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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
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
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 May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudStack2.3%
AWS Control Tower1.5%
Other96.2%
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

"With Control Tower, there are ready-to-use automated templates available, simplifying the implementation of a centralized management solution."
"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."
"AWS Control Tower helps companies save costs."
"Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security."
"I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10."
"It offers automated recommendations for security and policies, creating a landing zone and providing a list of policies."
"It is incredibly user-friendly and functions seamlessly."
"Compliance is the most valuable feature."
"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."
"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."
"We increased our IaaS sales by 30% and our deploy time of VM/instances has been reduced from one day to one minute."
"CloudStack has greatly helped integrate our existing infrastructure because we manage a massive cloud platform with thousands of VMs and around 1,200 to 1,500 hypervisors."
"Killer features for me were: support for many hypervisors, ability to match business logic, "everything in one box," available APIs."
"This is one of the major products that help to handle all of the NFV Infrastructure management services (IaaS), and it has helped us to quickly gain understanding and feel more powerful with respect to virtualization."
"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."
"You can use a single API to get things done, rather than multiple APIs on multiple modules."
 

Cons

"There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options."
"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."
"The sole drawback is its restriction to enable only one Control Tower."
"There should be more automation security tools in the Control Tower."
"The tool's setup is very technical. Its pricing can be cheaper."
"It could be improved by having a more intuitive graphical interface. It could also include other coding languages like PowerShell and Python, as it would be beneficial for DevOps recommendations."
"The solution's stability could be improved."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."
"​The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."
"I think CloudStack needs to promote itself better, since I believe it a better solution than OpenStack."
"The upgrade process can be improved further."
"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs."
"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."
"There are some minor things that can be improved even more such as, perhaps, a bit more polishing on the GUI side to catch up with the API possibilities (which are really extensive) but otherwise nothing critical."
"We recognize that CloudStack is an easy-to-use cloud management platform and, in my opinion, there has been a large number of improvements in the past few years, particular when it comes to the modern UI and overall ease of management. However, I believe that CloudStack needs to grow their marketing in the commercial side. They don't have a great piece of market share right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."
"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."
"The cost is reasonable, but there are opportunities for improvement in terms of pricing for larger enterprises."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"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."
"The pay-as-you-go model ensures you're only charged for what you use, which offers great flexibility for different types of companies."
"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."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"​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."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
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: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.