AWS Amplify vs Chef comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Progress Software are both solutions in the Release Automation category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.0, while Progress Software is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.4% mindshare in RA, compared to Progress Software’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

AWS Amplify

Read 7 AWS Amplify reviews

1,444 Views
727 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Chef

Read 19 Chef reviews

371 Views
231 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

AWS Amplify

Chef

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Chef and AWS Amplify are tools in the application management and deployment category. AWS Amplify appears to have the upper hand due to its ease of use and seamless integration with AWS services.

Features: Chef offers automation capabilities, infrastructure as code, and integration with multiple cloud platforms. AWS Amplify provides swift deployment, comprehensive libraries for frontend frameworks, and backend support, including AI integration.

Room for Improvement: Chef could improve ease of use and reduce complexity in setup and operation. Better GUI interfaces and more comprehensive beginner guides would help. AWS Amplify could enhance its local development experience and expand offline capabilities. Providing more detailed customization options and extending support for more non-AWS environments would be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef requires a steeper learning curve due to its complex setup but offers comprehensive control. AWS Amplify facilitates a user-friendly deployment model with the advantage of AWS's extensive support network and documentation.

Pricing and ROI: Chef may involve higher upfront costs due to its customization needs, offering significant ROI through scalable automation. AWS Amplify uses a pay-as-you-go model, aligning costs with usage and providing faster ROI through reduced time to market.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Amplify vs. Chef Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Amplify vs. Chef

April 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

AWS Amplify

Ranking in Release Automation

5th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Chef

Ranking in Release Automation

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (20th), Configuration Management (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Release Automation category, the mindshare of AWS Amplify is 2.4%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Release Automation

Featured Reviews

Shrihari Haridas

DevOps Engineer at Burns & McDonnell

Amplify CLI acts as a single source of truth

The Amplify CLI acts as a single source of truth. You install the SDK from there, and using the Amplify API, you can talk to and manage AWS services directly from your code. You don't need to go to the GUI and click through menus - everything is manageable through the Amplify API at the code level. AWS Amplify integrates seamlessly with other services through AWS CloudFormation. Amplify first connects to the cloud for me. Whenever we write down the SDK, it's managed by CloudFormation. CloudFormation still happens on our cloud for your application because everything is updated with the help of cloud automation. Anything we need to change, we just add it to Amplify, and Amplify triggers the CloudFormation templates. Then it logs permission, updates the whole thing, or whatever you need it to ask.

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Aaron P

DevOps Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation

In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.

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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

"The most valuable feature is user management, which includes authentication and authorization."

"Typically, whenever we make changes and need to switch environments (e.g., dev to production), it's easy for our developers to maintain the state of each environment and make customizations as needed. They don't necessarily need to involve the cloud team for basic management."

"The link with Figma is very nice. You can create your design in Figma, and then you can import it into AWS Amplify and use it. You can link it to your data source and data bindings."

"The only tricky part I experienced was during the initial installation. I followed the documentation, but it wasn't working for some reason. I had to modify some local files in the CLI-generated folder to get it to work. I had to dig deep to find the issue, and it wasn't mentioned in the docs. So, some issues could be better highlighted in the AWS CLI documentation, which would help developers integrate other services more easily. AWS needs to improve its support."

"One of the things I like best about AWS Amplify is its ease of use and strong integration with other AWS services, which enhances efficiency."

"I didn't host my application but have used their backend as a service. It was a complete package with authentication, AWS AppSync, DynamoDB, and GraphQL. AWS Amplify is great if you don't know backend development and don't want to struggle with other backend services like MongoDB. You don't have to worry about what backend language or database to use. If you're confused, enroll with AWS Amplify. I also recommend Google Firebase for similar purposes."

"The most valuable feature of AWS Amplify is authentication."

"The most important thing is it can handle a 100,000 servers at the same time easily with no time constraints."

"The most valuable feature is its easy configuration management, optimization abilities, complete infrastructure and application automation, and its superiority over other similar tools."

"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."

"The most valuable feature is automation."

"Deployment has become quick and orchestration is now easy."

"Chef recipes are easy to write and move across different servers and environments."

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."

"The scalability of the product is quite nice."

More Chef pros

Cons

"I don't think there are major issues, but there is room for improvement in the UI/UX of AWS Amplify. The UI still needs to be more polished and user-friendly. It's currently a bit like drag-and-drop initially, but there should be more options to customize the UI based on our needs."

"Its capability to handle big projects needs to be improved. If you generate a user interface in Figma and import everything where all components are in one directory, currently, it is complicated. It isn't able to cope with that. For small projects, it is not an issue, but if you have big projects and you want to use AWS Amplify, then it gets more difficult. That is the most important point for me. It should be improved to cope better with bigger projects."

"AWS Amplify could improve in the deployment. It would be beneficial to have more methods, such as automation."

"AWS Amplify can be improved in some areas, particularly in providing more robust documentation and easier customization options."

"The documentation needs improvement, as it is not user-friendly and can be challenging for novices."

"I like AWS Amplify's documentation. It's comprehensive and includes many examples, so you don't need to ask for help much - you can refer to the docs. It's easy to use. I also appreciate the cost structure. You only pay for what you use. For example, if you use 100 GB, you're charged for that, but if you don't use it, you pay the maintenance cost."

"AWS can implement multiple web applications, and cross-platform applications, like iOS."

"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."

"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."

"Support and pricing for Chef could be improved."

"The AWS monitoring, AWS X-Ray, and some other features could be improved."

"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."

"If they can improve their software to support Docker containers, it would be for the best."

"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."

More Chef cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on what your use case is and whether you're an existing AWS customer. It's a pay-as-you-go model, so not expensive."

"When you're just starting, it is free. You have to pay only when you reach a certain amount of usage. I'm still at the early stage. So, I don't have to pay a lot. At the moment, it is not too expensive for me. It is worth the money."

"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

17%

University

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How to estimate whether using the AWS services is worthwhile for saving time and money for manufacturing at a retailer company?

Estimating the cost-effectiveness of using AWS services for manufacturing at a retailer company involves a comprehensive analysis. To make an informed decision, you should consider factors like the...

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Amplify?

Typically, whenever we make changes and need to switch environments (e.g., dev to production), it's easy for our developers to maintain the state of each environment and make customizations as need...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Amplify?

I find the pricing of AWS Amplify reasonable, considering the value it provides, although opinions may vary based on usage.

See all answers

What do you like most about Chef?

Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chef?

Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container or docker images.

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS CodeDeploy vs AWS Amplify

Compared 57% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs AWS Amplify

Compared 34% of the time

AWS CodeStar vs AWS Amplify

Compared 9% of the time

More AWS Amplify Competitors

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 33% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Chef

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Chef

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Chef

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 9% of the time

More Chef Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Amplify

April 2025

Download AWS Amplify product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

April 2025

Download Chef product report

Overview

AWS Amplify is a set of purpose-built tools and features that lets frontend web and mobile developers quickly and easily build full-stack applications on AWS, with the flexibility to leverage the breadth of AWS services as your use cases evolve. With Amplify, you can configure a web or mobile app backend, connect your app in minutes, visually build a web frontend UI, and easily manage app content outside the AWS console. Ship faster and scale effortlessly—with no cloud expertise needed.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

Buyer's Guide

AWS Amplify vs. Chef

April 2025

Free Report: AWS Amplify vs. Chef

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