AWS Config vs. AWS Systems Manager

AWS Systems Manager

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
AWS Config	Score 7.2 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
AWS Systems Manager	Score 8.8 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 Config

AWS Systems Manager

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

AppConfig: $0.20
Per Million Calls
OpsCenter: $2.97
Per 1,000 Items

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
AWS Config	AWS Systems Manager
Free Trial
No	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

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.

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	AWS Config	AWS Systems Manager
Top Pros	Pro Track changes Pro Configuration changes Pro Simple to understand	Pro Easy to install Pro Single user Pro User interface
Top Cons	Minus Vendor lock Minus User friendly Minus No easy	Minus Bit confusing Minus Little bit confusing Minus Experienced any area

Features

AWS Config

AWS Systems Manager

Cloud Management

Comparison of Cloud Management features of Product A and Product B
	AWS Config - Ratings	AWS Systems Manager 8.0 1 Ratings 8% below category average
Cloud Management Security	00 Ratings	8.01 Ratings
Automation and Orchestration	00 Ratings	7.01 Ratings
Cost Management	00 Ratings	7.01 Ratings
Cloud Management Performance Monitoring	00 Ratings	9.01 Ratings
Governance and Compliance	00 Ratings	9.01 Ratings
Resource Management	00 Ratings	8.01 Ratings
Systems Integration	00 Ratings	8.01 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	AWS Config	AWS Systems Manager
Small Businesses	HashiCorp Terraform Score 8.6 out of 10	VMware Cloud Director Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Ansible Score 8.9 out of 10	IBM Turbonomic Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprises	Ansible Score 8.9 out of 10	vRealize Operations (discontinued) Score 8.3 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	AWS Config	AWS Systems Manager
Likelihood to Recommend	8.8 (6 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Performance	9.6 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Ease of integration	6.2 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	AWS Config	AWS Systems Manager
Likelihood to Recommend	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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Amazon AWS 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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	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 Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Amazon AWS 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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Cons	Amazon AWS It's only AWS, no third party. Not the most intuitive interface, but with a little getting used to it is OK. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Amazon AWS I would like to see the Search feature improved a bit more. UI is little bit confusing initially Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Performance	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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Amazon AWS No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	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. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Amazon AWS No answers on this topic
Return on Investment	Amazon AWS Enforcing audit requirements Easy to set up alerting when there are rule breaches Auto remediation reduces the manual policing of such breaches Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Amazon AWS Reduced team's time spent on EC2 management Patch management Remote access Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
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