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Alibaba Cloud vs Amazon AWS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon AWS
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
255
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 12.6%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.0%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Aderonke  Adeyegbe - PeerSpot reviewer
Good storage, great for smaller companies, and has impressive support
We're all aware that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation, and we believe that Alibaba, due to its pedigree, has what it takes to take small businesses to the cloud. It's a game-changer, for sure. The storage is very useful. It is easy to set up. Technical support is good. It is quite stable.
Arun Srivastav - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for automatic scaling of resources and provides built-in firewalls and security features, eliminating the need for external security solutions
One thing that's a bit different is that we're still accustomed to speaking to someone directly. AWS doesn't offer that kind of support. It's only through bots. You're speaking to chatbots, and that can sometimes be frustrating because there's no person on the other side. AI is not a substitute for a person. AWS marketplace is very strong, but somehow AWS doesn't promote it much. They have a huge customer base across the globe, and if products were launched in their marketplace, they could sell like hotcakes. They should improve their marketplace and promote the same product across the globe. They can take a cut, but they should promote it. That's something they don't do very much. So, AWS should promote its marketplace software. The company should promote it aggressively. Currently, they keep it very subtle. If you ask for it, they'll help you out. But they don't seem to advertise, "You're building a product on our platform? Why don't you sell it in our marketplace?" Improvement in AI: AWS is a little behind Microsoft Azure in terms of AI. AWS is still getting there, but the kind of examples and help files available in Azure for AI are much better. So AWS still needs to work on its AI functionality.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"The installation is easy."
"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."
"We use the solution to run VMs."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"What's good about Alibaba Cloud is its database service. It's also good in the virtual machine area."
"Cloud Management has been a valuable feature."
"The main reason why we use EC2 is because we are not dependent on maintaining the hardware inside our premises. Also, we have full control over the infrastructure, and we can modify it as per our own requirements."
"There are a lot of features that I really like including ease of deployment, ease of build and release, and also that it is heavily focused on a PaaS or SaaS model."
"Almost everything is good. It is a whole ecosystem. It is not only the storage, computing, or networking. It is interesting in the way all things are combined to form this ecosystem. It is a very well-built and logical ecosystem that has some small building blocks. These building blocks can be used in the right way to build a much bigger ecosystem that is robust, secure, scalable."
"The most valuable feature is scalability, as it is very easy to scale."
"You can build and release applications quickly with AWS instead of waiting for months to get the necessary hardware. That's the real benefit. The time-to-market for developing applications is much shorter."
"We have many projects where we can resolve a lot of issues with Amazon AWS. It has given customers a lot of visibility with their data. Many customers do not know what they can learn from their data and I provide them with this using useful information using Amazon AWS."
"The scalability of the product is the solution's most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"It is not robust."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"The solution should have more integration."
"The user experience must be improved."
"AWS should provide even more support and engagement to accelerate the adoption of new services and features."
"The price could be better."
"AWS is very expensive."
"The pricing could be adjusted to provide more advantages versus current on-premise solutions for business applications."
"I'd like to see AWS implement consolidated billing for businesses operating under one group. We want to consolidate the functionalities but keep the billing separate. That is a challenge we've faced, and I feel it's something they can improve on. For example, maybe you have three businesses that are operating under one group, and you want each entity to have a separate bill for the respective workload that they're using."
"Our API Management solution is integrated with Lambda, and last year, we had an issue while upgrading Lambda from version 8.0 to version 10. It seemed like Lambda runtime was changed by AWS, and there was a bug that caused the downtime. The loading of the dashboard is slow. It could be because I am located in China."
"Pricing is the one feature everyone wants AWS to improve."
"The pricing of AWS is very unclear. They make it quite confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not that expensive."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"Reasonably priced and comparable to similar services."
"The solution is on a pay-as-use pricing model. The price of the solution could always be better but it is priced competitively."
"We pay a monthly licensing fee. It's below $100 a month."
"It's expensive."
"Licensing fees depend on the contract. It can be monthly or on-demand resources."
"One of the best-kept ways to reduce costs is to develop it on serverless technologies with AWS Lambda, SNS, DynamoDB, and S3."
"They have a pay-as-you-go subscription."
"I find Amazon AWS very expensive compare to Microsoft Azure."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
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Also Known As

No data available
Amazon Web Services, AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Amazon AWS and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.