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Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) vs. Portainer

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AAmazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a scalable, high performance container management service that supports Docker containers.

    $0

    per hour per GB

    Portainer

    Score9.8 out of 10
    N/APortainer is a centralized container management platform for containerized apps and IoT device management. It helps accelerate container adoption and reduce time-to-value on Kubernetes, Docker, and Swarm with a management portal, allowing users to deliver and manage containerized applications from the data center to the edge. Portainer helps - Reduce the operational complexity associated with multi-cluster management Bridge the skills gap and facilitate feature…

    $0

    Pricing
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Editions & Modules
    AWS Fargate Launch Type Model
    Spot price: $0.0013335. Ephemeral Storage Pricing: $0.000111
    per hour per storage
    Amazon EC2 Launch Type Model
    Free
    Amazon ECS on AWS Outposts
    Free
    Portainer Business - 3 Nodes Free
    $0
    Home & Student
    $149
    per year
    Starter
    $995
    per year
    Professional
    $2995
    per year
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales for Pricing
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for Amazon ECS. You pay for AWS resources (e.g., Amazon EC2 instances or Amazon EBS volumes) you create to store and run your application. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no upfront commitments.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Considered Both Products
    Amazon AWS
    No answer on this topic
    Portainer
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    94 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    87 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    94 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    75 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    92 Answers
    Features
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Container Management
    Comparison of Container Management features of Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) and Portainer
    Feature
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    8.1
    6 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Portainer
    8.6
    94 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Security and Isolation9.06 Ratings8.790 Ratings
    Container Orchestration8.45 Ratings00 Ratings
    Cluster Management7.86 Ratings8.575 Ratings
    Storage Management8.03 Ratings8.680 Ratings
    Resource Allocation and Optimization7.35 Ratings8.183 Ratings
    Discovery Tools7.34 Ratings8.970 Ratings
    Update Rollouts and Rollbacks8.56 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self-Healing and Recovery8.46 Ratings00 Ratings
    Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.26 Ratings8.690 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Small Businesses
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Kubernetes
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (12 ratings)
    8.6
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.5
    (15 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.4
    (4 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)Portainer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon ECS is well suited for the scenarios where you want to deploy a microservice to a cloud and instead of manually specifying instance size, number of instances and then specifying the configurations and connecting it with other cloud services like database service, secret manager service etc., you just want to specify these configurations as a file and using that file, the ECS would deploy the service and keep it healthy. It might be less suited for a scenario when you don't want to stick to AWS specific solution for your microservice deployment. The ECS configuration file is specific to AWS ECS and may not be useful for other cloud providers like Azure etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Portainer
    Many developers, especially lesser experienced developers, don't have a really good background in setting up containers from the command line. Portainer is invaluable to them. Giving a UI to them gives them much more confidence and allows them to learn properties and capabilities of containers under far less stress. On the flip side of this, giving then a UI on a production system can lead to chaos...never give junior developers access to production servers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • One of the biggest advantages is the flexibility to change underlying EC2 instances. As the traffic or demand increases, we can easily change EC2 instances without any issues.
    • Amazon ECS APIs are extremely robust and one can start and stop containers by firing one post request only. So, it is not mandatory to keep the demo solutions up for every time. Just at the time of demo fire the command - make the container up and running - do the demo - down the container with API. A simple portal can control every container which helps non-technical (sales, marketing) to do the demo without keeping the solutions up for the entire time frame.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Portainer
    • Separating server maintenance with application development, providing a clear user interface for developers who don't want to worry about the underlying server.
    • RBAC for container deployment linked to a SAML IDP, not something particularly easy in a native Docker instance but point and shoot in Portainer, allowing the use of Azure / Okta etc to provide user access.
    • Image management with multiple repositories is super clear and reduces incidents
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • Another AWS Service - While AWS has a service for just about everything, that is also a negative point. There is no service that does 4 out of 4 things you need. This service does 3 out of 4, another service does the fourth thing you need and another two things that the other service does.
    • With AWS things in general, it's really hard to remain cloud agnostic. Keep that in mind.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Portainer
    • When setting up static IPs for a new container, having the used ones for a specific network at hand would be cool or something like a mini IPAM of some sort...
    • Using the developertools to see "oh, it's a 40x or 500" when something doesn't seem to load because the ui just states "Didn't work" is kinda annoying. expandable toasts or something would be nice.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Portainer
    It is an excellent tool.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    Aside from some ECS-specific terms to learn at first, learning & starting to use ECS is relatively straightforward. AWS docs on the topic are also of high quality, with sound & relevant examples to follow. Troubleshooting container issues is also a breeze thanks to CloudWatch integration & helpful error messages on the AWS console.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Portainer
    Accessibility for Non-Experts: even with some people having a bit longer on-boarding it is still very simple Quick setup is insanely useful, we can get it running in 10 seconds after installing docker Portainer has once again super clean UI and is very user friendly. Deployment/monitoring and management are super easy. I can tell just from a glance if something is out of date (watching at you Watchtower not doing your job for some reason)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    Support is relatively good, although the documentation sometimes is lacking, as well as outdated in our experience, especially when we initiated the process of using this service. But once we found how to assemble things, we haven't really required support from anyone at AWS, the service works without problems so we haven't had the need to contact support, which speaks well of how ECS is built.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Portainer
    One of their staff members jumped on a video call immediately with me and led me through the problem and solution during a quick session of screen sharing. In this day and age that is above and beyond, especially when it comes to software. It took approximately 5-10 minutes to diagnose and fix, including pleasantries!
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Portainer
    It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    I chose Amazon ECS over Amazon EKS and other products because the whole infrastructure was decided to be designed on AWS cloud and Amazon ECS made it easier to make the clusters live in just a few minutes. Amazon ECS has better integration with other AWS services and we don't have to look for plugins to do the things, everything is available and can be configured from the AWS console.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Portainer
    Portainer takes the cup in terms of usability and features. It is also more useful for smaller deployments, whereas Kubernetes in our opinion and experience, could probably be more suited to certain other use cases. Portainer is also a fresh feel among all the preexisting container management solutions and brings positivity and a new breeze in the industry.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • Easy to manage as it has an orchestrator to manage the containers.
    • Less costs and more flexibility with Fargate.
    • Negative (tied to AWS, so could not easily integrate other tools like running a Redis cluster. Still, it works but not easily like Kubernetes.
    Read full review
    Portainer
    • Increased productivity: Portainer's user-friendly interface and streamlined container management can help increase the productivity of IT teams.
    • Cost savings: By simplifying container management, Portainer can help reduce the time and resources required to manage container environments, potentially leading to cost savings.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Portainer Screenshots

    Screenshot of Portainer is a universal container management platform to help adopt and manage Docker, Kubernetes, Nomad and Edge environments.