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Amazon EC2 vs Zadara comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 EC2
Ranking in Compute Service
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zadara
Ranking in Compute Service
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (33rd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (16th), Public Cloud Storage Services (15th), File and Object Storage (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Compute Service category, the mindshare of Amazon EC2 is 5.7%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zadara is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compute Service
 

Featured Reviews

KatlegoMabila - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers customization and flexibility with great support
Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.
Kirubel Behailu - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhancing storage management efficiency with user-friendly experience
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage.  I typically use it for our infrastructure and offer both Zadara and Microsoft Azure to our customers Zadara…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Amazon EC2 is its ability to spin a new virtual machine in a few seconds."
"The scalability and elasticity are helpful."
"EC2 has the typical advantages of using the cloud. It's easy to provision and set up."
"Amazon EC2 is really reliable and provides great flexibility."
"My company uses the tool for cloud monitoring. We have a production, staging, deployment, and testing environment in AWS. However, we do not use the managed service of AWS yet. My team uses the required parameters for security like VPC, firewall, gates of security as well as the external layer of the app."
"The tool's performance, reliability, security and flexibility are good. We can use it remotely. The autoscaling functionality of EC2 is quite good. I appreciate the DevOps suite for tracking development tasks. This functionality is important for pure software development."
"An advantage of Amazon is that it offers a wide range of infrastructure services with an easy way to configure them."
"The setup is straightforward and it takes around an hour."
"A nice feature is the immutable object storage, which can be used in conjunction with Veeam."
"One of the most useful features is that they provide iSCSI as a service."
"It provides very satisfactory storage performance."
"Zadara is a fully-fledged platform, and our customers are happy with its use."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility in terms of deployment options."
"Zadara saves both time and money."
"The most valuable feature of Zadara is its ease of use and safety. Overall the solution is a complete package, it has all the features needed."
"One of the most valuable features is its integration with other cloud solutions. We have a presence within Amazon EC2 and we leverage compute instances in there. Being able to integrate with compute, both locally within Zadara, as well as with other cloud vendors such as Amazon, is very helpful, while also being able to maintain extremely low latency between those connections."
 

Cons

"We're expecting to have Graviton instances. Graviton means it's not internal, it's a low-cost instance. At present time, Graviton is not supported for a few packages."
"am concerned about the tool's data security."
"Support doesn't share or give insights on OS-based issues. That needs to improve because if someone is buying an EC2 instance with the Windows server and SQL license, the client expects that there will be a minimum level of support."
"Amazon EC2 could improve its dashboards and UI, they need to be more user-friendly."
"An area for improvement in Amazon EC2 is the cost because it's a bit higher than competitor pricing."
"Pricing-wise, it is a bit high."
"The support could be more responsive."
"If the solution was cheaper, if the price was less, it would be better."
"The cost is not favorable as Zadara does not provide competitive rates for regions like South Africa and Ethiopia."
"The initial installation was difficult because many steps required the command line interface (CLI). Maintenance can also be complicated, especially when deeper troubleshooting requires navigating the CLI and searching for logs."
"Cost-wise, because it's a pay-per-use model, it may ultimately end up costing us more in the long run than something we developed ourselves."
"There are still some storage features that they lack. For example, other vendors implemented the auto-tiering feature a long time ago, while Zadara Storage Cloud is just coming out with this feature today. So, they are a little bit late compared to the market."
"Some of the features are a little bit slow to come to market."
"I would like to see them be a little bit more proactive in terms of the patches and updates that are available. I would like to see more disclosure and information around what fixes or what enhancements are available within a patch, and help in coordinating and scheduling that. Right now, it's driven more by the customer in reaching out via a support ticket."
"The management interface is more geared towards end-users rather than a service partner like ourselves, and there are improvements that can be made around that."
"Currently, when we do firmware upgrades, it sometimes causes issues and is not as nondisruptive as desired."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon EC2 is a very expensive solution."
"The use of Amazon EC2 does not incur any licensing fees."
"You pay as you use it."
"EC2 pricing is somewhat transparent, in that AWS provides pricing for all instance types. However, the number of pricing options can be confusing."
"I am using the tier three Amazon service. I am not going to use another solution other than Amazon EC2 because here in Pakistan there are some payment issues for solutions abroad."
"We are paying about $1,500 a month for one of the services."
"Amazon EC2 has a pay-as-you-use cost model."
"It's expensive, and it could be cheaper."
"For our use, it's appropriately priced and overall, it's proved to be very cost-effective against other tier-one vendors."
"The pricing is very competitive and the fact that they have very compelling discounts for multi-year commitments is great."
"If you just take the street price of Zadara Storage Cloud and look up the price or cost per hour, then you could think that Zadara Storage Cloud is extremely expensive or a solution only for enterprise use. That is not true. You need to compare the entire system. This means that you don't stop looking at just the street price, but you need to consider all the features, requirements, and costs of support as well as the extra cost that other vendors have. Other players just play with hidden, additional costs. Everything is included in Zadara Storage Cloud's licensing cost; what you get is what you pay for."
"It is a nice licensing model and it makes it quite simple because we just pay for what we use, and the bill that comes shows us exactly what customers are using what resources."
"The price of Zadara is very good and it covers everything. There is no subscription needed."
"The pricing and licensing are very simple and the cost is predictable, although, like everything that you pay for as you use, you have to be mindful of what you're using."
"One of the factors that ruled out several providers was cost. They were way too expensive for the volume of data that we needed and the speed at which we needed to be able to manage it. There aren't a lot of providers that can do that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
I'm going to mention again that there is quite a bit of complexity within the pricing of EC2 instances. I'm just going to give it six out of ten since there are various standards, upfront and commi...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
There is not much to be improved or enhanced. One of the things that need to be looked into is the complex pricing, which is rather intense. Sometimes, clients don't understand the structures. Thes...
What needs improvement with Zadara?
There is room for improvement in pricing as it is currently quite expensive. Adding AI capabilities could enhance the offering as well.
What is your primary use case for Zadara?
Our customers are using Zadara for their research and development environments. We provide infrastructure for government projects, but we are often not fully aware of their specific usage. I typica...
What advice do you have for others considering Zadara?
If companies have the budget, I recommend Zadara for small business classes due to its robust performance and user-friendliness. I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
Time, Inc. A&E Network, The Washington Post, News UK, McGraw Hill, Gilt, Toshiba, Deloitte, VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EC2 vs. Zadara and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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