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AWS Control Tower vs CloudStack comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Control Tower
Ranking in Cloud Management
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.2%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudStack2.2%
AWS Control Tower1.4%
Other96.4%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sharkrit Impat - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Platform Engineering at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Streamlines governance and security management but requires effort in managing hidden costs
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one single account, but in AWS, you have to separate many accounts. You end up with maybe 20 or 30 accounts if you try to separate. It has limitations; you pay a fixed amount for 15 accounts, but if you exceed that, you have to pay more. It could be useful for implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) for multiple organizations, but for one organization, I would advise against it; it is too much overhead and adds hidden costs. There are limitations on the Landing Zone feature as well. If we implement AWS Control Tower, we need to implement Landing Zone and the security policy, guardrails, and Account Factory; it is not one single product. Using another cloud's enterprise project, you can just create the project and manage it already. It requires some learning curve to get hands-on. For pricing and licensing of AWS Control Tower, it has hidden costs. The Control Tower itself does not cost much, but the child accounts created from AWS Control Tower add costs for checking all configurations, logging, and metrics.
Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys
Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls
I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The advantages of AWS Control Tower that stand out for me include centralized management and easy governance control."
"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."
"With Control Tower, there are ready-to-use automated templates available, simplifying the implementation of a centralized management solution."
"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."
"AWS Control Tower provides tremendous value by simplifying multi-account governance and reducing operational complexity."
"Compliance is the most valuable feature."
"AWS Control Tower is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."
"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."
"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."
"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."
"We like the virtualization capabilities."
"We increased our IaaS sales by 30% and our deploy time of VM/instances has been reduced from one day to one minute."
"The initial implementation process was quite good."
"CloudStack provides an easy way to have high availability (HA) of the virtual machines and helps with a better SLA."
"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."
"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."
 

Cons

"There should be more automation security tools in the Control Tower."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"The reason I do not give it a 10 is that larger enterprises sometimes require more flexibility and customization than the service currently provides."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"While using the solution recently, it broke a certain activity. So, AWS Control Tower needs to consider making the solution better."
"It is essential to clarify that this isn't necessarily a drawback of the service, but having a clear and concise set of predefined guidelines from AWS for moving existing accounts under AWS Control Tower would be highly beneficial as it would simplify the process and make it more user-friendly."
"AWS should provide more resources, examples, and tutorials."
"The solution's stability could be improved."
"The product has evolved a lot since the first versions in which it was very complicated to do version updates, and had various problems."
"​The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."
"The web UI can be improved. It is too complex, and not trivial for the average user."
"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."
"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."
"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."
"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."
"The area of improvement could be the regionalization aspect. For example, managing multiple regions or HubStack deployments together was not thought out thoroughly in the versions I used. We faced issues around managing the global infrastructure and had to develop around it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pay-as-you-go model ensures you're only charged for what you use, which offers great flexibility for different types of companies."
"I believe it's free of charge or comes at a very low cost. It's an additional feature. Even if there is a fee, it's minimal. AWS seems to assist customers in gaining a comprehensive view of their security setups within AWS. Using Control Tower is highly recommended, especially as your company grows and involves Active Directory, various departments, and different architectural aspects. It becomes more advisable to leverage Control Tower rather than managing these aspects manually, especially for larger organizations."
"The cost is reasonable, but there are opportunities for improvement in terms of pricing for larger enterprises."
"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."
"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."
"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The solution is open-source and free."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?
Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.
What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one si...
What is your primary use case for AWS Control Tower?
I use AWS Control Tower to enhance governance, enhance security, and manage multiple subsidiaries. We sunset the AWS Control Tower that I implemented, but it was a new project that we implemented. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...
What is your primary use case for CloudStack?
My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vmops, Cloud.com
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. CloudStack and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.