Amazon Web Services vs. AWS CloudFormation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Web Services
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$100
per month
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Pricing
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Editions & Modules
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.There is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
8.9
67 Ratings
9% above category average
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.763 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.164 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.360 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.956 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools9.164 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.457 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support9.062 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls9.365 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation9.116 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Small Businesses
Akamai Cloud Computing
Akamai Cloud Computing
Score 9.0 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(79 ratings)
7.6
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.2
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(24 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
We recommend AWS Lightsail with Plesk Ubuntu Web Admin (free) edition for launching WordPress websites. Pricing starts with 3.5$ per month and they are providing 3 months free. In order to access advanced features of Plesk, consider upgrading to paid Plesk plans that starts with 13.50$ per month (10 websites supported). Up to 40% discount is available for the first year. Anyway, even the free Plesk Web Admin version is by itself self sufficient with free SSL.
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Amazon AWS
AWS CloudFormation is well suited for scenarios where all of your resources need to be provisioned on AWS but it is not suited for hybrid cloud deployments. It's very easy for someone new to learn. The level of customization offered as part of the template specifically for AWS services is great. There is also a UI tool where we can drag and drop the services we want and it generates an yaml file which is very easy to use. The visibility of stacks and its resources and one place where we can track and identify the issues in deployment is great.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Starting an instance and accessing it for testing purpose, demo or production deployment its always easy.
  • All the things which are available over AWS are pretty well managed and easy to use.
  • You might find everything you required for an product and other development over AWS.
  • Its suitable for both either an enterprise or an startup
  • Various resources and documentation are available in case you struck somewhere.
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Amazon AWS
  • SaaS
  • Paas
  • Iaas
  • On promises
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • If there is one thing I think AWS needs improvement on, it is the administration dashboard. It can be a nightmare to use especially when trying to access billing. This could be made better, honestly, as there should be a simplified way to access simple admin features.
  • While AWS was fairly easy to integrate into our solutions, it is not as easy to use without some IT knowledge. The dashboards are complicated and designed for someone who is computer savvy. If you are just want to keep track of billing, for example, you may need to take a course or spend a few hours with someone being walked through the admin console.
  • AWS does tend to be slow at times. If you do not have a fast internet connection, it can take time to access services that are hosted on AWS. This is not always the case but we have had clients complain about this if they are trying to access a service from multiple points (IP addresses). The only real fix we found was to make our files cache to another server and only keep current data accessible to clients.
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Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
We are almost entirely satisfied with the service. In order to move off it, we'd have to build for ourselves many of the services that AWS provides and the cost would be prohibitive. Although there are cost savings and security benefits to returning to the colo facility, we could never afford to do it, and we'd hate to give up the innovation and constant cycle of new features that AWS gives us.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Usability
Amazon AWS
Our cloud platform architecture was designed in order to collect, analyze, and optimize modern networks, from AWS-powered computing, networking, storage, and more. So, we needed a reliable, scalable, and secure global computing infrastructure. Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing were key features in our evaluation and later on for scalability and high performance. We being a cybersecurity company, we needed to ensure that our cloud provider utilizes an end-to-end approach to secure and harden the infrastructure, including physical, operational, and software measures - which AWS had all in place.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Performance
Amazon AWS
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon Web Services is well suited when we have a huge amount of data to store, process, manipulate and get meaningful information out of. It is also suitable when we need very fast data retrieval from the database. They provide a superior product at a fair price which allows us to further our goals and push the limits of what we are capable of as a team / company.
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Amazon AWS
We didn't look into anything else as Cloudformation was "built-in" for AWS, it just kind of made sense to go with that. Terraform was something that we briefly looked into Terraform but decides to stick with Cloudformation because our task was relatively "simple". Apparently if it's a bit more complex, Terraform might be the way to go.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • AWS has lowered our employee cost, because you don't have to hire Network/Server Admins to manage infrastructure.
  • Increased productivity by incorporating Continuous Integration with AWS and our development life cycle.
  • Increased customer confidence by being able to provide HIPAA level security in our development and production environments
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Amazon AWS
  • It has a positive ROI
  • Less time inverted in bugs
  • More stable source code
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview