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AWS CloudFormation vs. AWS Systems Manager

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.2 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 Systems Manager
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
AWS Systems Manager allows users to centralize operational data from multiple AWS services and automate tasks across your AWS resources. With it, users can create logical groups of resources such as applications, different layers of an application stack, or production versus development environments. Systems Manager allows users to select a resource group and view its recent API activity, resource configuration changes, related notifications, operational alerts, software inventory, and patch…
$0.20
Per Million Calls
Pricing
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Editions & Modules
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
AppConfig
$0.20
Per Million Calls
OpsCenter
$2.97
Per 1,000 Items
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
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.—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Considered Both Products
AWS CloudFormation
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose AWS CloudFormation
The only real comparison would be to Terraform, which is another IaC technology at the infra level. Terraform is cloud-agnostic, which means most popular cloud providers are supported. While AWS CloudFormation is AWS-only. Although, if you consider CDK, CDK for Terraform …
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose AWS CloudFormation
Since the product I'm involved is primarily hosted on AWS we use CloudFormation but in some other products where we have hybrid cloud deployments we prefer terraform which is opensource.
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose AWS CloudFormation
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured …
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose AWS CloudFormation
As we have our whole infrastructure on AWS, that is why we selected AWS CloudFormation. AWS CloudFormation is better integrated with AWS services than other available products and also provides visibility and tracking on AWS. AWS CloudFormation is free while Terraform …
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose AWS CloudFormation
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 …
Manuela Jacqueline Mercado Rodríguez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Manuela Jacqueline Mercado Rodríguez
Senior Full Stack Developer
Chose AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation has more features and robustness. It is suited for professional projects since it provides stability and a wide variety of options for configurations. These include not only dividing stacks by specific code changes, but also in regions. This allows more …
AWS Systems Manager
Features
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Cloud Management
Comparison of Cloud Management features of Product A and Product B
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
AWS Systems Manager
8.0
Ratings
9% below category average
Cloud Management Security00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Automation and Orchestration00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Cost Management00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Cloud Management Performance Monitoring00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Governance and Compliance00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Resource Management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Systems Integration00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Small Businesses
IBM Terraform
IBM Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
VMware Cloud Director
VMware Cloud Director
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
IBM Turbonomic
IBM Turbonomic
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.1 out of 10
vRealize Operations (discontinued)
vRealize Operations (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudFormationAWS Systems Manager
Likelihood to Recommend
I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
When you have a process running in aws that needs to copy files to group of instances as part of the process Installing software on a group of machines Adding Cloudwatch agent to instance.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Pros
  • IaC, transactional on top of that
  • Support for "mainstream" general programming languages
  • Sharable IaC "snippets" that can setup standardized environments for individuals quickly
  • OOP techniques are available thanks to OOP languages
Verified User
Anonymous
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  • Copy files to a group of instance with particular tag
  • Enable CW agent and push metrics to CW
  • Easy to install software in a group of instances.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Cons
  • 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.
Verified User
Anonymous
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  • I would like to see the Search feature improved a bit more.
  • UI is little bit confusing initially
Verified User
Anonymous
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Usability
You just have to learn how it thinks then you'll be set. That however comes with a learning curve. Writing YAML or jSON templates feels natural now but early on, even a small syntax mistake could break a whole stack.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Since the product I'm involved is primarily hosted on AWS we use CloudFormation but in some other products where we have hybrid cloud deployments we prefer Terraform which is opensource.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
Verified User
Anonymous
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  • Reduced team's time spent on EC2 management
  • Patch management
  • Remote access
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
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