Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) vs. Microsoft Access

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon RDS
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.N/A
Microsoft Access
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools.
$139.99
per PC
Pricing
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Microsoft Access
Editions & Modules
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)
Microsoft Access
$139.99
per PC
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon RDSMicrosoft Access
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Microsoft Access
Considered Both Products
Amazon RDS
Chose Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Amazon Relational Database is more reliable and effective than the one I am using. Amazon Relational Database has more storage capacity and is easily accessible. Amazon Relational Database has multiple options. Amazon Relational Database cloud services are excellent. From the …
Microsoft Access

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Microsoft Access
Small Businesses
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.3 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.3 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.3 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Microsoft Access
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(52 ratings)
8.6
(99 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.4
(24 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Microsoft Access
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Whether your organization is [an] early startup or large company AWS RDS fits in most of the cases such as 1. Easy to start, setup, used by [a] few or large developers team. 2. You can easily scale DB [instances] when your business required scaling as a startup or pay only for [users] to optimize cost as [a] large organization. 3. If your application requires SQL Server, Oracle, or Maria DB then you should use AWS RDS instance. 4. Your application requires better availability and security of data you can use AWS RDS instance. When AWS RDS is not recommended: 1. You need automatic scaling or capacity flexibility as request load gradually increases, better to use Amazon Aurora DB in this case.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Access can be easily implemented with training. It doesn't require expert level skill for basic reporting functions - but can be scaled to a complex database with sophisticated users. Its appropriate to consider if excel needs to be used to create reports, or if there are data entry needs - with corresponding reports.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Setting up and managing a new RDS is just a matter of few clicks.
  • Maintaining different version of backup is just like a matter of turning on and off.
  • Automatic minor update of database.
  • Best restore:- You can even restore to 1 second before time.
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Microsoft
  • Very easy to create entity-relationship diagrams for various tables and designing mock layouts.
  • Really easy to navigate as it hold[s] the classic Microsoft UI. Another good thing is that it comes with the complete MS Office Suite.
  • It is really fast when joining multiple tables no matter what type of join.
  • Works on pretty much same SQL scripts so no need to learn a new language!
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • You don't have os-level or hardware-level access to the system, so all your performance tuning needs to be done within your application or within the parameters of the database engine that amazon allows you to customize.
  • Customizations/Extensions to the database engines are impossible, as you don't have OS-level access.
  • Migrating in/out of RDS with zero down time can be relatively challenging from a configuration and execution perspective, depending on your infrastructure.
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Microsoft
  • Microsoft Access has not really changed at all for several years. It might be nice to see some upgrades and changes.
  • The help info is often not helpful. Need more tutorials for Microsoft Access to show how to do specific things.
  • Be careful naming objects such as tables, forms, etc. Names that are too long can get cut off in dialog boxes to choose a table, form, report, etc. So, I wish they would have resizable dialog boxes to allow you to see objects with long names.
  • I wish it could show me objects that are not in use in the database for current queries, tables, reports, forms, and macros. That way unused objects can be deleted without worrying about losing a report or query because you deleted the underlying object.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
It has worked reliably in the past, we have not had any problems that would have been caused because of using RDS. Also it's future-proof, it will scale easily if user base of the application that relies on it is going to increase rapidly. Our application deployments also rely on it so renewing it is essential for business & switching to different provider would cause costs without any apparent benefit.
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Microsoft
I and the rest of my team will renew our Microsoft Access in the future because we use and maintain many different applications and databases created using Microsoft Access so we will need to maintain them in the future. Additionally, it is a standard at our place of work so it is at $0 cost to us to use. Another reason for renewing Microsoft Access is that we just don' t have the resources needed to extend into a network of users so we need to remain a single-desktop application at this time.
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Usability
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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Microsoft
Microsoft Access is easy to use. It is compatible with spreadsheets. It is a very good data management tool. There is scope to save a large amount of data in one place. For using this database, one does not need much training, can be shared among multiple users. This database has to sort and filtering features which seem to be very useful.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I don't think the program has ever failed me. It is one of those programs where there is always a solution if you know where to look.
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Support Rating
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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Microsoft
While I have never contacted Microsoft directly for product support, for some reason there's a real prejudice against MS Access among most IT support professionals. They are usually discouraging when it comes to using MS Access. Most of this is due to their lack of understanding of MS Access and how it can improve one's productivity. If Microsoft invested more resources towards enhancing and promoting the use of MS Access then maybe things would be different.
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
[Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)] is much better to have everything in the cloud instead of having it on-premise once you can get all the benefits from Cloud. Of course, it can be a bit expensive if your company it's not growing anymore but if you check it in detail, you can see that the scalability of Cloud makes a lot of sense and also the reliability.
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Microsoft
Crystal is easier for report writing, but isn't a database solution. Salesforce is lovely, but much more expensive than an old copy of Microsoft Office. For a small budget, [Microsoft] Access was really the only viable option. I only wish it was easier to write complex reports.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • RDS has made sure that we don't spend a lot of time resolving issues that are not even remotely relevant to our business use-cases. It has thus made the life of DB administrators easy which allows them to explore other avenues as well.
  • Using RDS for around 10 years now, we have never had an issue BECAUSE of RDS. It is a very reliable service.
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Microsoft
  • Our ROI has not increased as much since using Microsoft Access to mobilize and manage the company's databases, but if you take into account the entire Microsoft office 365 suite, the overall gains have been great.
  • The ROI increase for our small development company, taking into account the use of the entire suite including Microsoft Access, is up to 700% of the annual upfront payment.
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ScreenShots

Amazon RDS Screenshots

Screenshot of A look inside the RDS console.