While one boasts itself to be the world’s most giant cloud provider, the other has surfaced with competitive pricing and features. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Alibaba Cloud debates require considering multiple factors like pricing, service, technologies, and products.
In this article, we will compare AWS and Alibaba Cloud’s products and services so you can decide which one to choose for your business.
Table of Contents
A Comparison of AWS and Alibaba Cloud: Pricing and Services
Pricing
Both amazon web services and Alibaba cloud offer flexibility in billing through subscription billing and pay-as-you-go billing methods. The subscription option is viable for long-term usage, while the pay-as-you-go allows you to pay for resources that you used in intervals of workload surge.
With a subscription, you can save up to 75% of the amount you’d be paying via pay-as-you-go due to bulk savings. You can buy reserved capacity for your business needs and pay Full Upfront, No Upfront, or Partial Upfront with Reserved instances.
While AWS offers a more diverse range of resources and services, Alibaba Cloud is at least 30% cheaper than the AWS Cloud. It offers flexible pricing with discounts and grace periods that can possibly be extended, which suits all business models, large or small. On the other hand, AWS manufactures its own hardware and is gradually maturing way ahead of its tipping point which makes up for its high pricing.
Target Market
The market focus of AWS is clearly the United States and the United Kingdom. All new launches of Amazon cloud are introduced in Virginia, and it takes sufficient time for them to reach South East Asia. Even then, there are 77 server-ready regions and 120+ offerings are available in Vietnam, and in general, globally.
Alibaba Cloud aims to expand its target client base primarily in South Asian countries that have dense populations. With 200+ offerings available for China only and only around 40 elsewhere, it hasn’t been successful in making its services accessible globally.
Reliability
AWS holds a global 69% of the cloud market shares. AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon Inc., another e-commerce behemoth. People have a “trust” feeling in their cloud product because Amazon has hosted its own e-commerce application on AWS.
Besides, it’s the most experienced cloud service provider, providing a broader geographic coverage since 2009 when Alibaba Cloud did not even exist. AWS is also not susceptible to interference by any government officials.
Alibaba Cloud has evolved only 5 years ago but it successfully hosts the massive and biggest online Alibaba 11.11 sale. It has a limited client base, and there is no legal recourse if the Chinese government wants to interfere with its service. The users will have no choice but to abide by whatever changes the officials bring in upon intervention. Hence, the data privacy of Alibaba Cloud is not very reliable.
Functionality
AWS has a provisioning capacity that is six times that of all of its competitors combined. It also has a very low-end nano-server (t2.nano) available.
AWS only offers inter-region communication via the internet, and the dark fiber is the backbone purpose connection only. Because the client’s regions are not connected, they must use VPN peering or come via the open internet or MPLS. Alibaba Cloud interconnects all regions and makes it accessible to clients. If any area fails in the Alibaba cloud, the Domino effect will kick in, cascading to all regions and perhaps throwing the entire Alibaba cloud operation into disarray.
Alibaba, however, is known for the lowest market certification costs. Training your staff for Alibaba Cloud is much easier and offers the quickest path to becoming a certified cloud associate and machine learning engineer.
Technical and customer support
Both AWS and Alibaba Cloud offer after-sales service support groups. You can share your experiences, build influence, get rewarded, and connect with a community. Since AWS has a much greater client base than Alibaba, it has a bigger community where you can get help. Moreover, there are numerous documents, use cases, and community support services available that Alibaba lacks.
It is understandable that community build-up will take time for Alibaba Cloud. But a major problem with its customer care is that it has local numbers route to China, where representatives have difficulty understanding English. The language barrier is a major red flag for large-scale businesses.
The Final Verdict
AWS is an established cloud server with proven results throughout the past decade, while Alibaba Cloud is emerging as a keen competitor. Whether you should choose AWS or Alibaba Cloud depends upon your business model. A small-scale business struggling with finances will work best at a cost-effective Alibaba Cloud. And a massive business chain spread over multiple countries requires a much more coordinated yet costly AWS service.
Still confused about what to decide for your business? DEHA Vietnam has got your back! Contact us for a free consultation call with DEHA’s dedicated development team. We will help you figure out your business requirements and the cloud management company that provides its solutions.
