Choosing a Cloud Service Provider — Are There Any Alternatives to Amazon Web Services?
The process of choosing a cloud service provider has never been simple. When making the final decision, you need to take into account a number of factors — the availability of customized services, security, scalability, price, and many others. Therefore, in this article, we decided to compare the four most popular services that you can use to deploy cloud infrastructure.
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Amazon Web Services
Of course, Amazon Web Services is an industry leader. Most companies around the world have already chosen these technologies as an aid to their business. And this is not surprising, because at the moment Amazon offers the widest range of services, with the highest security standards and at the most reasonable price. And this is not a complete list of its advantages.
- It’s very easy to incorporate Amazon infrastructure into your project. Moreover, the company offers informative tutorials that will help to make everything right even for a novice developer.
- Reasonable payment system. In this case, you pay only for those services that you consume — no subscriptions, premium tariffs, and the like. Moreover, some services are provided to you free of charge throughout the year, and many of them will remain free forever.
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- This is a very flexible infrastructure when it comes to project scalability. Therefore, Amazon Web Services is very beneficial for large projects — especially since you never overpay.
- It is very easy to use Amazon Web Services regardless of the operating system.
- There is a very strong after-sales service, so all questions that arise are resolved in a few clicks.
- And finally, Amazon pays great attention to security. With this service, you can no longer experience worries about the security of sensitive data.
Who is it for? Definitely, Amazon Web Services is suitable for large companies that grow but always strive for flexibility, security, scalability and cost savings.
Digital Ocean
Digital Ocean is one of Amazon’s competitors. In general, this is a pretty good alternative, but there are also some nuances here.
- Digital Ocean only works with Linux servers. Therefore, this will be an inappropriate option for you if you prefer other operating systems.
- Moreover, this provider gives you the ability to manage the server yourself, which requires prior experience to effectively solve problems.
- However, this service will be quite convenient, including for beginner developers. As with AWS, there are guides and tutorials on installing all the necessary elements of the system.
- As for the price, in this case, it will be fixed, but still quite affordable. Prices start at $ 5 a month.
Who is it for? Digital Ocean is definitely suitable for novice companies and start-ups who want to have great performance.
Heroku
Heroku is placed on AWS, therefore, choosing this option, you get almost all the same benefits that Amazon can offer you, but with much less flexibility and performance. Therefore, most likely at some point, you will have to switch to AWS.
Who is it for? Heroku is suitable for small companies and start-ups that want to enter the market with minimal cost of money, effort and time.
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Google Cloud
This is perhaps the most well-known service on the market due to the big name of Google, but Amazon still holds a leading position in this regard. And yet, there are a few points that make Google Cloud more competitive.
- Familiar infrastructure. By choosing this service, you get access to the infrastructure that is used for Google Mail, YouTube and Google Drive.
- Very favorable price for the use of services. If you compare Google with Amazon, the price difference will be about 25%.
- Amazon gives free access only for one year, while Google does not limit you in time, but limits it in the available volume for data storage. However, if this amount is enough for you, then you can use this service for free as long as you like.
- Google offers four times fewer services than Amazon. However, if you find the service you need in this list, then most likely it will not make sense to consider Amazon as an alternative.
Briefly About the Main Thing
As you can see, each of the providers has its advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, it is possible to continue this list. To give you the most objective picture, the Clockwise team conducted a study and supplemented it with their practical experience in choosing a cloud provider. Feel free to read the article “AWS vs Digitalocean and AWS vs Google Cloud” and do not hesitate to ask questions and leave comments!
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