# AWS CloudFormation

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-cloudformation/

5 people recommended AWS CloudFormation in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 6 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended: people find rollbacks, deployment speed and YAML or JSON templates frustrating; those who recommend it cite managing AWS infrastructure as code and free to use.

Summary written by Claude from the comments below.

## What people warn about

- Poor rollbacks and failure handling (3 comments in the sample): "It's not the best "control plane" as far as updates and rollbacks go, but it works pretty well for our needs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49242750)) "the fact that its failure modes often leave you in a state that feels extremely dangerous" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46909600)) "Failed deployments without rollbacks still leave you in a unusable state" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497627))
- Many prefer other IaC tools (3 comments in the sample): "You don’t need Ansible, Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47228017)) "it's good too, even for me much better than CF or Terraform" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868463)) "I like to avoid cloudformation as much as possible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228822))
- Slow deployments (2 comments in the sample): "cloudformation deployments take inordinate amounts of time for seemingly no reason" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497226)) "CloudFormation is also not particularly fast" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226573))
- Hard-to-read YAML and JSON templates (2 comments in the sample): "yaml is a terrible format for the knowledge encoded in these artifacts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48549670)) "Cloud formation is not human friendly as JSON or YAML." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085560))

## Why people recommend it

- Works with AWS CDK (2 comments in the sample): "to make CloudFormation usable, it is written in typescript, and generates the templates on the fly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45958816)) "I'd rather just use the AWS CDK and CloudFormation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46861888))
- Preferred over other IaC tools (1 comment in the sample): "learning something arguably better, like Cloudformation / Terraform / SST" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822242))

## Other IaC tools people recommend

- [Terraform](https://hackerapproved.com/p/terraform/): 80 recommend, 35 mixed, 74 criticize
- [Pulumi](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pulumi/): 29 recommend, 13 mixed, 8 criticize
- [AWS CDK](https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-cdk/): 20 recommend, 9 mixed, 15 criticize
- [OpenTofu](https://hackerapproved.com/p/opentofu/): 14 recommend, 6 mixed, 2 criticize

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/)

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "AWS CloudFormation", https://hackerapproved.com/p/aws-cloudformation/ (5 recommend, 3 mixed, 15 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.