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Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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

Amazon AWS
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
257
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (2nd)
IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 13.6%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.1%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS13.6%
IBM Public Cloud3.1%
Other83.3%
PaaS Clouds
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Oct 16, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.
Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is stable. For the cloud version, we require some installation platforms and we don't have a server with us right now. We require it from Amazon AWS. We can just plan and get the AWS server."
"The technical support is good."
"It integrates well."
"Serverless computing: This can be more cost-efficient just regarding computing resources than renting or purchasing a fixed quantity of servers, which involves periods of underutilization or nonuse."
"It has a lot of new features that make our lives easier in terms of what we want it to do in the house."
"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."
"The scalability of Amazon AWS is excellent. I would rate it as a 10 out of 10 because they have massive power."
"It's very easy to use."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."
"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"The beauty of cloud service providers, especially public cloud service providers, is that they are scalable every time when you need them because their payment model is pay-as-you-go."
"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."
"It is easy to deploy what you need for the initial setup"
"This is a predictable and dependable service."
 

Cons

"The pricing of AWS is very unclear. They make it quite confusing."
"Could be more user friendly and include additional applications."
"The interface could be improved."
"The use of this tool should be extended to Google and Apple operating systems."
"While AWS often is at the top of my list to recommend to people, I always have to tell them, "Hey, you got to be careful because if they don't like you, they can shut you down in a heartbeat. And they can kill an entire company by doing that.""
"The price could be better. Support for data analytics could be better. I don't see much support for data analytics. They have a lot of support in Azure, but I don't see a lot of innovation on the data analytics side in AWS."
"The dashboard and interface need improvement."
"The price of the solution is comparatively quite high in comparison with that of Azure."
"Recently, we just faced some issues with the operating system due to the end of life of CentOS 6...So, then the client wanted to try it out under AWS instead of IBM. In short, it has some complexities."
"The product should offer more computing, similar to Amazon."
"Support could be improved."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"Maybe performance enhancers and reports could be better improved. If they do so, it would be better. Of all the drawbacks I saw, this would be the biggest enhancement."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."
"Normally, for any cloud, we get a lot of information on the web, but that is missing in the case of IBM Public Cloud. We need some technical support documents. That is the only thing missing in IBM Public Cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for Amazon AWS annually."
"Much faster than other solutions at a super low cost."
"This is a subscription-based service and there are licensing fees."
"I rate the tool's pricing a six to seven out of ten."
"The price tends to be higher, but that is a usual case when prioritizing reliable backup solutions for servers and other infrastructure."
"The Oracle licensing is higher than it is with Amazon AWS."
"Licensing is on a yearly basis. I believe we are satisfied with the current pricing. Otherwise, we would have switched to another vendor."
"I find that Amazon AWS is expensive."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Oct 16, 2021
Oct 16, 2021
I agree with Vik and Marcelo. AWS cloud is more matured, but you would like to run some specific IBM business tools like document management, IBM Watson for AI, SPSS analytics then IBM Cloud should be preferred.
2 out of 3 answers
VD
Oct 12, 2021
Amazon AWS is superior to IBM public for several reasons.  The most important reason is the diversity of software tools, the geographic diversity and availability, lower operating costs and excellent customer service. All cloud companies are simply playing catch-up to AWS. 
MJ
Oct 14, 2021
AWS, the main reason is the number of DC distributed arround the world
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
University
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise112
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

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Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What needs improvement with IBM Cloud?
The front end is not pervasive, so it is very difficult get the status of your current services or account from a mobile device.
What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?
The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
IBM Bluemix
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. IBM Public Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.