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AWS Control Tower vs Firefly comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Firefly
Ranking in Cloud Management
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Firefly is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Control Tower1.5%
Firefly0.3%
Other98.2%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

SI
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.
MR
Senior Software Consultant at a hospitality company with 10,001+ employees
Design workflows have been transformed and now enable rapid ad visuals and campaign launches
Firefly offers several best features in my opinion. We have the TTS feature and TTV feature. Additionally, suppose I have a single image from the creative designer and I want to generate different variations or different sizes of that image that will get adapted mostly on Google Ads. For example, I want to generate different renditions of that same image in different resolutions. I can quickly go to Firefly and from a single image generate different multiple images in different renditions. Firefly also helps us expand images. For example, I have a small image that is a portrait and I want to convert that as a full image or a hero image, which fits on a wide screen. Firefly helps us generate the images. It will not be stretching or squeezing your image. Instead, Firefly takes the context from your image and generates the next object which could appear. For example, if I am standing on a beach, it will generate the beach. It will generate a few people, it will generate some pictures of the sea, maybe some coconut trees. Firefly has positively impacted my organization a lot. I can say it is helping us reduce the effort and cost, saving the cost. For example, I have to create one image for our social media post. For that, we have to request our creative team, and then a creative designer will work on that idea and take one day or two days to get the design complete. After that, it comes to the review. With the help of Firefly, we can quickly generate the images and get them reviewed. Our go-to-market becomes easy. Within two hours or three hours, we can complete this whole process: generation, review, and all, and go to the market instantly. Additionally, if we have one image available and I want to quickly launch a Google Ad campaign that requires different renditions of the image, I can quickly use Firefly and generate different renditions of the image using the single image. So, it also reduces the dependency which we had earlier with the creative designers and the creative team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The solution's initial setup was easy for me."
"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 is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."
"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."
"The most significant benefit of Control Tower is its capability to align with our organization's standards."
"AWS Control Tower helps companies save costs."
"Firefly simply acts as a single source of truth for my cloud inventory and governance, and it complements my existing cloud and FinOps processes rather than replacing them."
"Firefly saves one employee, it saves 5 million annually, and we are currently improving 40% of our go-to-market time while reducing cost by 30% and increasing revenue by approximately 20%."
 

Cons

"AWS Control Tower should improve its fast execution. It also needs more tools for triggering and monitoring AWS services. AWS Control Tower needs more tracking as well."
"There is a sync issue within the organization."
"The solution's stability could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"There should be more automation security tools in the Control Tower."
"However, I still see a lot of improvement scope in their service."
"If I talk about the cost, the cost is a little high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"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."
"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 operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

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...
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 needs improvement with Firefly?
At times the image quality from Firefly is inconsistent. That is something that could be improved. There is limited creative visibility that could be worked on. Firefly is already a pretty good too...
What is your primary use case for Firefly?
I have been using Firefly for creator purposes, specifically for creating images, videos, vectors, and design elements. I have been working on a few projects that require documentation, and those p...
What advice do you have for others considering Firefly?
I can tell you about time savings, but the exact metrics are beyond the scope of my work, so I do not have them. Personally speaking, I have been spending less time on creating visuals for presenta...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
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