What are the best AWS-Alternatives?

AWS alternatives are cloud platforms that provide services similar to Amazon Web Services—such as computing power, storage, and databases—while often differentiating themselves through unique pricing models, regional specialisation, or a focus on open-source solutions. These providers give businesses the flexibility to select cloud services that align more closely with their technical needs and legal requirements.

What matters when choosing a cloud provider?

Companies benefit from the many advantages of cloud computing. However, switching to cloud-based infrastructure also requires significant adjustments. In many ways, using the cloud means a loss of control. Where previously owned hardware was used, it is now rented—under the provider’s terms. Therefore, the choice of involved partners should be well considered.

When choosing a cloud provider, a variety of decision factors come into play:

• Cost structure (e.g., pay-as-you-go, subscription models, hidden costs)
• Performance and scalability (e.g., computing power, automatic scaling)
• Availability and reliability (e.g., uptime, redundancy)
• Data protection and compliance (e.g., GDPR], ISO certifications)
• Location of data centres (e.g., data residency, latency)
• Security standards (e.g., encryption, firewalls, access control)
• Service offerings (e.g., databases, AI services, container services)
• Technical support and customer service
• Integrations and compatibility (e.g., APIs, multi-cloud capability)
• Ecosystem and community (e.g., documentation, forums, partner networks)
• Transparency and vendor lock-in

When evaluating these factors, so-called quality-of-service attributes play a central role as they define the measurable performance characteristics of a cloud offering and facilitate comparison between providers.

QoS attributes for AWS alternatives

Quality-of-service attributes (QoS) are features by which the quality of a service is measured. Aggregated, they can be extended to measure the quality of the service provider.

Choosing a cloud provider as an AWS alternative

The abundance of cloud providers leads to increased competition. This results in falling prices, but also brings transparency issues and uncertainty. Customers heavily rely on the information provided by each provider. The multitude of services and pricing models further complicates the choice.

The general process for choosing a cloud provider involves three phases:

1. Decide to use cloud services, define business requirements, and outline framework conditions

2. Pre-select cloud provider candidates – all of them meet the functional requirements

3. Decide on one or more cloud providers, considering multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud approaches

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How cloud services can be used as an AWS alternative

The above-mentioned QoS attributes provide a solid foundation for reproducible decision-making. Let’s now focus on the specific characteristics of alternatives competing with AWS, as well as the modalities of collaboration.

Outline the framework of the business relationship

First, it is important to define your own requirements for cloud services. As initial steps, the objectives are set, and the current state is determined. It’s important to keep dark data in mind: You are likely operating with only a subset of the available information.

Before engaging with the technical capacities, the trustworthiness of potential partners should be ensured. Important points are financial stability, company headquarters, and provider transparency. The business philosophy is also a decisive factor.

Typically, there is existing IT infrastructure on the customer side, whether on their own systems or in the cloud. It must be ensured that existing systems can be migrated to or used in conjunction with the new provider. For maximum flexibility, the cloud provider should support multi-cloud and hybrid cloud structures. Ideally, orchestration tools and infrastructure-as-code approaches can be used to build the cloud infrastructure.

Ensuring provider compliance

When using cloud services, you are reliant on the promises of providers. However, trust is good, but control is better. Thus, provider certification according to established standards plays an important role. Typically, cloud providers are certified at least to ISO 9001 (quality management system) and ISO 27001 (information security management).

Privacy and security are among the most important criteria when choosing a cloud provider. At the very least, encryption of all data in transit should be a given. Encryption should also be applied to data at rest whenever possible. Automated backups lay the foundation for audit compliance. The applicable law also depends on the geographical location of the data centres.

Technical performance

Among the most important technical criteria when choosing a cloud provider are performance and scalability. This includes available CPU cores, memory, and storage, each billed per unit of time. Typically, the customer can choose between different types of technologies used, such as AMD vs Intel processors, SSD vs HDD storage, etc.

For a meaningful evaluation, you also need information on the reliability and availability of the service. The availability is often specified as a percentage to define high-availability services. A common availability rate is 99.999% – also known as ‘Five nines’. If a service is 99.999% available, it is expected to have downtime of less than one second per day.

Ongoing collaboration

To regulate the ongoing collaboration between cloud provider and customers, a ‘Service Level Agreement’ (SLA) is often established. This is a framework contract. The SLA defines the expected availability of the utilised services and other parameters like the provider’s response times. Higher service levels come with higher costs for the customer.

Pricing for cloud services is highly variable. Typically, the resources used are billed based on consumption. However, there are also offers that include fixed costs or a combination of the two cost types.

When using cloud services, you rely on the provider. Therefore, support is also of great importance.

AWS and alternatives compared

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader in cloud computing. This naturally raises the question of why a company might choose an alternative to AWS. The answer often lies in the company’s specific requirements for cloud infrastructure and business partnerships.

What are the disadvantages of AWS?

However, there are also some critical aspects regarding AWS.

• Complex pricing structure: Prices depend on many factors (region, operating system, instance type, additional services) and changes to the pricing structure are common; support costs may also apply.
• Overwhelming number of services: Over 200 AWS services and a constantly growing range make it difficult to keep track and compare with other providers.
• Legal risks: Amazon is a US-based company and is therefore subject to US law (e.g., Cloud Act), which brings risks such as industrial espionage, data protection violations, and arbitrary contract terminations.
• Moral and ethical concerns: The service has often been criticised for questionable business practices (market dominance, impact on partner companies) and poor working conditions.

What are the advantages of smaller AWS alternatives?

Using cloud services from smaller providers comes with several advantages. They often prioritise ease of use for both services and interfaces and typically offer clearer, more transparent pricing structures—an appealing factor for startups and small businesses. If they are European providers, data is stored in Europe in compliance with GDPR. This ensures data sovereignty is maintained. There is no risk of data needing to be disclosed due to foreign laws like the US CLOUD ACT.

Additionally, customers benefit from transparent pricing and the legal security that comes with a provider under EU law. For many businesses, especially those in the public sector or regulated industries, this is an essential criterion.

For smaller providers, it is particularly attractive to strive for close collaboration with customers. They are not just service providers but partners in cooperation, working towards mutually set goals. Instead of merely providing infrastructure, small providers offer special managed solutions. This positions them in an area traditionally reserved for IT system houses and managed service providers.

Why is IONOS a good AWS alternative?

IONOS Cloud is a European cloud solution for businesses. IONOS is a founding member of the German-French state project Gaia-X. The project aims to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in digitalisation. Generally, it is not efficient for SMEs to build their own data centres. With Gaia-X, synergies are utilised and the interoperability of European providers is expanded. The use of open interfaces, open-source solutions, and international standards protects SMEs from vendor lock-in.

IONOS Cloud includes all the components a company needs to implement sophisticated cloud-based applications. Let’s take a look at the main components of IONOS Cloud in overview:

In addition to GDPR-compliant data hosting, IONOS Cloud shines with sustainability and transparency. Special emphasis is placed on the extensive support, which also includes managed solutions and Cloud Disaster Recovery.

Building a cloud infrastructure usually requires a lot of skill and experience. This is where using IONOS Cloud pays off multiple times. With the Data Center Designer (DCD), a web-based graphical user interface is available. It allows you to easily assemble the individual components of a cloud infrastructure. Behind the scenes, the DCD accesses the IONOS Cloud API. The API can also be addressed directly with the command-line tool IonosCTL and SDKs for Golang, Python, Java, Ruby, and Node.JS. Furthermore, the orchestration tools Terraform, Ansible, Docker Machine, and Chef (via Knife Plugin) are supported. This allows the use of state-of-the-art infrastructure-as-code and multi-cloud approaches.