AWS CloudFormation vs. AWS Config

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.8 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
AWS Config
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services offers AWS Config, a service that provides monitoring and assessment of AWS resource configurations to support compliance auditing, change management and troubleshooting, with resource histories and comparison of historical configurations against planned configurations.N/A
Pricing
AWS CloudFormationAWS Config
Editions & Modules
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudFormationAWS Config
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere 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.With AWS Config, you are charged based on the number of configuration items recorded, the number of active AWS Config rule evaluations and the number of conformance pack evaluations in your account. A configuration item is a record of the configuration state of a resource in your AWS account. An AWS Config rule evaluation is a compliance state evaluation of a resource by an AWS Config rule in your AWS account, and a conformance pack evaluation is the evaluation of a resource by an AWS Config rule within the conformance pack.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudFormationAWS Config
Considered Both Products
AWS CloudFormation

No answer on this topic

AWS Config
Chose AWS Config
I have not assessed any other tools that do a similar function to AWS Config.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
AWS CloudFormationAWS Config
Small Businesses
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.6 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS CloudFormationAWS Config
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(5 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
6.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudFormationAWS Config
Likelihood to Recommend
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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Amazon AWS
It's really good if your infrastructure services is all in AWS, that means everything could be audited and monitored using AWS config. You also can create alarms to notify you or your team about any changes on your AWS resources which is very useful to prevent abuse if you have a fairly large team. It's also very useful whenever some third party wants to audit your AWS resources, if you have a fairly comprehensive AWS config configured, the auditing process will be easy since they only need to look at your AWS config setup.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • SaaS
  • Paas
  • Iaas
  • On promises
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Amazon AWS
  • The ability to track changes in AWS is paramount, AWS config allows you to do this
  • Allows the auditing of an AWS account
  • Can view history of an account that has AWS config enabled
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Cons
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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Amazon AWS
  • It's only AWS, no third party.
  • Not the most intuitive interface, but with a little getting used to it is OK.
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Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
Would rate lower for other workloads but for AWS workloads its simple to set up, cost effective and customisable. Primary use case is compliance from a governance perspective.
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Alternatives Considered
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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Amazon AWS
I do not know or have used any other product in AWS cloud space that matches what AWS Config provides. We have some custom built monitoring and governance, however that is there because AWS Config does not provide it currently.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It has a positive ROI
  • Less time inverted in bugs
  • More stable source code
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Amazon AWS
  • Enforcing audit requirements
  • Easy to set up alerting when there are rule breaches
  • Auto remediation reduces the manual policing of such breaches
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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