Amazon Web Services
The world's largest and most comprehensive cloud platform.
Speed
4.9
Support
4.5
Value
4.2
Features
5.0
Reliability
4.9
The verdict
Amazon Web Services is the global leader in cloud infrastructure, serving millions of customers with over 200 fully featured services spanning compute, storage, databases, AI/ML, networking, and analytics. AWS runs approximately one-third of the internet and powers some of the world's most demanding workloads.
Best for:
Enterprise companies
Startups scaling fast
Data-intensive applications
AI/ML workloads
What you get
- 200+ cloud services
- Global network of 30+ regions
- Pay-as-you-go pricing
- EC2 compute instances
- S3 object storage
- Lambda serverless functions
- Free tier for 12 months
Plans & pricing
EC2 t3.nano
$3.50/mo
- 2 vCPU
- 0.5 GB RAM
- Pay-as-you-go
EC2 t3.small
$15/mo
- 2 vCPU
- 2 GB RAM
- EBS storage
EC2 m7i.large
$68/mo
- 2 vCPU
- 8 GB RAM
- Latest Intel
The trade-off
In its favour
- Unmatched breadth of services
- Global availability and reliability
- Industry-standard enterprise platform
Worth knowing
- Complex pricing can be unpredictable
- Steep learning curve for beginners
- No traditional cPanel hosting
Infrastructure & support
Support channels
- Documentation & forums (free)
- AWS Developer Support ($29/mo)
- Business Support ($100/mo)
- Enterprise Support (custom)
Data centers
- United States (6)
- Europe (7)
- Asia-Pacific (11)
- South America
- Middle East
- Africa
- 30+ regions globally
Common questions
Does AWS offer a free tier?
Yes, AWS Free Tier includes 12 months of limited free access to many services including EC2, S3 and RDS.
Is AWS suitable for small businesses?
Yes, though AWS is best suited to developers or businesses with technical staff; managed alternatives like Cloudways simplify the experience.