Software Advice offers objective, independent research and verified user reviews. We may earn a referral fee when you visit a vendor through our links. Learn more
Our commitment
Independent research methodology
Software Advice’s researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology.
How Software Advice verifies reviews
Software Advice carefully verified over 2.5 million+ reviews to bring you authentic software and services experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI.
How Software Advice ensures transparency
Software Advice lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Software Advice is free for users. Software and service providers pay us for sponsored profiles to receive web traffic and sales opportunities. Sponsored profiles include a link-out icon that takes users to the provider’s website.

Amazon RDS

4.7
Overall rating
Reviews

4.7
Overall rating
Reviews

About Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is a cloud-based software that helps businesses leverage existing database engines to automate administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, data backup, patching, failure detection and more. Managers can define parameter groups for new database (DB) instances and utilize solid-state drive (SSD) storage to specify the rates of input/output operations per second (IOPS). Amazon RDS allows enterprises to run databases in a virtual private cloud (VPC) and protect critical information through access control and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. Administrators can use the RDS Management Console to view operational metrics, including storage capacity utilization, input/output (I/O) activities and instance connections. Additionally, the software supports database engines such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Amazon Aurora, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. Pricing is based on usage and support is extended via documentation, FAQs and other online measures.
Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS encryption keys
Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS overview
Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS database snapshot
Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS encryption keys - thumbnail
Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS overview - thumbnail
Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS database snapshot - thumbnail

Amazon RDS pricing

Amazon RDS has a free version and offers a free trial. Amazon RDS paid version starts at US$0.01/month.

Starting Price:
US$0.01/month
Free Version:
Yes
Free trial:
Yes

Alternatives to Amazon RDS

Microsoft SQL Server

4.6 (1971 Reviews)
Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI) Edition is a database management and BI software solution designed for...

MySQL

4.6 (2093 Reviews)
MySQL is a scalable database management system, which enables organizations to securely record, update and manage data...

MongoDB

4.7 (466 Reviews)
The AI era demands unprecedented adaptability. Traditional software and rigid legacy systems that were designed for...

Airtable

4.6 (2214 Reviews)
Airtable is a platform designed for building AI applications that support business operations and deploy embedded AI...

Microsoft Access

4.4 (205 Reviews)
Microsoft Access is a database management solution that helps users store and manage information, create business apps...

Google Cloud

4.7 (2232 Reviews)
Google Cloud is a suite of cloud computing services that allows businesses to build, deploy, and scale applications....

Oracle Database

4.6 (470 Reviews)
Oracle database services and products offer customers cost-optimized and high-performance versions of Oracle Database,...

PostgreSQL

4.6 (412 Reviews)
PostgreSQL is an open-source database management solution that helps businesses streamline operations related to...

SQL Complete

4.6 (83 Reviews)
dbForge SQL Complete is a powerful solution for code autocompletion, formatting, code analysis, and refactoring that...

Browse Amazon RDS Reviews

218 of 218 reviews
Sort by:
Sonpal Singh
Sonpal Singh Show more details
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 1+ year
  • Review Source Show more details
Value for Money
5
Features
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
4

5.0
Reviewed on 15/06/2023

Easy To Setup & Super In Security & Data Management

I have a very good experience with AWS RDS system.

Pros

You don't want to care about more configuration setup to run as we did in normal case. A lot of configurable variable available in it to help the system working smooth. You can change maximum setting at runtime . easy to setup replication here, user & permission management is fast & secure.

Cons

No more cons except the price in compare to others only.

Verified Reviewer Show more details
  • Industry: Publishing
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source Show more details
Value for Money
5
Features
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
3

5.0
Reviewed on 06/05/2022

Amazon RDS - the backbone of your AWS stack

Waaaay back in the day, we owned and managed huge machines on which we ran our database software. It was Oracle for a while, then we moved to mySQL. But the machine and the software were our problem to handle. Most of the time (because these are not new technologies), there were no problems. But when there were problems, there were huge problems. Because like many websites/apps, data is at the core of what we do. No database, and everything goes poof. Since switching to RDS, this has become a thing of the past. We tell RDS what kind of beefy setup we want, and they do the rest. The mySQL patching. The upgrades. If we want to move to a bigger instance, that's pretty straightforward, too. Database hosting at pretty large scale, with just a few clicks. And no machines to worry about. You get decent (but not amazing) visibility into the instance at any time. But, basically, what you really get is peace of mind, not having to worry that your system's most critical layer will flake out on you. That's worth a lot. Also: AWS's Aurora is a very nice port of mySQL. We've had no issues there either.

Pros

Aurora is a great port of mySQL - very compatible and super fast
Prices are always going one direction: down
Scalable way huge with just a few clicks
Automated backups, patching, upgrades
You can still do a lot of customization using PL/MYSQL
The instances just stay up and running - becomes one less thing to worry about
You have options: both mySQL and Postgres

Cons

It's not amazingly easy to update the various variables that enable you to configure your mySQL instance.
I wish it was a bit easier to get monitoring that would give you more granular insight into what's causing issues.
You don't have quite as much flexibility and control over special packages you might install to do special stuff (calculating the Levenschtein distance between words, for example).

Verified Reviewer Show more details
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Review Source Show more details
Value for Money
4
Features
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
3

3.0
Reviewed on 24/04/2018

Amazon RDS is really simple and lightweight.

Pros

Amazon RDS is really simple and lightweight. It is easy to use and scale up in the cloud. Easy to setup.

Cons

I have not used Amazon Relational Database extensively, so I did not find any drawbacks forAmazon Relational Database.

Verified Reviewer Show more details
  • Industry: Logistics & Supply Chain
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source Show more details
Value for Money
0
Features
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
0

4.0
Reviewed on 14/04/2022

Simplifies a lot of database management work

Overall, Amazon RDS has been very useful to us. It has saved us tremendous amounts of time just in the provisioning, scaling, and maintenance activities alone.

Pros

I like how easy it is to scale RDS up and down alongside its monitoring features which can be conveniently accessed via AWS console.

Cons

The burst balance limit for the underlying EBS disk gave us lots of problems. I wish this feature was more user-friendly.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Azure

Reasons for Choosing Amazon RDS

In my previous companies, we used to self-host databases (postgres, MySQL/MariaDB) in VMs. This was more expensive in the long run in terms of time spent. We also used Google Cloud SQL for some projects but eventually switched to RDS since our main tech infra runs on AWS.

Reasons for Switching to Amazon RDS

Our main tech infra runs on AWS already.
Verified Reviewer Show more details
  • Industry: Civic & Social Organization
  • Company size: 11–50 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source Show more details
Value for Money
3
Features
3
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
3

4.0
Reviewed on 29/07/2019

Amazing relational database which is easy to setup and use provided you have the technical...

AWS RDS can be linked with Victorops/splunk/slack and what not to constantly monitor the state of the database and set up alerts for catching problems. It can automatically save regular copies of the database.

Pros

ease of setup
ease of taking snapshots
no configurational drainers
very easy to set up alerts for monitoring problems in the database
debugging is a breeze.

Cons

It is easy to get lost without an UI.
also replicating databases can get stuck sometimes if you don't know what you are doing.
replication can be pain depending upon whether you want (master-master) or (master-slaves)

Alternatives Considered

Google Cloud

Switched From

Google Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Amazon RDS

GCP was sort of handing off sensitive data over to Google and flying blind. AWS RDS debugging is much more useful when a problem arises. aws was a no contest choice despite it's expenditure.

Related categories

powered by