When you think of cloud computing platform, the first name that comes to your mind is Amazon Web Services or AWS. When you think of the competitors of AWS, you are probably going to think about Azure and Google Cloud Platform. In fact, AWS is the world’s leading cloud computing platform at present. However, the fasting growing cloud platform is Alibaba Cloud. Even though it is nowhere close to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, but in the next few years, it is likely to become of the leading cloud web service provider not only in China but across the world. Therefore, it is fitting to make a comparison between Alibaba Cloud and AWS in terms of their services and pricing.
Alibaba ECS Vs AWS EC2 –
ECS stands for Elastic Compute Service while EC2 stands for Elastic Cloud Compute. The core features of both the services are the same. Among that the main difference is that Alibaba Cloud has a broader range of instance families while AWS has catered to more regions. This is obvious as AWS is the leading provider in the industry and they started it at the very beginning. Therefore, they have a greater geographic coverage.
Pricing –
Making a direct comparison of the prices of the two is difficult. The reason is that both the services have different instances and there is no identical instance. Moreover, the pricing of Alibaba Cloud differs in different regions significantly. For the cloud computing service, most of the people opt for Pay as you Go service. However, AWS is better in terms of user-friendliness. This is because a user has to enable no fee for stopped instances to save money. However, it is applied automatically in AWS.
But going by the monthly payment system for services, Alibaba Cloud is cheaper than AWS. It is more so for Mainland China and Hong Kong. Their worldwide regions consist of Singapore, Sydney, Virginia, Silicon Valley, and Frankfurt. Both the providers offer the auto-scaling feature.
Storage –
The basic storage system is the same for AWS and Alibaba Cloud. They offer block, object and file storage service. For Alibaba Cloud, it is Object Storage Service, Elastic Block Storage, and Network Attached Storage. For AWS, it is S3 Object Storage, Elastic Block Store, and Elastic File System. Both of them also offer cold storage services for cost-effectiveness. Almost all the core features of storage services are also the same. Therefore, many can consider the lower price point of Alibaba Cloud as the winning point.
Security –
The security is a primary concern now, especially in the hosting platforms. A single attack can ruin a company and put its customers’ security under the scanner. Therefore, it is the duty of the cloud host to provide an optimal level of security automatically. In short, Alibaba has better security measures than AWS. There is no mobile security and no instance security offered by AWS. Alibaba Cloud has Server Guard as instance security along with mobile security. This could be one of the reasons why Alibaba Cloud has gained so much traction in such a short time.
Analytics –
In today’s world, analytics has emerged as a way to monitor every detail in the best way possible. Every customer wants to monitor the user activity, and there are various analytics services cloud host can offer. AWS has Amazon EMR for big data processing. But it has not gone beyond that to ensure more critical data analytic service for its customers. On the other hand, Alibaba Cloud has MaxCompute and E-MapReduce for big data processing. Along with them, there is DataV and DataWorks for data visualization and development platform.
Other Services –
CDN service is very common is hosting to boost the speed of the website or applications. AWS has expanded over the year to provide CloudFront CDN. Alibaba Cloud has a similar service within this short span of time. It is safe to say that both the companies go hand in hand with providing a comprehensive suite of cloud services. However, other than the brand value being the leader and getting a hold on the market being the early service provider, AWS rules due to its large community and awareness. There are many who have not heard of Alibaba Cloud yet.
Conclusion –
It is said that it is always better to go with the leader in the group. Alibaba Cloud is the leader in China while AWS rules the world. But unlike other Alibaba ventures, Alibaba Cloud has entered the global market aggressively and looking to compete directly with AWS. It is safe to say that Alibaba Cloud edges past AWS in terms of pricing and features. Even though it is tough to make AWS customers migrate to Alibaba Cloud, but attracting new customers towards Alibaba Cloud is what Alibaba group is focusing. This will also help them to attract the existing customer of AWS.
