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Amazon Lightsail VS DynamoDB

Compare Amazon Lightsail VS DynamoDB and see what are their differences

Amazon Lightsail logo Amazon Lightsail

Simple Virtual Private Servers on AWS

DynamoDB logo DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fast and flexible NoSQL database service for all applications that need consistent, single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. It is a fully managed cloud database and supports both document and key-value store models.
  • Amazon Lightsail Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-19
  • DynamoDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-18

Amazon Lightsail features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Amazon Lightsail offers a simplified user interface and is designed for users who need to quickly deploy and manage applications without getting into complex configurations.
  • Cost-Effective
    Lightsail provides predictable pricing with low-cost, fixed-price plans, making it more cost-effective compared to other AWS services for small to medium-scale projects.
  • Pre-Configured Services
    It comes with pre-configured development stacks, such as LAMP, Node.js, and WordPress, allowing users to get started quickly without manual setup.
  • Integrated Networking
    Lightsail includes built-in networking capabilities, including static IPs and DNS management, streamlining network setup and management.
  • Scalability
    Users can easily scale their operations by upgrading their instances, although this is more limited compared to other AWS services.
  • Backup & Snapshots
    The service offers built-in backup options and snapshots, providing data security and recovery options.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Lightsail

  • Limited Resources
    Lightsail instances are not as powerful as the EC2 instances and are better suited for smaller applications or projects.
  • Limited AWS Service Integration
    It has limited integration capabilities with other AWS services compared to EC2, restricting the extent to which you can leverage the full AWS ecosystem.
  • Less Configurability
    The simplified interface and pre-configured settings mean that there are fewer options for customization and fine-tuning compared to more advanced AWS services like EC2.
  • Scaling Limits
    Scaling options are less comprehensive; transitioning from Lightsail to more complex AWS services can be cumbersome if the application grows significantly.
  • Performance Limits
    Lightsail’s performance and storage options are limited compared to EC2, potentially impacting resource-intensive applications.
  • Fewer Geographic Options
    Lightsail offers fewer geographic regions compared to other AWS services, which could be a limitation for applications requiring global distribution.

DynamoDB features and specs

  • Scalability
    DynamoDB automatically scales up and down to handle your application's needs, with no intervention required. This allows for easy handling of traffic spikes and growth over time.
  • Performance
    With its fast, predictable performance at any scale, DynamoDB ensures low-latency responses, even with large volumes of data.
  • Fully Managed
    As a fully managed service, DynamoDB handles hardware provisioning, setup, configuration, replication, software patching, and backups, letting you focus on your application.
  • Flexible Data Model
    DynamoDB supports both document and key-value store models, providing flexibility in how you structure your data.
  • Security
    DynamoDB integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to provide fine-grained access control and encrypts data at rest and in transit.
  • Global Tables
    You can create multi-region, fully replicated tables for high availability and globally distributed apps with low latency reads and writes.
  • Event-Driven Architecture
    DynamoDB integrates with AWS Lambda for automatic triggering and the creation of event-driven architectures.

Possible disadvantages of DynamoDB

  • Pricing Complexity
    DynamoDB's pricing model, which charges based on read and write capacity units, storage, and data transfer, can be complex and difficult to predict.
  • Limited Query Capabilities
    DynamoDB does not support complex queries as well as traditional SQL databases. Querying capabilities are limited primarily to primary key attributes.
  • Secondary Indexes
    While DynamoDB supports secondary indexes, their use can be limited and complex to manage effectively compared to relational databases.
  • Consistency
    DynamoDB offers eventual consistency by default. While strongly consistent reads are available, they can be more expensive and slower.
  • Data Size Limitations
    Each item in a DynamoDB table must be 400KB or less, limiting the amount of data you can store in a single item.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using DynamoDB heavily ties your application to AWS, which can be a downside if you want to maintain flexibility in your cloud infrastructure choices.

Amazon Lightsail videos

Amazon Lightsail Review

DynamoDB videos

#13 - Amazon DynamoDB Basics In Under 5 Minutes [Tutorial For Beginners]

More videos:

  • Review - AWS re:Invent 2018: Amazon DynamoDB Deep Dive: Advanced Design Patterns for DynamoDB (DAT401)
  • Review - What is Amazon DynamoDB?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon Lightsail and DynamoDB)
Cloud Computing
48 48%
52% 52
Databases
0 0%
100% 100
VPS
100 100%
0% 0
NoSQL Databases
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Amazon Lightsail and DynamoDB

Amazon Lightsail Reviews

Best Vultr Alternatives and Competitor Cloud Services of 2022
Amazon Lightsail servers start from only $3.50/mo with 512MB RAM, 1 CPU core, 20GB SSD, and 1TB bandwidth. You can even get started for free, but there will be certain limitations that way. The standard charges will be applied after the completion of the first 750 hours each month.

DynamoDB Reviews

Top 5 Dynobase alternatives you should know about - March 2025 Review
Dynomate offers a comprehensive solution with native AWS SSO support, advanced multi-tab functionality, and Git-based collaboration features. NoSQL Workbench is a valuable free tool from AWS, excellent for designing and visualizing data models. The JetBrains DynamoDB Plugin brings DynamoDB into your IDE with helpful autocomplete and query-saving features.
Source: www.dynomate.io
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
Amazon DynamoDB is a nonrelational database. This database system provides consistent latency and offers built-in security, and in-memory caching. DynamoDB is a serverless database which scales automatically and backs up your data for protection
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, DynamoDB should be more popular than Amazon Lightsail. It has been mentiond 120 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon Lightsail mentions (50)

  • Ask HN: Tips to get started on my own server
    Https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/?nc1=h_ls. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Top 20 Web Hosting Services in 2024 - Choose the Best for Your Website 🚀
    AWS Lightsail 🏆 Amazon's affordable VPS hosting service, starting at $3.50/month. Explore more: AWS Lightsail. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Farewell EC2-Classic, it’s been swell
    LightSail is decent: https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Any recommendations for .net web hosting with SQL Server?
    Even if it's part of the gargantuan mess that's AWS with its 200 interconnected services, AWS Lightsail is actually very intuitive and fairly priced. There's a super basic $5/month VPS, even though .NET is hungry and you'll likely want the $10 one for some extra RAM. You can easily install whatever database you like on the same instance the application is running on. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Configure a WordPress Instance with Amazon Lightsail
    Lightsail includes everything you need to launch your project quickly – virtual machines, containers, databases, CDN, load balancers, DNS management etc. This is especially good if you just need to get started quickly and have a good jump off point seeing as Amazon Lightsail is the easiest way to get started with Amazon Web Services (AWS) if you just need virtual private servers. Lightsail includes everything you... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
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DynamoDB mentions (120)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon Lightsail and DynamoDB, you can also consider the following products

Microsoft Azure - Windows Azure and SQL Azure enable you to build, host and scale applications in Microsoft datacenters.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.