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Alibaba Cloud vs SAP S4HANA on 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)
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP S4HANA on AWS
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.2%, down from 13.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP S4HANA on AWS is 1.9%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP S4HANA on AWS1.9%
Alibaba Cloud5.2%
Other92.9%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Jayakrishna Amm - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
End-to-end accounting has been streamlined and secures data with automated controls
SAP S4HANA on AWS is mostly well secured because you need a VPN of the company you are working in to log in and view only with the VPN. It is not possible to connect to a random network, and it is very safe. In terms of usage and automation, SAP S4HANA on AWS is very good at automation, where instead of manually punching entry by entry as with Tally, Zoho, or NetSuite, you can do a bulk upload and close it from one GL to another GL entry from one T-code to another T-code. These are all the options and features, and it is user-friendly. Once you learn SAP S4HANA on AWS, you tend to know how to customize things and what features you want. You can add in features by working closely with the SAP team, whether it is a direct SAP team or through a contract with some agent. There are numerous things you can do; it is not limited to only one function. You can have end-to-end control, and back-dated entries are not possible as in Tally or Zoho, which is very good in terms of security and safety. There are no accounting frauds; we can even identify who has done an entry by name. It is very secure; a password gets locked automatically after two incorrect attempts, and you have to contact the SAP team for that. Data privacy is very good, and overall, it is a better option. Regarding real-time analytics features in SAP S4HANA on AWS, you can integrate with Qlik or Power BI, and I believe there is also an analytics component within SAP itself. SAP S4HANA on AWS provides one analytics tool, and these tools can be integrated and customized however you want. It is very easy to do analytics; you can download reports or integrate those reports with Power BI. It is very convenient that way. When it comes to AI capabilities integrated with SAP S4HANA on AWS, I am not certain because most of it comes via tools such as Qlik and Power BI. There are multiple other things that can help you integrate and work on it. For example, integrating Power BI with N28 or Cloud is convenient with tools such as Copilot. However, I am unsure how it works in SAP S4HANA on AWS because most organizations do not allow integrating AI with SAP S4HANA on AWS.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"Alibaba also offers a lot of flexibility compared to Google Cloud, where you can only use Google's Tools."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features, and ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"I like that they are very familiar with our VM which makes it easy to use."
"We use the product for many different functions; financial production, material management, distribution functions, everything."
"The internal integration within departments and integration with third parties is simplified in the system."
"I recommend SAP S4HANA if your team is well-prepared and your internal organization is educated before implementation."
"They have their own instances where you can host your database."
"There are two main features that we find very valuable. One is the interface and the new user experience. That's really, really helpful for the end-user. The second is the HANA database itself because it speeds up the process. In other solutions, like Oracle, there is a lot of redundancy that slows things down."
"We have found the retail business features to be the most valuable."
"This solution has one of the most modern databases and it is very stable."
 

Cons

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."
"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."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"The flexibility of the solution could be improved."
"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"One thing which is really killing a lot of people using this product is because they have been using it for twenty or twenty-five years and a lot of the customers' customizations are not working anymore."
"SAP S4HANA could be improved by adding a click-to-deploy model."
"Currently, we have some integration areas like Concur and Ariba that could be improved. Having these integrations as a single source rather than working in silos would be beneficial for customers."
"Deployment is quite complex."
"The AI aspect of SAP S4HANA can be improved."
"The solution's overall enterprise support could be improved."
"Not just S4 but for SAP in general, the price is a little high because they have implemented a new licensing scheme on a number of connections. The price being too expensive is some of the feedback we get from our customers."
"SAP S4HANA's pricing model should be more flexible and transparent - there's a lot of negotiation and internal factors, and some customers get better value and services for the same product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"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"
"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"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."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"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."
"It is a significant investment, around six hundred thousand dollars, and it involves both a one-time on-premises installation on servers and a cloud subscription with different flavors for SAP S4HANA."
"It's expensive. It would be good if AWS and Azure could reduce the computing cost for people who move to the public cloud."
"SAP S4HANA's pricing model should be more flexible and transparent - there's a lot of negotiation and internal factors, and some customers get better value and services for the same product."
"The vendors have different pricing, ways of serving, security, and providing the service. You go and compare the offerings. Some might be better with smaller companies. For example, Microsoft Azure can handle small and medium-sized companies best but still can cover some large companies. Whereas Amazon AWS and IBM are going to cover sized companies. There's no clear advantage. Probably Amazon AWS may have been the first to be certified by SAP as a cloud-hosting partner. Then Microsoft Azure and IBM were certified at the same time. You have to partner up and be certified by the software."
"We pay an annual subscription fee for the solution, which is slightly expensive."
"SAP S4HANA on AWS has reasonable pricing."
"On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the highest price, I rate the solution's pricing an eight."
"The price of SAP S4HANA on AWS is reasonable, given how much it costs to maintain a scratch-built system. To upgrade the support there is a fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Thanks for sharing these insights! I completely agree that Microsoft Azure provides IT administrators with strong centralized management, robust security controls through RBAC, and tools for cost o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP S4HANA on AWS?
Customers need to pay for a license on a yearly basis with a one-year strategy. I believe SAP S4HANA on AWS is a little bit more expensive than other solutions.
What needs improvement with SAP S4HANA on AWS?
I want to improve the cloud data center by establishing a local data center in the country.
What is your primary use case for SAP S4HANA on AWS?
SAP S4HANA on AWS is useful when comparing it with on-premise solutions because everything is maintained in the cloud. With managed services, you do not have to worry about your data center or mana...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP S/4HANA on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Brigade Group, DoHome, Royal FloraHolland
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. SAP S4HANA on AWS and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.