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Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services

Overview

What is Amazon Web Services?

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.

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Recent Reviews

Great for remote access desktops

9 out of 10
November 04, 2022
I use AWS to access a remote desktop which I require to access Microsoft-based applications that I need for my day to day use. It was a …
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AWSome

10 out of 10
December 28, 2021
Incentivized
We have a product that is a distributed system, SaaS on AWS. We use Route53 to register our domain and configure subdomains. We use EC2 to …
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Do NOT use AWS

1 out of 10
November 29, 2021
Domain registration for my small business. AWS system, processes, and staff cause me to lose money and they did not take responsibility …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 9 features
  • Security controls (65)
    9.3
    93%
  • Monitoring tools (64)
    9.1
    91%
  • Dynamic scaling (64)
    9.1
    91%
  • Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime (63)
    8.8
    88%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Free Tier

$0

Cloud
per month

Basic Environment

$100 - $200

Cloud
per month

Intermediate Environment

$250 - $600

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.clickittech.com/aws/aws…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $100 per month
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Features

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides the basic building blocks for an IT infrastructure like servers, storage, and networking, in an on-demand model over the Internet

8.9
Avg 8.1
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Product Details

What is Amazon Web Services?

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. According to Amazon, AWS is suitable for organizations of any size, and helps to efficiently power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. AWS is also known for its service coverage, with over 69 Availability Zones across the world, allowing for users to experience lower latency and prevent their data centers from failing, which is important for cloud computing services.

AWS product range covers, but is not necessarily limited to, the following categories:

  • Analytics

  • Application Integration

  • AR & VR

  • AWS Cost Management

  • Blockchain

  • Business Applications

  • Compute

  • Customer Engagement

  • Database

  • Developer Tools

  • End User Computing

  • Game Tech

  • Internet of Things

  • Machine Learning

  • Management & Governance

  • Media Services

  • Migration & Transfer

  • Mobile

  • Networking & Content Delivery

  • Robotics

  • Satellite

  • Security, Identity, & Compliance

  • Storage

Pricing varies greatly across their vast scope of products, but AWS does provide an “AWS Free Tier” offering of services. Depending on the product, users can use the product for free indefinitely, a year, or in shorter-term trials.


Amazon Web Services Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Amazon Web Services starts at $100.

DXC Managed Cloud Services, 9STAR EasyIdentity Cloud, and 9STAR Elastic SSO are common alternatives for Amazon Web Services.

Reviewers rate Elastic load balancing and Security controls highest, with a score of 9.3.

The most common users of Amazon Web Services are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(692)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 79)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 05, 2021

AWS

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon Web Services for storing our disaster recovery backups and it has been very affordable and simple to use. It works very smoothly with our Rubrik backup system. This has proven to be smooth. We also use a number of SaaS providers that are using AWS and we have had good successes with those too.
  • Smooth
  • Easy
  • Affordable
  • Cost to restore
I would strongly advise that companies use [Amazon Web Services]. They deliver on the needs that we have and have provided the comfort in knowing that we are protected. Prior to our Rubrik / AWS setup, we had to take Backup tapes to other locations to make sure data was safe. This is so much more secure. I am super pleased with this design.
July 18, 2020

Startups, go for it

Salwat Hamrah | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Amazon Web Services for the web hosting of www.getbeyondlimits.com for many years. All our data gets backed on Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services seems to be quite dynamic in its functionality. You have so many plans to choose from. The best part is that you only pay for what you use. Ideally, if more people visit your website, you pay more and that is good for business.
  • Dynamic pricing
  • Push load time is less
  • Easy to use
  • S3 can be made easier for use.
  • The pricing, though dynamic, still gets high at times.
  • At times, downtime happens as well.
For a startup, it is one of the best things. But for large companies, the bills may become high, so keep searching for alternatives, I would say. Until now, we have not come up with anything that can beat Amazon Web Services in any way. Also, you become comfortable with what you use.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon Web Services as a cloud service provider for most of our IT requirements. The ease to set up and run an application on AWS has made it our go-to choice. It helps avoid the hassle of setting up and managing infrastructure and lets us focus on our application quality. We leverage S3, EC2 , Elastic BeanStalk, Lambda, CodePipeline, CloudWatch and a lot of other AWS components regularly for our application development and deployment.
  • Easy to use even for beginners.
  • Free tier for 1 year with access to most offerings.
  • Pay only what you use model.
  • Helpful & quick real-time support.
  • Highly reliable and fault tolerant.
  • Due to the various services provided, it can become a maze for beginners.
  • If not monitored and managed carefully, huge bill can pile up.
  • For larger scale applications using AWS becomes expensive, better to go for on-premise servers.
Any firm small or big can fulfill all their IT requirements using AWS. Although it is best suited for small or medium sized organizations who don't want to invest in an on-premise infrastructure and want a ready-to-go solution even larger organizations can utilize many AWS services as stand-alone features which can be integrated with third party apps.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use AWS to host our mobile app data and PIM. We needed to manage CRM data when we launched our mobile app and there were a few options like on-premise or outsourced hosting. Considering the effort needed to invest in-house equipment as well as potential difficulties to maintain continuity, our choice was Amazon Web Services.
  • Besides planned maintenance windows, there are no interruption to the services provided.
  • Great variety of applications ready to be deployed.
  • Fees could be higher than competitor.
  • We experienced failure and performance issues at least once in the past years., although it is getting better through the years.
Amazon is well suited if you have a small, busy team to which you do not want to add an extra project. No matter its size, a new application would need (at least) constant efforts of backup, upgrade and security as well as technical support like storage increase, etc. Unless you have enough in-house resources and it is economically feasible, you can easily consider using AWS.
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We're using AWS primarily for web hosting.
  • The technology is great. I've never had technical issues.
  • They have been incredibly slow to respond to a billing dispute. Over a year ago, we erroneously signed up for a service that we never used. It was a total 'gotcha,' and it added $800/mo to our monthly invoices. Shortly thereafter we noticed the huge credit card bill and asked them to remove the service. We're a small education company, and we're spread pretty thin- and I'm embarrassed to admit that when I asked them to turn it off, I naively believed that they would do so. When we noticed last month that they were still auto-billing us $800/mo for the entire past year, we were stunned. I again asked for them to honor our original, well-documented request, and this time we asked them to help make things right for us. We've corresponded 2-3 times/week over the last 30 days and I still can't get a response from their Finance department. I'm surprised and disappointed - I was expecting AWS to be much more responsive and helpful than this. I still trust that they'll make things right - but as of now they're still billing us for this.
I might revise this based on the outcome of this dispute. I love them technically - but this has been very frustrating customer service.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use AWS for our IT infrastructure and Development platform. AWS is utilized by all departments within our organization. We have been able to improve IT infrastructure reliability and reduce costs at the same time.
  • AWS provides enterprise fail over capabilities at a reasonable cost.
  • It's extremely easy to scale up or down with your infrastructure.
  • Better UI design and layout.
  • It could get expensive if not managed correctly.
AWS is great for any organization, and can scale as your organization grows. If managed correctly, AWS will provide enterprise level reliability and availability at a reasonable cost. The more services that are added to AWS and the more complex environments become, you will have to add staff to properly manage AWS.
January 15, 2020

My AWS experience

Zakarieya Abderoef | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon Web Services offers a comprehensive range of cloud services, which we can utilise at a cost-effective price as well as offering the flexibility and scalability to fast-track deployment of server and storage infrastructure for our clients. We are also able to set up test / Dev environments for testing applications quickly as well as setting up secure cloud disaster recovery (DR) sites with minimal costs.
  • Innovation. Since AWS is a world leader, we are able to benefit from running on the latest technologies being deployed using best practices and industry standards that typically comes standard from these leading cloud service providers.
  • Scalability. There is basically no limitation in expanding system resources when using AWS. The advantage of this is that we can increase resources for business systems and projects at a click of a button.
  • Implementation. Migrating to AWS is somewhat complex and adequate training is required. However, this can be mitigated using an accredited AWS provider.
  • Support Costs. AWS has various support options which includes Developer, Business and Enterprise support. Depending on the business requirement, the support costs can increase significantly since the basic support option may not meet the requirement of certain businesses.
Amazon Web Services is well suited for startup organisations that can benefit from immediate deployment of the virtual infrastructure and applications on a cloud platform. It's also cost-effective since you do not have to lay out a huge capital investment especially for small start-up businesses. AWS is also useful for organisations who need to rapidly deploy infrastructure to test applications and for those short-term projects that do not require permanent infrastructure. AWS can also be cost effective for running your disaster recovery environment on Cloud platform.
Devendra Parhate | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Being part of RND team, we do data analytics at PetaByte scale. Amazon Web Services helped us to efficiently orchestrate pipeline and perform data analytics on EMR and Sage notebook. Using Cloudformation and Step functions, we can deploy the pipeline in production reliably without worrying about infrastructure. Also, Amazon Web Services support team was accommodating while setting up initial infrastructure and troubleshooting any EMR or Spark related issues.
  • Cloudformation to bring up infrastructure.
  • Using triggers like S3 file creation to invoke lambda automatically.
  • EMR service allows the use of Big data tools seamlessly.
  • Amazon Web Services team support for debugging cluster related issues.
  • Handling Cloudformation stack deletion gracefully while the EMR Cluster is scaling.
  • Providing free access to Amazon Web Services to graduate students.
  • Educating users using blogs like https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-data/best-practices-for-successfully-managing-memory-for-apache-spark-applications-on-amazon-emr/.
Easily manageable, compatible big-data tools, and cluster scaling operation by providing EMR service.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Amazon as a cloud service provider. We are using Amazon across all the departments in the organization. It has all the services we need, from virtual machines to serverless. We mostly use serverless, DynamoDB, S3 and virtual machines with virtual private cloud. So far AWS was really useful. We haven't faced any issues yet.
  • Serverless
  • DynamoDB
  • S3
  • So far I didn't find any.
Amazon Web Services are very useful when we need serverless technologies or DB as service or Queue services etc. AWS has tons of services in all the aspects we need. it is a one-stop solution for all your cloud needs. But if we don't but your infrastructure in the right way you will end up paying a lot.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon Web Services as the backbone of our software-as-a-service product. We use it to host media files for streaming, downloading, etc with our client app. Our product involves a wide range of media files: images, audio files, video files, documents, etc and some of them are quite large, so we store it all using AWS.
  • The interface is pretty easy to use.
  • It's very reliable and there almost never seems to be an interruption in service.
  • It's pretty pervasive so when working with other companies, partners, etc, it is a piece of technology that nearly everyone is familiar with.
  • Occasionally I've had issues uploading many files at once, and have to resort to one-at-a-time to ensure successful upload. Not often, but it's happened.
I'm not sure where it wouldn't be appropriate unless someone was just starting out and maybe was super budget-conscious. I imagine there are some less expensive alternatives out there but honestly, the barrier to entry is pretty low.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting almost every imaginable type of application. We utilize it regularly and company-wide for trying new things as a POC as well as for mature application hosting. It is very easy for us to spin up new virtual computing environments, as needed, and on demand.
  • We like the native AWS RBAC authorization tools for controlling access without having to add other layers of complexity.
  • We like the robustness and simplicity of S3 storage services and the related APIs.
  • The ability to quickly provision and manage complex computing environments is 2nd to none in the industry.
  • Like any suite of applications they could benefit from having a team of usability experts make the products more intuitive.
  • Like most cloud solutions they could make it easier to understand the total costs associated with the various feature sets and related constraints.
  • Customer service in the technical support area could be improved - they could use a bit more of a personal touch at times.
AWS is perfect for global computing and creating geo-redundant virtual stacks that can be architected for high availability. It's a great way to host mission critical applications as well as a place to try something new in a very short timeframe. Overall I have nothing bad to say about AWS services, they are robust, complete and highly scalable. Though we are a multi-cloud company, we use AWS for about 75% of our cloud hosted solutions.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use a hybrid multi-cloud environment where we have multiple cloud vendors that include AWS, Google and Oracle (OCI). AWS (Amazon Web Services) is being used for the dev/test environment on-demand. It was earlier used for customer-facing workloads and analytics but was replaced by Google/Oracle.
  • AWS has a very in-depth and descriptive dashboard that helps to chargeback easily as well as keep track of expenses.
  • It is also highly reliable and scales well with workloads.
  • It is very well suited for a multi-cloud set-up since it is compatible with and supports other public clouds ( Oracle, Google, Microsoft).
  • AWS dashboard is complex and it needs someone with reasonable experience with Cloud deployment and maintenance to use. AWS can reduce the complexity of the AWS console to make it more user-friendly.
  • AWS is also much more expensive and the license metrics are not that well aligned for extremest scale workloads.
  • There is a good amount of install and deployment time using if you are using Oracle database or even Microsoft SQL Server as best practices documents for large scale deployments over AWS is not that easily available.
AWS is very well suited when you need cloud services (compute, storage, analytics, etc) on demand. It tends to be expensive if you are looking at long term workload deployments. It is also not well suited if you are new to public cloud deployments.
September 26, 2019

AWS: short for Awesome

Ryan Hart, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AWS is used in many, but not all, departments within our organization. Leveraging AWS allows for our company to avoid upfront infrastructure investments and scale to customer demand with a very short ramp time (if any at all). Using a secure and best practice common cloud infrastructure mitigates much (but not all) of the security and business continuity risks.
  • AWS is very cost-effective, costing far less than 1% of our revenue.
  • AWS is very reliable, with the services we use being in the 4-11 9s SLA.
  • AWS is very scalable, with the services being on-demand and growing with us as we need them.
  • AWS doesn’t offer the same level of end-to-end software that Azure offers.
  • S3 individual transactions can be expensive. AWS charges for transactions in addition to storage.
  • EC2 instance controls are limited to one option. EC2 allows users to deploy dedicated hosts but they must declare an instance type. Each instance per host must be uniform that requires users to specify configurations like RAM, CPU, and bandwidth requirements.
AWS is a trusted and relied upon partner to power our SAAS platform.
Martha Batruny | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon Web Services is a very helpful platform because of its attractive interface that allows me to obtain and configure capacity information, with minimal friction, that perfectly suits our company. Moreover, it helps me to take complete control of my computer resources and helps to reduce the time required to obtain and to boot new servers, as well. Apart from this, it provides tools to be build-failure resilient applications and to isolate them from common failure scenarios, in a very efficient manner.
  • What I like in it, is its simple notification service which provides a mobile messaging feature to enable push messaging to my mobile devices as well.
  • It helps in sending out notifications to all my teammates with full integrity.
  • Responsive Support.
  • Offers a variety of features that help to manage my workload.
  • It is a bit costly when compared to other tools.
  • This application has great integration power, which enables me to work on different applications, simultaneously. This suits me well.
  • It is playing a significant role in our company.
Each and every feature of this application is unique and is also efficient enough to help me to make suitable decisions for my company. Apart from this, if I talk about any concerns in it or any disastrous drawbacks then there are no words because this application is a lifesaver by every point of view without having anything to objectify. Moreover, this application provides me with the right of pre-built services, which benefit me when building custom cloud-based solutions.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Amazon Web Services in multiple parts of our organization. We use it for the development of our product, QA, Sandbox and UAT scenarios, as well as in our production environment. AWS allows us to reliably provide our customers with the services we have to offer. It also allows us to test the latest technologies and make future plans to develop our software to use them.
  • AWS allows us to scale up (or down) depending on our busy season. Our software has fairly predictable "busy" seasons, so this allows us to properly spend on infrastructure based on needs.
  • EBS Snapshots allow us to create in-time based backups. We use these as part of our DRP/BCP.
  • Understanding the AWS bill is very confusing. Sometimes it is nearly impossible to track what charges are for which particular service is using which feature.
  • The ability to tag all items, including Marketplace items for cost usage report would be especially useful. The cost usage report being more detailed when filtering by usage and cost allocation tags would also be exceptionally helpful.
The flexibility that Amazon Web Services offers is nearly unbeatable in comparison to any other cloud offering. AWS is constantly making improvements on existing services while simultaneously creating new service offerings. In our environment, we have a very heavy MS SQL footprint. AWS allows us to scale up our servers to the best possible instance size based on the current needs.
July 18, 2019

Serverless Saviors!

Denzel Robinson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by an individual department. It provides scalability without the need to manage server infrastructure. It offers versatile services such as data warehousing, machine learning, and performance monitoring. You also have control of who accesses what feature through identity and access management, as well as audit activity through Cloud Trail. It is easy to import your data into AWS, so start-up time is quick.
  • It is highly redundant.
  • You can design performance capable infrastructure at up to 80% cheaper than other services.
  • You can configure your routing based on latency, geo-location, weighted, etc.
  • Menu to access different services is a bit muddled. It could use some streamlining.
  • Interactive and informative training should be offered by Amazon, rather than third party services.
  • Availability zones differ between accounts.
It is a well-balanced service for commercial-scale applications or at homes start-ups. You can experiment with different environments to find a configured that suits your needs, without the fear of long-term consequences. This allows for high performing, highly available architecture that is also cost-effective. You can configure your environment down to the minutia, or launch a wizard to handle it for you, allowing for mass-scale deployments.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AWS is being used by the IT department mainly. We take advantage of manged VMs, serverless databases, and different services in order to publish our web applications to external and internal users. It is also used by our analytics department for predictions.
AWS addresses operational costs related to on-premise infrastructure; it helps to simplify infrastructure management and in other cases, eliminating infrastructure management.
  • Serverless services remove overhead from IT department.
  • Diversity of services. Anything you need, it is there.
  • Support through official channels or even through unofficial ones helps you never get stuck on anything.
  • Mobile app for AWS console is very limited.
  • Site-to-site VPNs provide no logs for troubleshooting.
  • Grub access in VMs would be nice.
AWS is well suited for secure, highly available, low latency web apps, running databases (any engine), storing your data (sensitive or not), running microservices, serverless architectures or IaaS. It can be used by anyone even if you don't have any experience. It works for companies of any size, market, and geographic location.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Both within our organization and for clients, we implement several different Amazon Web Services. We mostly make use of EC2 for hosting private cloud servers/applications, Simple Storage Service (S3) for hosting data in the cloud, both for active use and backup, and S3 Glacier for archiving low-touch data to the cloud. All of these AWS services allow us to provide on-demand, infinitely expandable cloud services as needed.
  • Easy to deploy. It's trivial to create a new S3 bucket, or spin up a new EC2 VM.
  • AWS console is relatively easy to navigate/administrate services. It used to not be the case, but it has improved quite a bit over the years.
  • Cost Explorer service makes it somewhat easier to plan/budget and track/manage AWS cost.
  • Tons of software, services, etc that integrate directly with AWS services -- example, CloudBerry Backup that integrates with S3, Glacier, etc.
  • Cost - Because of the many variables involved in AWS pricing, it can be difficult to budget for AWS costs. For small deployments, this isn't too big of a problem, but when you start using multiple AWS services, even with Cost Explorer, planning can be time-consuming.
  • Some of the terminologies are unnecessary. Too much input from marketing types. They should just say what the service does and note waste time with cutesy names.
  • On the flip side of the thriving AWS ecosystem, the lack of Amazon-created apps to interface with their services is a bit of a bummer. Sometimes you just want a good, documented, first-party backup app, for example.
AWS services are well-suited for organizations of all sizes. Using a backup app like CloudBerry Backup plus AWS S3 or Glacier would be great for a small office/home office media consultant, for example, backing up large quantities of multimedia data to the cloud. S3 buckets can (and should!) also be used to host website content for any size business.It is well-suited for small to medium-sized businesses who need to spin up a server for a specific application and can easily deploy EC2 instances. And of course, as we all know, the biggest enterprise businesses in tech use AWS services to host their cloud.

Who isn't AWS for? Well, there is something to be said about putting all your eggs in one basket. For those who are hesitant to move their businesses to the cloud entirely, I would obviously recommend against using multiple AWS services. Also, for organizations who have strict IT budgets, estimating AWS costs can be tough and might be frowned upon by their finance departments.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use AWS as the infrastructure provider for our entire global operations. From DNS down to database systems, we are using services powered by AWS.
  • Automated server provisioning.
  • Load balancing.
  • Hassle-free OS updates.
  • Hard to get support (even you pay extra for paid support services).
  • Expensive compared to the competition.
  • Regional outages may occur.
AWS is well-suited for mid-to-large scale operations. I do not recommend them for small companies with local operations, as it may be expensive and hard to setup/provision. Companies using AWS may need extra DevOps people to manage AWS resources in order to have the right resource with the rigth price. Mid-to-large scale companies can manage AWS more effectively and leverage their services efficiently.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon Web Services serves multiple purposes for our company. Depending on a clients requirement and budget, we use Amazon Web Services as database storage and for deploying our computing environments. It is generally used, accessed and managed by the team working on that particular project. Our company is a data science product based company and we sell products like inventory management tools, discount management, etc to clients.
  • Secure data storage.
  • Reliability.
  • Less downtime.
  • Faster data retrieval.
  • Easy to use.
  • Costly compared to other alternatives.
  • Billing is a bit confusing.
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. We also have deployed many cron jobs to schedule some tasks to be accomplished automatically.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We migrated our transaction processing system from our own hardware in a data center to the AWS cloud. In addition, we migrated our accounting server as well. So our whole organization is now using it. We also migrated our Oracle database server to Amazon RDS and the performance increase was a nice surprise.
  • The ability to scale instances to optimized cost and performance.
  • Monitoring hardware issues and automatically migrating instances to new hardware when necessary.
  • Cloudwatch alerting allows monitoring of systems 24/7.
  • There are a lot of great services that are only available in the US zone and we would like to use them in Canada.
There are so many services offered by Amazon in addition to simply migrating your server to an AWS instance. We also use SES for our bulk email sending of client invoices (~30,000 per week). We use S3 buckets for storing image files that are on our server inside our internal and customer-facing web apps.
Nathan Sichilongo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our goal as a company is to ensure that our services are efficient and fast to load. After years of using traditional web hosts, we finally made the switch to Amazon Web Services and we have not looked back. Our biggest issues with traditional web hosting was the inability to store large amounts of data and the lack of scalability for our different applications. AWS allows us to run our services more efficiently and without absorbing the high cost of owning servers. For our business it's really about solving 3 problems:
  1. Scaling - The solution should be able to allow us to scale effectively without the hassles of setting up new servers.
  2. Cost effective - The solution should allow us to manage our costs effectively so that none of our clients have to pay more for our services.
  3. Integration - The solution should integrate well into our development teams coding and not slow them down.
Amazon Web Services has done these for us.
  • AWS (Amazon Web Services) is not the easiest virtual service to set up but once you get the hang of it, it's fairly easy to install new instances (servers) and stop them. This is good for multiple reasons e.g we run multiple tests and live production servers for our different services. When we are done with one we can easily turn it off. The cost of the specifications on our virtual servers is only a fraction of the cost of what we would get locally or even on most traditional web services companies.
  • Amazon Web Services can be relatively cost efficient depending on where you are coming from. For our smaller organization, we felt the cost was worth it as other alternatives were not as affordable. The good thing with AWS is you only pay for what you use. If you want S3 (Simple Storage Service), you can pay for that. If you want to run a compute engine, EC2 can be paid for. At the end of the month, you get one bill based on your usage.
  • Because of our size as a company, AWS was easier to deploy compared to local dedicated solutions. All we had to do was take our development team through a simple 2-day course to get them on board. The ease of deployment means that we do not have to hire a specialist to deploy servers for us.
  • 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.
Amazon Web Services is well suited for companies or organizations that need to run specific applications or virtual services on servers. The cost-per-server ratio makes this ideal for testing and live deployment scenarios. It is especially ideal for smaller to medium size IT development teams. If you are looking to just set up a website, for example, AWS may not be ideal unless you are having it custom built.
Stella Gillham | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AWS has completely changed our business, 1000%. We used to be tied to a server located in our office. Access was limited and we were constantly crashing, due to software updates or other items. AWS holds our entire database, which includes over 25 years worth of data. While not a direct reason, because we made the switch to AWS, we have been able to move to a smaller office space because we are not longer dependent on a space that includes a server closet. We've saved a considerable amount of money since the switch because we are no longer calling a developer to come in in an emergency situation to fix our server.
  • Data Storage
  • Affordability
  • Easy to use
  • Because we have a large amount of data, constantly uploading and downloading, our monthly fee isn't a set amount, but instead fluctuates up and down each month.
While we are a small company, we have millions of photos of our work, and AWS has been the perfect host. We have access at any time, and are able to archive data as needed. We are also able to access our archive without any trouble. It's a no-brainer, really. I don't see how anyone would want to go anywhere else. Our data is always available and secure.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AWS is used because it was an easy-to-deploy infrastructure solution for our core applications as well as any future applications. It is easy to provision different resources, connect those resources, and provide a security to them relatively easily. It addresses the issue of spinning up a quick infrastructure with a customized configuration and still keep early costs very low.
  • Launching a VIrtual Machine quickly, especially from AMI images from verified providers.
  • Launching RDS instances, configuring and managing parameters
  • Managing monthly costs and budget
  • Some resources parameters needed and prerequisites are difficult to understand, even with services that have well-known solutions that are easy to understand. For example, IAM and SSO solutions are more complicated and confusing than other services.
  • Generally, the User Experience is lacking WITHIN services is poor compared to other comparable platforms, however high-level access to the many services in AWS is good - as compared to other platforms.
  • Some services seem fragmented - as interrelated functions withing services don't seem to provide detail weel without some work. The billing area is an example of where getting and reviewing information is difficult.
It is well suited for quickly provisioning a web and application hosting platform that you are able to have greater control over managing additional resources.
It is well suited for databases.
It is well suited for storage.
It is well suited for experimental applications.
It is not as well suited authentication and user management.
Jackie Bassett | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
AWS is Infrastructure As A Service for us so we can focus on what our core strengths are. We started with AWS 8 years ago for one of our Strategic Business Units and honestly waited for other competitors to meet or exceed what we received in services from AWS. While we did shop around, early on, largely for pricing reasons as our consumption increased across our entire organization. Then Bezos did what he's best at: he responded to market demand with even more elasticity, even greater service levels (for which he is known to be maniacal) and after all of our shopping around, we made a proactive decision to stay!
  • Customer service: There's no beating AWS for their customer service. They've clearly been trained to lisetn to understand the core issue you've called them for. Our customers satisfaction is in direct correlation to what AWS can deliver, so this is the #1 reason we chose and have stayed with AWS for 8 years.
  • Agility: We have demand cycles that fluctuate, largely without alot of notice. It doesn't take more than 1 phone call to address any increase in bandwidth. In fact, they're more likely to reach out to us with any enhancements we might need or shoul be considering.
  • Performance: We've never experienced a slowdown, nor failure - even when there've been internet-wide issues. They're always innovating based on every customer, and we all benefit from Bezos vision of what infrastructure technology should do for business.
  • It's such a well conceived service, I can't think of anything that's missing in functionality for our HC company. What we ask of AWS is to be so reliable, so customer-focused and so fast that we can just do what we do best, and forget about their job in our success.
  • Healthcare: Since this is our core market, we're very interested in watching this vertical evolve and Amazon's vision for it. We'd value more insights and collaboration with Bezos on what our vision is too.
Infrastructure as a service is what every sized company should be doing these days, so we can all focus on our expertise. We were lucky that we chose AWS in our, and their earliest days as I can't imagine having built out several SBUs and then having to migrate over to them now. Google would prefer to own this space but we found them far less attractive to work with. Google's a search engine that sells ads. Even as Google try to build out fiber, they're never have the level of customer service that businesses relying on infrastructure need. Amazon, is really the only and the best choice!
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