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reviewer2000469 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Great EC2, simple storage, and good security
Pros and Cons
  • "We deploy our core application and our integration platform on AWS EC2 instances. These applications contain multiple containerized Python Django applications, which need to scale up and down dynamically."
  • "It could be made cheaper. I know we spend a lot of money each month on AWS."

What is our primary use case?

We deploy our core application and our integrations platform on AWS EC2 instances. Both applications contain multiple containerized Python Django applications, which need to scale with how often and how intensely customers use the platform. 

We need a secure cloud environment to support our new self-service API, allowing customers to hit our services from outside an outside service. AWS provides the security, scalability, and flexibility to make this happen.

We also store large customer files on AWS S3 Buckets.

How has it helped my organization?

Without AWS, our organization simply would not exist. Our entire tech stack is served on AWS. Thanks to AWS, we have been able to save money. Thanks to AWS, we have been able to save time and utilize technical resources in other ways. Other ways include building out the front end of our application as well as the back end of our application. Without AWS, we would have to hire network/server engineers, which would take away from our overall speed of growth.

What is most valuable?

We have found the Elastic Cloud Compute service (EC2) as well as the simple storage solution (S3) to be the most valuable aspects of the solution.

We deploy our core application and our integration platform on AWS EC2 instances. These applications contain multiple containerized Python Django applications, which need to scale up and down dynamically. They also need to be secure to prevent unwanted bad actors from using our AWS compute instances for malicious activity.

Finally, we find the S3 buckets to be quite valuable. S3 allows us to securely store large customer files without fear of them being compromised, changed, lost, or corrupted.

What needs improvement?

I am not an expert in AWS, nor do I work in the dev-ops department, so I might not be the best person to ask this question. It could be made cheaper. I know we spend a lot of money each month on AWS.

Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS
April 2025
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
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For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using AWS since the company was founded in 2017 - about five years.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1505535 - PeerSpot reviewer
Corporate IT Applications Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Robust, easy straightforward, and works well for our e-commerce solution
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability is magnificent, it's spectacular."
  • "When you are first starting, the initial setup can be a bit complex, but it gets easier after that."

What is our primary use case?

We use Amazon AWS as an IaaS Cloud for our e-commerce sites.

How has it helped my organization?

Because of the stability and scalability AWS provides, our team can now focus on how to engage and delight our customers instead of constantly being fixing production issues.

What is most valuable?

We have not had any problems at all. 

In the 4 years that we have been using  IaaS services from Amazon, we have not had any issues.

It's a great IaaS cloud. They are the leaders. No cloud provider can match Amazon right now.

Other providers are improving year over year, but Amazon is still ahead at least two years.

What needs improvement?

Working with AWS requieres your organization to invest in training your team to better use and take advantaje of all that AWS has to offer.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for 4 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

AWS provides without a doubt the most mature and stable IaaS cloud in the market.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have thousands of customers who are going to our websites to purchase goods and it takes a matter of minutes to scale the infrastructure both horizontally or vertically.

How are customer service and technical support?

Great services, assistance and response time from the AWS team

How was the initial setup?

It depends on how complex is the architecture of the solution to be deployed, in our case because Magento is sort of "native" for AWS it has been straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implement through a vendor team specialized implementing and managing Magento on AWS

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Amazon AWS a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS
April 2025
Learn what your peers think about Amazon AWS. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Scrum Master | Project Manager | SW Developer at Mobi7
Real User
Good availability and reliability, with a user-friendly set of tools
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the availability, as we work in different availability zones."
  • "At times we find ourselves a little trapped, with the lack of customization, for what we need."

What is our primary use case?

I am a software developer and I have experience with several languages and technology stacks. Amazon AWS is one of the technologies that I work with. It's integrated with the solution that we have. It's a continuous integration and deployment pipeline.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the availability, as we work in different availability zones.

It has been easy to use, and the tools included are quite friendly.

The reliability and ease of use are the benefits.

What needs improvement?

At times we find ourselves a little trapped, with the lack of customization, for what we need. That doesn't mean that the tool is lacking it means that we are trying to be more creative than the tool and the rest of the market. In cases like this, it is we who need to revise our plans.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Amazon AWS for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We are pretty happy with the stability.

The only issue that we have encountered is when Amazon had problems with one of their availability zones that impacted half of the world. We found that we were impacted as well, but it wasn't that difficult for us because we already had a solution with multiple zones. We had a minimal outage, as we were swapping from one server to another. It took less than ten minutes for us, so we were pretty pleased.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable solution.

We have both options of vertical and horizontal scalability. Everything that we have needed so far has worked well. We have no complaints.

We are in the process of scaling up. We have an IoT solution and if we translate that to endpoints and devices that are monitored, we would have 70,000 devices, and counting, in the field. In terms of clients, there are 300 to 400, each of them with their own users.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have contacted technical support and because we are just a small client, rather than a partner, it can take 30 minutes to get a solution. We have not had to use it much to this point, so this may not be a fair evaluation.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This solution was already in place when I started with the company. AWS was in-place and they have never switched to anything else.

How was the initial setup?

Our build, or deployment, is dependent on the application, but the pipeline for submitting a new commit and making it a hot deploy would take from five to twenty minutes, depending on the solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For our infrastructure, the cost is approximately $25 per device, and you have to include the other tools that we have in the cloud, for a total of approximately $200,000 per year. Our tools included several databases and Kubernetes. If the price was a little bit cheaper, I would consider this solution to be a ten out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I'm not very experienced in the solution yet. I don't have a clear view of all that is offered, but with the experience that I do have, I'm pretty happy with the features and it is difficult for me to find where they are lacking.

Currently, I am switching to Redshift, which is one of their solutions that is already deployed. I can't say that I'm missing anything from their roadmap, so far.

I would rate Amazon AWS a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1483656 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant General Manager, Information Technology & Infrastructure at a real estate/law firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to provision new virtual services, easy to scale, and has most of the infrastructure components
Pros and Cons
  • "It is quite easy to provision new virtual services for our use. The procedures are quite straightforward and simple as compared to other competitors, such as Microsoft or Huawei. This is what we are happy about with Amazon AWS. It is pretty mature in terms of the availability of most of the infrastructure components. If you want to deploy a server on your platform, everything is already there in terms of the operating system, network components, securities, and data encryption. It is also quite scalable and stable."
  • "Our use case is limited to virtual services and RPA development. We are not using it quite heavily, and there are not many issues or problems so far. However, it would be great if it could be integrated with more AI features and proactive monitoring. It could also have more automatic capacity expansion features. For example, when renting out some space, memory, or computing power, the service can have the capacity to expand by itself without being manually handled by us."

What is our primary use case?

It has been useful for running virtual services for some of our internal applications. Some of the developers are using it for doing some kind of development work on robotics process automation or RPA.

What is most valuable?

It is quite easy to provision new virtual services for our use. The procedures are quite straightforward and simple as compared to other competitors, such as Microsoft or Huawei. This is what we are happy about with Amazon AWS.

It is pretty mature in terms of the availability of most of the infrastructure components. If you want to deploy a server on your platform, everything is already there in terms of the operating system, network components, securities, and data encryption. It is also quite scalable and stable.

What needs improvement?

Our use case is limited to virtual services and RPA development. We are not using it quite heavily, and there are not many issues or problems so far. However, it would be great if it could be integrated with more AI features and proactive monitoring. It could also have more automatic capacity expansion features. For example, when renting out some space, memory, or computing power, the service can have the capacity to expand by itself without being manually handled by us.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is quite stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is quite scalable. It is easy to expand and unsubscribe. In terms of the number of users, we have ten administrators from the IT side.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have interacted with them. They are quite responsive to our inquiries.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

What about the implementation team?

It was pretty much done by our in-house developers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing is on a yearly basis. I believe we are satisfied with the current pricing. Otherwise, we would have switched to another vendor.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution. Amazon AWS cloud is pretty mature in terms of availability for most of the infrastructure components. It is a one-stop shop that gives everybody simple steps to get things done, which is great.

I would rate Amazon AWS an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user677697 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
CloudWatch provides many plugins to manage various types of logs centrally.

What is most valuable?

Auto Scaling and CloudWatch Logs are the most valuable features. With just a few criteria to scale in/out of, you can save the life and time for DevOps.

The CloudWatch Logs feature provides many plugins, so that we are able to manage various types of logs centrally.

How has it helped my organization?

In the era, we used private clouds as network virtualization must be controlled by the IT division, server rooms were in the remote branches and DevOps were distributed in various areas. Now, we can use the same API and the same workflow without considering to centralize the logs.

What needs improvement?

IaaS is sometimes way too complicated to complete one task.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for around eight months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far, the VPC is sometimes not that reliable. Therefore, we have to set up a redundant VPC to make sure the connection is always available.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We do not have any scalability issues until now.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have never used technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we surveyed OpenStack. However, due to the time, budget and manpower limitations, building a private cloud is not practical in our case.

How was the initial setup?

Managing IaaS was very difficult in the beginning, i.e., tons of jargon to get up and I struggled for months.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Try the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It is yet another good choice because sometimes, what you need is just a platform and not to build a platform from the infrastructure.

What other advice do I have?

When your division grows to a certain scale and you really need DevOps, then you could move either to a private/public cloud. Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user261489 - PeerSpot reviewer
Program and Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
As with all public clouds, there is still a dilemma with security, but provides a rich set of services for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

AWS is a good platform for non-MySQL, MySQL, and Hadoop databases, but it’s not as good for RDBMS ones like MS SQL. It still has many missing features -- like replication, backup policy, and the ability to store/attach databases from a local drive -- but it has many good features for big data. 

Its new AppStream service will pre-process graphics, including 3D renderings, and blast the results to mobile clients. Its Kinesis service for streaming data sets the stage for building big data apps on AWS, the basic architecture for the internet of things. As for its Hadoop capabilities, AWS launched its Elastic MapReduce (EMR) a long time back. It is the best cloud services provider for open source software for databases, operating systems hosting apps, and many other customized applications.

As discussed with many tech professionals, there is still a dilemma with security like there was a decade ago when online e-commerce business started and people weren’t prepared to share their credit card and bank details. Now, as online shopping is common, I am expecting the same trend will grow for public cloud very soon. AWS security is very good and they are following all the required security regulations as much other public cloud providers are doing, as they know any security breach could impact their entire business.

Pricing is another key concern when private cloud is used for big business and multiple growth on data. The price is a big debate and requires lot of analysis, as it is a question for big organizations. But no doubt, AWS is quite good for a small setup as it’s very cost effective and provides an eco-setup.

AWS is quite for good cloud services such as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. It provides a rich set of services and integrated monitoring tools alongside a competitive pricing model. AWS offers a full range of computer and storage offerings, including on-demand instances and specialized services such as Amazon EMR, and Cluster GPU instances. Amazon Cloud Trail and Amazon CloudWatch services are very good monitoring and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a good administration and security feature for administrators to use.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user544134 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user544134IT Coordinator at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User

Thank you for the information on the AWS solution.

Steven Odera - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Contractor at Legacy Lighthouse Ltd
Real User
Reliable, and scalable, but artificial intelligence tools could improve
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the EC2 instance for web applications with CDN Networks."
  • "There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on."

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Amazon AWS are the EC2 instance for web applications with CDN Networks.

AWS Cloudfront is the official reference for the Global content delivery network (CDN) which significantly reduces latency or slow loading times.

What needs improvement?

There is a feature called Kinesis, which has to do with image processing. There are a few artificial intelligence tools that Amazon AWS should improve on.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have found Amazon AWS to be stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Amazon AWS is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support has been challenging. I have found more tickets are being placed and the availability of the agents has been limited for some of the team members.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We selected Amazon AWS because it was the most mature at the time. It was the initial cloud provider. Then Google and Microsoft also came up with Azure and TensorFlow. TensorFlow is catching up with a few code web programming tools, and that is a point of interest as well as image processing.

In a future release, the solution could improve on the IoT integrations and API access.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of Amazon AWS is complex due to how infrastructure is set up in different organizations.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For the initial 12 months, the solution is reasonably priced. On enterprise license contracts where you negotiate, have been reasonable too.

What other advice do I have?

I would encourage the student package for someone who is starting out, they can get acquainted with the interface and the tools available.

I rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sohail Iqbal - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Systems Architect at Orison Tech
Consultant
Good community support, but the pricing could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "AWS has large community support."
  • "The billing should be more competitive."

What is our primary use case?

We are both a user and a provider of services to some of our clients. We are not official partners, but we provide regular services to set up our clients' infrastructure on AWS. We deploy their projects there with their own account so that we can hand over technical ownership whenever they need it. As a result, they can continue to provide their services to other consultants. we offer these services to set up their systems and their services.

We use Amazon AWS mostly for typical hosting for applications, some emails, queuing services, and databases most of the time.

What is most valuable?

I am not sure what features they'd like.

AWS has large community support. You are never stuck with anything if something doesn't work in time.

What needs improvement?

We don't have any issues for the time being, because I intend to use this in a limited, not exhaustive, manner. For the time being, we're fine with whatever we're doing.

The billing should be more competitive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Amazon AWS for more than two years.

As AWS is online we are always using the most current version. We have some virtual machines that you create based on the version when you initialize them, but the services that you use on a daily basis are always the most recent version.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have a limited number of users and use standard services.

How are customer service and support?

There have been no issues. The support is good.

There are no issues at the moment.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were hosting on bare metal servers. Then we moved on to VPS servers, which were managed by our technical staff. And now we're utilizing cloud services.

That technical management part for the multiple VPS, as well as for ourselves and our client, is taking a long time to maintain and everything. As a result, we went to manage services.

These are some additional options. I've seen that Azure has the best cloud dashboard, but the billing and other features are very difficult to use. The same as any other cloud service. The documentation is far superior.

How was the initial setup?

The installation is straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cloudflare and other services are developing more affordable solutions. They provide a much cheaper alternative to Amazon's S3 storage buckets. That's something that could be improved.

This should be comparable to the other options on the market.

Billing for cloud services can be difficult at times. In the VPS, you only have quota-based billing management, but in the cloud, it's as if every bit and byte and every I/O operation is metered, and your bills can be surprisingly high when you've published something that can attract a lot of traffic, which is one catch.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We researched Microsure and Google Firebase, but we are not using these solutions.

What other advice do I have?

I'm not an expert. I don't have any advice at the moment, but whenever they're looking to host some applications, when there's a lot of traffic or bandwidth, they should think about it carefully. 

I would rate Amazon AWS a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Amazon AWS Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.