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AWS Control Tower vs AWS Trusted Advisor comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
AWS Control Tower
Ranking in Cloud Management
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AWS Trusted Advisor
Ranking in Cloud Management
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 5.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.6%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Trusted Advisor is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified security management ensures comprehensive compliance for account safety
Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security. I can manage user security and user IAM, firewall, and other security-related tasks via Control Tower. The unified security management is a crucial aspect, and whenever an AWS organization is used, Control Tower is typically included to ensure comprehensive compliance fulfillment.
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimizes cloud strategies with security and cost insights
Trusted Advisor offers features that provide inside information for the entire account, including identifying security gaps and offering cost optimization insights. The key features include security recommendations, cost optimization, and various packages to choose from, depending on the size of the company. It is especially beneficial for larger companies, as the tool provides a comprehensive view of account security, open ports, buckets, and offers recommendations for protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Before implementing Turbonomic, we had difficulty reaching a consensus about VM placement and sizing. Everybody's opinion was wrong, including mine. The application developers, implementers, and infrastructure team could never decide the appropriate size of a virtual machine. I always made the machines small, and they always made them too big. We were both probably wrong."
"We have seen a 30% performance improvement overall."
"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."
"The automated memory balancing, where it looks at whether it's being used in the most efficient way and adds or takes away memory, is the best part. If it didn't do that, it would be something that I would have to do. We have too many machines for one person to do that. The automation helps me in that it is done in a really efficient way and a balanced way because of the policies. It really helps."
"The notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature."
"The ability to monitor and automate both the right-sizing of VMs as well as to automate the vMotion of VMs across ESXi hosts."
"Using this product helps us to reduce performance risk because it shows us where resources are needed but not yet allocated."
"Turbonomic helps us right-size virtual machines to utilize the available infrastructure components available and suggest where resources should exist. We also use the predictive tool to forecast what will happen when we add additional compute-demanding virtual machines or something to the environment. It shows us how that would impact existing resources. All of that frees up time that would otherwise be spent on manual calculation."
"I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10."
"The most significant benefit of Control Tower is its capability to align with our organization's standards."
"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."
"AWS Control Tower helps to save a lot of work and manage multiple accounts."
"Security is the most valuable feature of Control Tower."
"AWS Control Tower is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."
"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."
"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."
"I would give it a ten out of ten."
"The key features include security recommendations, cost optimization, and various packages to choose from, depending on the size of the company."
"The cost optimization and security-related fixes in AWS Trusted Advisor have been great."
"Trusted Advisor scans the complete infrastructure within the account, providing a consolidated view of all services in use."
"The Security Advisor is the most valuable feature. It instantly informs you about any system misconfigurations, and the best part is, it's completely free."
"It is very stable."
"I strongly recommend using Trusted Advisor due to its role in cybersecurity, providing cost-effective solutions compared to external companies."
"The cost optimization features are valuable."
 

Cons

"We don't use Turbonomic for FinOps and part of the reason is its cost reporting. The reporting could be much more robust and, if that were the case, I could pitch it for FinOps."
"It would be nice for them to have a way to do something with physical machines, but I know that is not their strength Thankfully, the majority of our environment is virtual, but it would be nice to see this type of technology across some other platforms. It would be nice to have capacity planning across physical machines."
"I like the detail I get in the old user interface and will miss some of that in the new interface when we perform our planned upgrade soon."
"The GUI and policy creation have room for improvement. There should be a better view of some of the numbers that are provided and easier to access. And policy creation should have it easier to identify groups."
"We're still evaluating the solution, so I don't know enough about what I don't know. They've done a lot over the years. I used Turbonomics six or seven years ago before IBM bought them. They've matured a lot since then."
"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."
"There is room for improvement [with] upgrades. We have deployed the newer version, version 8 of Turbonomic. The problem is that there is no way to upgrade between major Turbonomic versions. You can upgrade minor versions without a problem, but when you go from version 6 to version 7, or version 7 to version 8, you basically have to deploy it new and let it start gathering data again. That is a problem because all of the data, all of the savings calculations that had been done on the old version, are gone. There's no way to keep track of your lifetime savings across versions."
"Remove the need for special in-house knowledge and development."
"There aren't any additional features that I feel are missing. However, it's worth noting that Control Tower seems to function as a layer utilizing standard AWS products in the background. Occasionally, the interface may appear less streamlined, with changes in layout based on the underlying products being used. While this doesn't impact functionality, having a more standardized user interface, irrespective of the background products, could enhance the user experience."
"By making APIs and organizational units more centralized, it would be simpler to pinpoint the source of issues in case of a breach and would ultimately benefit everyone involved."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"The solution's stability could be improved."
"The sole drawback is its restriction to enable only one Control Tower."
"It is essential to clarify that this isn't necessarily a drawback of the service, but having a clear and concise set of predefined guidelines from AWS for moving existing accounts under AWS Control Tower would be highly beneficial as it would simplify the process and make it more user-friendly."
"While using the solution recently, it broke a certain activity. So, AWS Control Tower needs to consider making the solution better."
"The tool's setup is very technical. Its pricing can be cheaper."
"Maybe adding more security rules would be great."
"The tenancy must be free for all metrics."
"Cost is a significant factor that needs improvement. Reducing the cost would make it more beneficial for all users."
"I'd like the solution to support clouds beyond AWS."
"Trusted Advisor currently scans the whole system, including development, staging, and QA environments, which increases costs."
"The integration between Trusted Advisor and Security Hub sometimes lacks, and I need a way to ensure things come through there."
"Cost is a significant factor that needs improvement."
"Trusted Advisor currently scans the whole system, including development, staging, and QA environments, which increases costs. It would be better if it could selectively scan only production systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."
"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."
"I consider the pricing to be high."
"Licensing is per socket, so load up on the cores rather than a lot of lower core CPUs."
"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."
"I don't know the current prices, but I like how the licensing is based on the number of instances instead of sockets, clusters, or cores. We have some VMs that are so heavy I can only fit four on one server. It's not cost-effective if we have to pay more for those. When I move around a VM SQL box with 30 cores and a half-terabyte of RAM, I'm not paying for an entire socket and cores where people assume you have at least 10 or 20 VMs on that socket for that pricing."
"It is cost-effective and the associated cost is quite minimal."
"I believe it's free of charge or comes at a very low cost. It's an additional feature. Even if there is a fee, it's minimal. AWS seems to assist customers in gaining a comprehensive view of their security setups within AWS. Using Control Tower is highly recommended, especially as your company grows and involves Active Directory, various departments, and different architectural aspects. It becomes more advisable to leverage Control Tower rather than managing these aspects manually, especially for larger organizations."
"It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."
"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."
"AWS Control Tower is not really that expensive."
"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."
"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"Trusted Advisor offers various packages, with the most comprehensive costing $15,000 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?
It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...
What do you like most about AWS Control Tower?
The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global comp...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?
Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.
What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?
There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiri...
What do you like most about AWS Trusted Advisor?
The Security Advisor is the most valuable feature. It instantly informs you about any system misconfigurations, and t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Trusted Advisor?
The cost of Trusted Advisor is reasonable, though it can be further economized by allowing selective scanning, focusi...
What needs improvement with AWS Trusted Advisor?
Trusted Advisor currently scans the whole system, including development, staging, and QA environments, which increase...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
No data available
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. AWS Trusted Advisor and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.