Most AWS partner directories are dominated by firms built for enterprise accounts: thousand-person teams, six-month sales cycles, and pricing that assumes a corporate budget. A startup or SMB doesn’t need that. It needs a small team that can both architect the AWS side and actually build the product on top of it. Here are five small AWS partners that fit that brief, starting with us.
1. Perfsys
Perfsys is an AWS Select Tier Consulting Partner and authorized AWS reseller built for startups and SMBs. Founded in 2013 and fully remote since 2022, the boutique team of senior engineers has delivered 70 plus projects for 30 plus international clients across the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, and Europe, with a 5.0 rating on Clutch.
What sets Perfsys apart from most small AWS shops is that consulting and development sit under one roof. AWS Consulting Services cover cloud architecture and application migration, while a separate MVP development practice builds the product itself on AWS-native infrastructure. Once something is live, CloudCare managed services handle support, observability, and security. The team also carries AWS Delivery designations in Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon API Gateway, plus individual certifications including AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Associate and Professional) and AWS Certified Security (Specialty).
Best for: startups and SMBs that want one small team covering both AWS infrastructure and product development, not two separate vendors.
2. StormIT
StormIT is a Prague-based AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner founded in 2019, with a team of around nine people serving clients in more than 20 countries.
The company holds AWS Service Delivery designations in Lambda, CloudFront, WAF, and DynamoDB, and works directly with clients rather than through account managers. It’s a consulting and managed services shop though, not a development one, so a startup still needs a separate team to build the product itself.
Best for: EU-based startups that want a lean, well-certified AWS specialist purely for architecture, migration, and ongoing cloud management.
3. Towards The Cloud
Towards The Cloud is a Netherlands-based AWS Partner Network member run by a single senior practitioner, focused on CDK-first infrastructure such as landing zones and security reviews.
Every engagement is delivered by that one practitioner directly, with everything built in version control and no offshore handoff. The tradeoff is capacity as much as scope. It’s one person, so it can’t run parallel workstreams, and like StormIT it stays on the infrastructure side rather than building product features.
Best for: founders who want one experienced architect handling infrastructure personally, and who have their own developers for the application layer.
4. Lambert Labs
Lambert Labs is a UK-based AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner built around infrastructure as code, with senior engineers doing the delivery work directly instead of managing a junior bench.
Most engagements leave you with version-controlled, audit-ready AWS environments rather than manual console configuration. The firm’s focus is architecture and IaC, so its natural fit is a startup that already has an engineering team and needs the AWS layer underneath it built properly.
Best for: UK startups that want handoff-ready infrastructure and already have developers building the product itself.
5. Aland Cloud
Aland Cloud is a Germany-based AWS-focused consultancy working with growth-stage companies on migration, DevOps, and custom software development, covering both infrastructure and application work.
It works exclusively on AWS, covering CI/CD, infrastructure as code with Terraform, and compliance work spanning SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR. Its public track record is thinner though, with two published reviews on Clutch, and delivery centers on a single country rather than the multi-country reach of a distributed European team.
Best for: German-based startups that want a small, AWS-only partner covering both infrastructure and development, and are comfortable with a shorter public review history.
Choosing between them
The first question to ask isn’t tier or price. It’s whether you need AWS infrastructure work alone, or a partner that also builds the product running on it. StormIT, Towards The Cloud, and Lambert Labs cover the infrastructure half well and expect you to bring your own developers. Perfsys and Aland Cloud cover both.
Whichever you choose, verify the AWS Partner tier on the AWS Partner Solutions Finder, ask who specifically will be on your account, and confirm what you can maintain yourselves once the engagement ends.