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AWS Control Tower vs CloudStack comparison

 

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

AWS Control Tower
Ranking in Cloud Management
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.5%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudStack2.5%
AWS Control Tower1.8%
Other95.7%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sharkrit Impat - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Platform Engineering at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Streamlines governance and security management but requires effort in managing hidden costs
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one single account, but in AWS, you have to separate many accounts. You end up with maybe 20 or 30 accounts if you try to separate. It has limitations; you pay a fixed amount for 15 accounts, but if you exceed that, you have to pay more. It could be useful for implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) for multiple organizations, but for one organization, I would advise against it; it is too much overhead and adds hidden costs. There are limitations on the Landing Zone feature as well. If we implement AWS Control Tower, we need to implement Landing Zone and the security policy, guardrails, and Account Factory; it is not one single product. Using another cloud's enterprise project, you can just create the project and manage it already. It requires some learning curve to get hands-on. For pricing and licensing of AWS Control Tower, it has hidden costs. The Control Tower itself does not cost much, but the child accounts created from AWS Control Tower add costs for checking all configurations, logging, and metrics.
Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys
Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls
I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."
"AWS Control Tower is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."
"With Control Tower, there are ready-to-use automated templates available, simplifying the implementation of a centralized management solution."
"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."
"Security is the most valuable feature of Control Tower."
"AWS Control Tower helps to save a lot of work and manage multiple accounts."
"There are two features in Control Tower which are the most valuable. One is the guardrails because it has preventive and detective guardrails."
"The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on job descriptions in Active Directory. This establishes a direct correlation between the user's name, job definition, and the corresponding rules applied to each account."
"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."
"The product gives us the ability to orchestrate large virtual environments and is flexible enough to allow us to configure it for what we need. We value the flexibility of the networking feature set as well as the ability to build virtual private clouds."
"CloudStack, by default, gives us a zone-based setup which makes it easier to manage datacenters located in different geographical areas."
"I liked the separation of the isolated network versus the shared network."
"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."
"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."
"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."
"​You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs​."
 

Cons

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"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."
"The sole drawback is its restriction to enable only one Control Tower."
"While using the solution recently, it broke a certain activity. So, AWS Control Tower needs to consider making the solution better."
"The integration with other AWS functions has room for improvement."
"The tool's setup is very technical. Its pricing can be cheaper."
"AWS Control Tower should improve its fast execution. It also needs more tools for triggering and monitoring AWS services. AWS Control Tower needs more tracking as well."
"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."
"Companies need to be knowledgeable about cloud technology. It's not for novice users."
"I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved."
"Lack of support for third-party software vendors such as Veeam and Zerto creates limitations on comprehensive offerings which would include backup and disaster recovery."
"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures. Those areas needs improvement."
"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."
"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is reasonable, but there are opportunities for improvement in terms of pricing for larger enterprises."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."
"The pay-as-you-go model ensures you're only charged for what you use, which offers great flexibility for different types of companies."
"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."
"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 is cost-effective and the associated cost is quite minimal."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The solution is open-source and free."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one si...
What is your primary use case for AWS Control Tower?
I use AWS Control Tower to enhance governance, enhance security, and manage multiple subsidiaries. We sunset the AWS Control Tower that I implemented, but it was a new project that we implemented. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...
What is your primary use case for CloudStack?
My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vmops, Cloud.com
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. CloudStack and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.