Amazon Lightsail vs. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Lightsail
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Lightsail is a virtual private server (VPS) designed to present an easy-to-use cloud platform that offers everything needed to build an application or website, plus a cost-effective, monthly plan.
$3.50
per month
Amazon RDS
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.N/A
Pricing
Amazon LightsailAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Editions & Modules
512 MB Linux
$3.50
per month
1 GB Linux
$5.00
per month
2 GB Linux
$10.00
per month
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
$0.24 ($0.48)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for MariaDB
$0.25 ($0.50)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for MySQL
$0.29 ($0.58)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for Oracle
$0.482 ($0.964)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for SQL Server
$1.02 ($1.52)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon LightsailAmazon RDS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon LightsailAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Features
Amazon LightsailAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Lightsail
8.8
6 Ratings
7% above category average
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling5.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.34 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls10.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation10.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon LightsailAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS
Score 8.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
InterSystems IRIS
InterSystems IRIS
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP IQ
SAP IQ
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Amazon LightsailAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(6 ratings)
8.9
(131 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(5 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.7
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(13 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon LightsailAmazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We utilized Amazon Lightsail to get a web application proof of concept up and running. It's easy to set up, requires minimal configuration, and lets us to concentrate on the coding. It's designed to help you get started fast and easily, but it's not designed for corporate applications or workloads.
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Amazon AWS
If your application needs a relational data store and uses other AWS services, AWS RDS is a no-brainer. It offers all the traditional database features, makes it a snap to set up, creates cross-region replication, has advanced security, built-in monitoring, and much more at a very good price. You can also set up streaming to a data lake using various other AWS services on your RDS.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Its provide pre configured Apps and operating system
  • Very easy to use interface and the cost is also very low
  • Integration with other AWS services like route53, S3 etc
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Amazon AWS
  • Automated Database Management: We use it for streamlining routine tasks like software patching and database backups.
  • Scalability on Demand: we use it to handle traffic spikes, scaling both vertically and horizontally.
  • Database Engine Compatibility: It works amazingly with multiple database engines used by different departments within our organization including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
  • Monitoring: It covers our extensive monitoring and logging, and also has great compatibility with Amazon CloudWatch
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • slow
  • complex integration to AWS Cloudwatch - complex setup required
  • No IPv6, a big downside
  • less value compared with Linode or Digital Ocean
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • It is a little difficult to configure and connect to an RDS instance. The integration with ECS can be made more seamless.
  • Exploring features within RDS is not very easy and intuitive. Either a human friendly documentation should be added or the User Interface be made intuitive so that people can explore and find features on their own.
  • There should be tools to analyze cost and minimize it according to the usage.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
We do renew our use of Amazon Relational Database Service. We don't have any problems faced with RDS in place. RDS has taken away lot of overhead of hosting database, managing the database and keeping a team just to manage database. Even the backup, security and recovery another overhead that has been taken away by RDS. So, we will keep on using RDS.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
My overall experience with Amazon Lightsail is very good, and the online community of Lightsail users is very large and its helps to resolve any kind of issue i faced on my server. I also like the integration of other AWS services with Amazon Lightsail like we can export our Lightsail instance into ec2 server using snapshots.
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Amazon AWS
I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.
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Online Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
the online training & digital content available on the web from AWS was having sufficient information to deploy and run the service
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Lightsail is a great platform. Before we started using it, we were using AWS EC2 instances as our primary servers after being dissatisfied with other providers. After Amazon Lightsail's introduction, we were able to reduce our operating costs, improve our quality assurance tasks, and provide much more efficient and better apps with our microservices architecture.
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Amazon AWS
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) stands out among similar products due to its seamless integration with other AWS services, automated backups, and multi-AZ deployments for high availability. Its support for various database engines, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle, provides flexibility. Additionally, RDS offers managed security features, including encryption and IAM integration, enhancing data protection. The pay-as-you-go pricing model makes it cost-effective. Overall, Amazon RDS excels in ease of use, scalability, and a comprehensive feature set, making it a top choice for organizations seeking a reliable and scalable managed relational database service in the cloud.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Hosting a production application on Lightsail will guarantee you a loss
  • Saved lots of time for our prototyping
  • Other VPS providers are better
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Amazon AWS
  • The overall cost increases, but we spect this and we can mitigate other risks.
  • Is easy to work from the cloud. Is reliable, but we keep our local solution as well where RDS works quite good.
  • RDS allow us to focurs on owr objetives instead of the other matters regarding databases.
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ScreenShots

Amazon RDS Screenshots

Screenshot of A look inside the RDS console.