consuming."

"One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace. These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic."

"The whole area around the hybrid cloud could be improved. I would like to deploy a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on-premise and on the cloud, then have Red Hat do the entire hybrid cloud management."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon Lightsail is a bit cheaper than Amazon EC2."

"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."

"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 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."

"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."

"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."

"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."

"The cost is quite high."

"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."

"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

University

11%

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	40

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Lightsail?

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenShift?

OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 33% of the time

Google Cloud vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 28% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 10% of the time

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 8% of the time

Render vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 8% of the time

More Amazon Lightsail Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Proxmox VE vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail

October 2025

Download Amazon Lightsail product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

September 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Overview

Lightsail is ideal for simpler workloads, quick deployments, and getting started on AWS. It’s designed to help you start small, and then scale as you grow.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Red Hat OpenShift offers a robust, scalable platform with strong security and automation, suitable for container orchestration, application deployment, and microservices architecture.

Designed to modernize applications by transitioning from legacy systems to cloud-native environments, Red Hat OpenShift provides powerful CI/CD integration and Kubernetes compatibility. Its security features, multi-cloud support, and source-to-image functionality enhance deployment flexibility. While the GUI offers user-friendly navigation, users benefit from its cloud-agnostic nature and efficient lifecycle management. However, improvements are needed in documentation, configuration complexity, and integration with third-party platforms. Pricing and high resource demands can also be challenging for wider adoption.

What are the key features of Red Hat OpenShift?

Security: Comprehensive security features ensure safe deployments and operations.
Scalability: Auto-scaling and monitoring capabilities cater to high-demand environments.
CI/CD Integration: Seamless integration for efficient continuous deployment processes.
Cloud Compatibility: Supports multi-cloud and on-premise solutions with ease.
GUI: Simplifies platform management and enhances usability.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlined operations reduce time and resource investments.
Enhanced Flexibility: Adapt quickly to changing demands and environments.
Quick Deployment: Fast application deployment supports agile project timelines.
Robust Support: Access to dependable customer support services.

Red Hat OpenShift is strategically implemented for diverse industries focusing on container orchestration and application modernization. Organizations leverage it for migrating applications to cloud-native environments and managing CI/CD pipelines. Its functionality facilitates efficient resource management and microservices architecture adoption, supporting enterprise-level DevOps practices. Users employ it across cloud and on-premises platforms to drive performance improvements.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail vs. Red Hat OpenShift

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon Lightsail vs. Red Hat OpenShift

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