AWS Control Tower vs CloudStack comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Apache are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.6, while Apache is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.4% mindshare in CM, compared to Apache’s 4.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Apache users who would recommend it.

AWS Control Tower

Read 18 AWS Control Tower reviews

807 Views
807 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Read 32 CloudStack reviews

2,031 Views
1,848 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

AWS Control Tower

CloudStack

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and AWS Control Tower compete in the cloud management category. AWS Control Tower seems to have the upper hand due to its extensive capabilities and robust enterprise-level support, despite CloudStack's cost-effectiveness.

Features: CloudStack is appreciated for its flexibility, open-source nature, and strong multi-tenancy support. It offers customizable deployments and comprehensive hypervisor support, making it adaptable and versatile. AWS Control Tower is known for its centralized management, enhancing compliance and security with centralized authentication, guardrails, and automated recommendations. It provides a seamless setup process with integrated governance and structured REST API support.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack may improve in simplifying its open-source setup to reduce deployment complexity and enhance ease of use. User interface enhancements could further broaden its appeal. Better documentation and more intuitive user experience can elevate its profile. AWS Control Tower can benefit from more flexible pricing models to improve accessibility for smaller organizations. Its complexity in advanced configuration may require streamlining to enhance user satisfaction. Expanded integration options with third-party tools might improve user flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack’s open-source setup requires more expertise, with a focus on community support for troubleshooting. AWS Control Tower offers an out-of-the-box deployment experience and robust enterprise-level support channels, providing smoother operational experiences.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack's lower initial setup cost is attractive for maximizing early ROI, particularly for budget-conscious organizations. AWS Control Tower, with a potentially higher initial pricing, offers a strong ROI with its comprehensive service and long-term scalability, appealing to large-scale enterprises that prioritize integration and robust management.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Control Tower vs. CloudStack Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Control Tower vs. CloudStack

July 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 Control Tower

Ranking in Cloud Management

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.4%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 4.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Unified security management ensures comprehensive compliance for account safety

Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security. I can manage user security and user IAM, firewall, and other security-related tasks via Control Tower. The unified security management is a crucial aspect, and whenever an AWS organization is used, Control Tower is typically included to ensure comprehensive compliance fulfillment.

Read full review

Nelson Marcos

Engineer Manager at Globo.com

It's easier to provision VMs than other solutions and you can customize it to integrate with load balancers

My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security."

"The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on job descriptions in Active Directory. This establishes a direct correlation between the user's name, job definition, and the corresponding rules applied to each account."

"With Control Tower, there are ready-to-use automated templates available, simplifying the implementation of a centralized management solution."

"AWS Control Tower is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."

"The most significant benefit of Control Tower is its capability to align with our organization's standards."

"Security is the most valuable feature of Control Tower."

"It provides centralized solutions for all AWS accounts in one place, customized to meet the organization's specific needs."

"It offers automated recommendations for security and policies, creating a landing zone and providing a list of policies."

More AWS Control Tower pros

"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."

"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."

"CloudStack supports every operating system that supports hypervisors, which makes the product more attractive, compared to vCloud Director or Azure."

"It gives us the ability to manage and segregate a guest network with openvSwitch and VLAN IDs."

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."

More CloudStack pros

Cons

"The solution's stability could be improved."

"The process of closing an AWS account using Control Tower needs improvements to simplify it, especially when managing multiple accounts."

"The integration with other AWS functions has room for improvement."

"By making APIs and organizational units more centralized, it would be simpler to pinpoint the source of issues in case of a breach and would ultimately benefit everyone involved."

"There aren't any additional features that I feel are missing. However, it's worth noting that Control Tower seems to function as a layer utilizing standard AWS products in the background. Occasionally, the interface may appear less streamlined, with changes in layout based on the underlying products being used. While this doesn't impact functionality, having a more standardized user interface, irrespective of the background products, could enhance the user experience."

"AWS should provide more resources, examples, and tutorials."

"The initial setup is complex."

"There should be more automation security tools in the Control Tower."

More AWS Control Tower cons

"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."

"It would be great to have a couple of “external” networks for VPC and have the possibility, for each domain, to choose they type of “external” network."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."

"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."

"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."

More CloudStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."

"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."

"The solution is free."

"It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."

"It is cost-effective and the associated cost is quite minimal."

"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."

More AWS Control Tower pricing and cost advice

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"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."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

19%

Educational Organization

12%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Control Tower?

The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about CloudStack?

The initial implementation process was quite good.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product. Additionally, more themes and drag-and-drop interfaces could enhance the user experience. Improved document...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Trusted Advisor vs AWS Control Tower

Compared 33% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs AWS Control Tower

Compared 29% of the time

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control vs AWS Control Tower

Compared 26% of the time

Morpheus vs AWS Control Tower

Compared 11% of the time

More AWS Control Tower Competitors

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 73% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Control Tower

August 2025

Download AWS Control Tower product report

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

August 2025

Download CloudStack product report

Also Known As

No data available

Vmops, Cloud.com

Overview

AWS Control Tower offers the easiest way to set up and govern a new, secure, multi-account AWS environment. It establishes a landing zone that is based on best-practices blueprints, and enables governance using guardrails you can choose from a pre-packaged list.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Buyer's Guide

AWS Control Tower vs. CloudStack

July 2025

Free Report: AWS Control Tower vs. CloudStack

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