AWS Control Tower vs Densify comparison

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AWS Control Tower

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Densify and AWS Control Tower compete in cloud management solutions. AWS Control Tower appears to have the upper hand for its enhanced security and streamlined multi-account management, while Densify shines in resource optimization and cost efficiency.

Features: Densify provides advanced analytics, real-time optimization, and automatic resource adjustment. AWS Control Tower delivers centralized control with comprehensive governance, offers integration with other AWS services, and focuses on security and compliance.

Room for Improvement: Densify could enhance its user interface for more intuitive navigation, improve its prediction capabilities for better forecasting, and expand integration options with other non-cloud systems. AWS Control Tower may benefit from offering more flexible customization options, enhancing user training resources, and improving integration with third-party management tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Densify is noted for seamless integration with existing cloud setups and personalized customer support which facilitates deployment. AWS Control Tower provides pre-configured guardrails and automation features for straightforward deployment across AWS accounts, with an edge in deployment automation.

Pricing and ROI: Densify is commendable for cost savings through resource optimization, enhancing ROI by reducing unnecessary cloud expenses. AWS Control Tower, despite potentially higher initial setup costs, is valued for comprehensive control features and security benefits, offering strategic long-term value and reducing operational overhead and risk.

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

AWS Control Tower vs. Densify

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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

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Densify

Ranking in Cloud Management

35th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Migration (16th), Virtualization Management Tools (11th), Cloud Analytics (4th), Cloud Cost Management (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.4%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Densify is 1.0%, down from 1.1% 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.

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Amit Kantia

Infrastructure capacity & demand manager at Kyndryl

Its most valuable feature is the ability to capture attributes in the console, but it is not a stable solution

I recommend others to use Densify. They can not only use it for reporting but for automation as well. They can implement the policies on the console easily during the build-out procedure. Stability is the primary concern to us as it is causing lots of problems. We can only make significant decisions if Densify allows us, and it takes lots of time. Thus, I rate the tool as a six out of ten.

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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

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

"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."

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

"There are two features in Control Tower which are the most valuable. One is the guardrails because it has preventive and detective guardrails."

"AWS Control Tower helps companies save costs."

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

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

"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."

More AWS Control Tower pros

"The tool will come back and tell us that we can operate with 1,000 minutes as an example, save 90% on the contractual rate and not run into any issues."

"I would say that the initial thing is that it provides us with a technological basis to expand capacity management beyond Excel."

"Densify's ability to aggregate multiple on-premise vCenters and multiple cloud accounts, gives it a level of visibility not found in many places."

"One would be the automatic rebalancing of the environment. That was one feature which helped. With that, we could improve our efficiency of our VMware infrastructure."

"The Control Console is an incredible way to give a quick view of current capacity utilization allowing technical people to drill down quickly and allowing business/management people to get a quick overview of the environment."

"The ability to increase server density inside of my environment, which has helped me drive reduction in costs."

"The Control Console provides a very easy to read dashboard of "too little/just right/too much" resources both for current data and on a historical or predictive basis."

"The Densify Control Console, and Environment Status."

More Densify pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The initial setup is complex."

"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."

"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."

"There is a sync issue within the organization."

More AWS Control Tower cons

"In terms of integration, the tool has great data. However, it's not always meaningful because the true business attributes of how most Fortune 500 companies operate are not maintaining in one tool, they're in a school of many tools."

"The solution's stability is the primary concern for me."

"A closer integration to the service management processes."

"It seems that the mechanism for integration is, it goes so far but I think there could be some standard integration to normal remedy service now etc. I think that should be out of the box."

"Initially we talked about some custom reporting, wherein our customer expected certain reports on a few areas, like how the storage is allocated, how the network performance is doing, and how the network utilization is happening for a virtual machine."

"Unfortunately the tools and mechanisms which really came to maturity in the cloud, and were not mainstream on-premise, are still not implemented."

"Normalization of CPU utilization is required. At present, the data is available based on entitlement level."

"Some parts of the interface are rather complex and require a bit of time to navigate, but this has never stopped us as a Densify advisor is readily available to help with our "how to" queries."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free."

"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."

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

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

More AWS Control Tower pricing and cost advice

"Cost is always involved, but then I feel that this solution is better than other products that we have."

"Setup cost is negligible, as it scales fairly well."

"There was some sticker shock, as this is not just another software product to spit out graphs."

"Densify has licensing setup so you can collect data without licensing. It gives you the ability to collect on everything, then choose later what you would like to license."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

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...

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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.

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What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?

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.

See all answers

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Product Reports

AWS Control Tower

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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)

Densify is a hybrid cloud and container resource management platform that makes workloads self-aware of their precise resource requirements and automates the resource management and selection process. This solution helps you control your cloud spend and also helps your apps perform and scale better. Densify enables you to match your cloud requirements with the optimal cloud supply. Additionally, Densify is the only technology that leverages patented, predictive machine learning-powered analytics to perform advanced modeling of workload patterns, and provide precise optimization directives. It is ideal for cloud engineers, container platform owners, and IT finance.

Densify works by:

Establishing application demand patterns that are based on business cycles, seasonality, peaks, valleys, and other variables.
Building normalized models of cloud supply and ingesting the entire cloud catalog and latest technologies.
Considering numerous factors, such as performance benchmarks, cost, technical rules, tags, and policies. The solution uses business and functional tags, operational realities, and granular policy control.

Densify Features

Densify has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Integration with management and provisioning systems
Machine learning-based analytics
Automated resource optimization
App owner collaboration
Tailored efficiency reports
Observability
Controllability
Capacity optimization
Policy driven, automated governance
VM placement
Predictive analytics

Densify Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Densify. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Automated resource management: Densify provides your organization with automated resource management at scale, with elasticity at an affordable low cost.

Full stack visibility: The Densify solution offers full stack visibility with improved efficiency by determining container size and node resources.

Financial visibility: In addition to full stack visibility, one of Densify’s other advantages is that it offers full financial visibility and cost intelligence for both reporting as well as chargebacks.

Resizing and rebalancing: Densify analyzes your private cloud infrastructure, providing resizing and rebalancing recommendations.

Helps you choose the right host environment: Densify automatically routes workloads to the best hosting environment based on detailed workload requirements. For workloads not requiring immediate placement, it reserves capacity to ensure it is available when required.

A true SaaS implementation: Because Densify is a true SaaS implementation, there is no software to maintain or to learn.

Better for IT finance: The solution is good for IT finance because it collects and analyzes your detailed billing data, giving you visibility into your spending, what services you’re buying, and how to better manage your costs. In addition, it can also generate reports that cover your spending and your utilization of reservations and reserved instances and savings plans.

Reduce risk and costs: Machine learning-based analytics help your organization optimize consumption to eliminate waste and overprovisioning while ensuring performance.

Cost-efficient: The Densify solution is cost-efficient, helping you drastically reduce per-processor software license costs by placing workloads intelligently.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

AIG, Bank of America, Cigna, Citi

AWS Control Tower vs. Densify