AWS CloudFormation - The native AWS IaC
October 21, 2025

AWS CloudFormation - The native AWS IaC

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with AWS CloudFormation

We were looking for an IaC technology, something refreshing after so much hassles with the current bloated terraform repo (our faults, not terraform's). Given that 99.99% of our infra is on AWS CloudFormation & CDK seem like a natural choice.

On top of that, with limited Platform team, the ability to use Typescript for IaC is a big plus, as the software engineers can participate in maintaining their team's own infra.

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

Cons

  • The transactional part could be headache-inducing if you're caught surprised
  • Missing some features like moved / import blocks from Terraform
  • The whole availability of OOP techniques opens the usual OOP can of worms
  • Individual team members can have their personal sandbox up & running in minutes
  • Standardized environment templates shared across organization
  • Sophisticated RBAC & cost allocation
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.

Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.

However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
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 (CDKTF) seems to be a new choice with rising popularity. But well, it adds another layer of abstraction.

Do you think AWS CloudFormation delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with AWS CloudFormation's feature set?

Yes

Did AWS CloudFormation live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of AWS CloudFormation go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy AWS CloudFormation again?

Yes

If you're using AWS, then AWS CloudFormation is a native option.

If you have a team with individual sandbox accounts, AWS CloudFormation sharable snippets make night & day difference. Team members can quickly get their own personal standardized environments up & running. Then equally tear it down when they're done with it.

If you insist on a managed, source-controlled IaC then CDK is a natural choice, which is based on AWS CloudFormation.

AWS CloudFormation Feature Ratings

Configuration Management
8.8
Infrastructure Automation
9
Automated Provisioning
10
Parallel Execution
8
Node Management
7
Reporting & Logging
8
Inventory Control
9
Version Control
10
Role-based access control
9

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