andrew

May 26, 2025

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

4.00/5

Powerful, But Not Without Complexity

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most powerful and feature-rich cloud platform available. It offers unmatched flexibility across compute, storage, networking, databases, machine learning, and more. Whether you're building a simple web app or a global-scale system, AWS has the tools to support it.

The real strength of AWS lies in its scalability and composability. Services like EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, and IAM give you full control over your infrastructure. The global infrastructure and uptime guarantees are excellent for production workloads.

However, AWS has a steep learning curve. The console is complex, and configuring services—especially IAM and networking—requires care and experience. Documentation is broad but can lack practical clarity, and pricing, while fair, can get out of hand if you’re not diligent. Thankfully, tools like the pricing calculator and Trusted Advisor help mitigate that.

Support varies depending on your plan: enterprise support is great, but free/basic users may face delays. Still, the platform is incredibly reliable, secure, and fast.

In short, AWS is ideal for those who need flexibility, scale, and enterprise-grade features. It’s not the simplest option out there, but for those willing to learn, it’s one of the best investments you can make in cloud infrastructure.