Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Information Reviews & Insights

Score8.9 out of 10

344 Reviews and Ratings

Overview

Synthesised from 5 reviews | Last Published April 23, 2026

This product assessment is based on a synthesis of 5 recent reviews analyzing Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) across four dimensions: overall satisfaction, strengths, weaknesses, and business impact. EC2 is used by organizations to host web platforms, backend applications, and development/production environments. A key benefit of EC2, cited by 4 out of 5 reviewers, is its scalability and performance, enabling it to handle varying workloads effectively. Reviewers also praised the flexibility in instance types and auto-scaling capabilities for managing infrastructure and peak demands. However, 3 out of 5 reviewers expressed concerns regarding instance management, particularly with Spot Instances, and suggested improvements to Reserved Instance plans. While 3 of 5 reviewers noted cost savings as a positive impact, 2 reviewers mentioned increased latency and potential cost issues with custom configurations. Overall, EC2 offers a flexible and scalable infrastructure solution, but users should carefully consider instance management complexities and potential cost implications.

Pros

Scalability and performance to handle varying workloads
Flexibility in instance types to fit different needs
Integration capabilities with other AWS services
Auto-scaling capabilities for managing infrastructure and peak demands
Potential for cost savings compared to traditional infrastructure

Cons

Complex instance management, particularly with Spot Instances
Need for more flexible handling of Spot Instances, such as automatic switching to on-demand instances
Setup and configuration process can be complex and require simplification
Potential for increased latency in certain use cases
Cost can escalate with custom configurations

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Reviews

30 Reviews

InformationComputer Software15Computer Networking1Internet8Telecommunications1Broadcast Media1Publishing2Information Services1Online Media1

Honest Review - AWS EC2

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our organization uses Amazon EC2 to operate highly scalable machines for various machine learning services. We use a fleet of EC2 cluster groups combined with an auto scaling group and reserved / spot instances configuration for high performance.
The service addresses the problems of manual maintenance by automatically scaling machines based on demand and traffic.

Pros

Huge Diverse range of machine shapes are available which cater to our demand.
Ability to combine the machines and integrate them with any other service in AWS (Ex: RDS, S3)
Handling performance and scalability using auto-scaling, ELB configuration and high performance machine shapes.

Cons

More options and affordability for GPU machines.
Spot / Reserved Instances plans can be better
More flexibility in AWS CLI to handle ec2 machines.

Likelihood to Recommend

Suitable: For running monolithic applications. EC2 offers very good services for those kinds of use cases. Cloud-native applications focused on AWS exclusively can be deployed on EC2.

Not Suitable: Microservices-based applications are not suitable for EC2 as they take up more memory and are slow. Alternative services include using Docker, Kubernetes, etc to deploy lightweight applications.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Online Media company, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

userec2.aws.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

March 27, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use our EC2 instances to host our backend app. It runs our web server that allows users to interact with our app via a browser. The product helps us deliver/process our user's designs and emails, send out automated emails and notifications, and run periodic security checks to ensure data integrity.

Pros

Easy to interact with instances via ssh.
Many different options and configurations to choose from.
Widespread compatibility with other cloud services especially AWS.

Cons

Interaction via amazon's console.
Complex setup/configurations to get it running.
Operating system versioning is done manually.

Likelihood to Recommend

It works well when you work at scale. For example, if you are hosting a web application, having EC2 in auto-scaling groups would make it very easy to handle all traffic volumes, given that the scaling configuration is set up accordingly. It can be used with a load-balancing layer to improve availability.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Computer Software company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

AWS EC2 is so e-c-2-use!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

September 25, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use EC2 for almost all our operations, they are an excellent option for workloads like Web Servers like Apache and nginx, Application Servers like WebLogic, Java Servers, and even as Database Servers with Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server running on them. There plenty of choices to choose on how the EC2 is so they accommodate almost any software on them.

Pros

They start and stop quit fast
They can be created and terminated (deleted) very fast
They can scale-up or scale-down almost immediately (just require a restart)

Cons

You can not scale up or down without a restart
You can increase the size of the volumen (hard disk) but you can't decrease its size
By default any Linux OS on EC2 doesn't have a GUI

Likelihood to Recommend

AWS EC2 is well suited for almost any scenario, you can run any software that is compatible (x86_64, arm, mac), and you have plenty of instances types to choose with little or massive memory, the same for CPU and disk space.
You even can run in a non-virtual EC2, that is a physical server we you have all the resources available to you, perfect for some very strict industries or by some licenses rules.

I can't think of an scenario where EC2 is not appropriate.

Iván García

Consultant in Professional Services at Datum, S.A. (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) - A Great Solution

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

June 26, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

- Cloud Linux Virtual Machines

- Cloud Windows Virtual Machines

- VPC and Security Groups

- Key Pairs

- LoadBalancers

Pros

Great Response time on GUI as well as automation with Terraform
Very effective and crisp functioning with all API's
Easy User Management with IAM
Secure Key Pair Management

Cons

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is very well placed and doing quite well and they might increase default resource limits.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) can add Project management feature like Resource Groups or Projects.
Better Cost Control like Budget High Limit utilization can be help

Likelihood to Recommend

- Perfect for Virtual Machine Environment on Cloud with Security in Place

- Perfect for automations with API's or Terraform

- Perfect for multi-user Cloud Management platforms.

- Perfect for flexible Security Groups with Ports and Rules controlled by Engineers.

- Great for easy setup and migrations with databases and dynamic functions.

Sagar Mehta

Consultant in Information Technology at Atgen Software Solutions LLP (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

14 years of experience

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EC2 is expensive - expect cost overruns - but works as advertised

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

November 24, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We do website design and development. We used AWS EC2 as a VPS server to host a variety of web applications, including Apache server, postfix-dovecot mail server. We also have an API server that orchestrates many of the different web services we make - ie. for analytics, billing, customer account management, etc.

Pros

Easy to use.
Integrates with other AWS services well.

Cons

Unstable for EC2 instances of small size.
Expensive compared to Linode, Digital Ocean.
Hidden charges such as network fees.

Likelihood to Recommend

You should stay away from EC2 if you want savings on your infrastructure bill. Only choose EC2 if you're a large corporation where you are using multiple AWS services and you want to integrate them together seamlessly - and also that infrastructure bill is of no concern to you. You want to also closely monitor your EC2 using cloudwatch (and set up alarms) for smaller instances as they tend to be less stable in my experience. Since I'm a small company, I prefer Linode or Digital Ocean, or OVH over EC2 any day.

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Secure and Smartly Control your business with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

August 5, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances are easy to modify and really easy to use in production with beginners on Unix/Windows. Being compatible with many AWS utilities is also a huge virtue. It is common that you want to start the server without assuming the costs and the aptitude of care of the bare metal servers, another plus is the construction of instances worldwide can be carried out within a few seconds of time. That's what I like most about the EC2 instance.

Pros

Dashboard its nice.
The product is constantly evolving both in terms of features and user-friendliness.
Sales is present but not pushy.

Cons

Hard to get used to and often need to search for items instead of them being visible.
More extensive video library instead of written documentation
Identifying the cost of the resources is not straight forward.

Likelihood to Recommend

The flexibility to select the right resource size for current needs is great - this has allowed us to scale our resources alongside the growth in the amount of work we put through EC2.

The great thing about Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud has been that this is one of Cloud Services, and among the most commonly used products for AWS Web service. Very flexible and quick to set up/launch compute resources.

Ana Baker

Senior Software Engineer in Research & Development at Kforce Inc (Information Services, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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The best and most scalable cloud infrastructure in the entire world!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 25, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Amazon EC2 is being used by my organization as the centralized cloud server hosting tool. It is being used across the entire organization and is one of the most important tools that we have to run our company. We run all types of servers from testing to development to staging servers and we use all different types of images when we run our servers. It solves the need to have a cloud based, infinitely scalable system to better host everything from applications to backend servers and so on.

Pros

elastic compute
cloud server creation
infinite scalability
ability to secure and deploy servers on the run
cloud imaging and machine images

Cons

user interface
documentation
server sizes and regions

Likelihood to Recommend

Amazon EC2 is one of the best tools a development and software company could ask for. It is infinitely scalable and relatively easy to use when it comes to all the things that we used to do that took a long time because human beings had to provision rack mounted servers by hand. It's less apporpriate for enterprise settings where there is still a presence of older, localized infrastructure.

Verified User

Consultant in Information Technology (Internet company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Maximum flexibility. Competitive pricing. Great support.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 31, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Similar to many other startups, our whole infrastructure is on top of AWS, and EC2 is being used in many ways across multiple departments.

DevOps supports a fleet of reserved EC2 instances to host backend services and pipelines using Kubernetes.
Data Science team uses EC2 instances to run Jupytor notebooks to do feature exploration on pre-loaded data, and sometimes spot instances to support ad-hoc feature generation and model training. Data team uses the spot instances to run backfill jobs whenever needed.

Pros

A great variety of choices in Amazon Machine Image (AMI) types. Users can select a more basic type to run generic workloads, but also have the choice to pick an AMI pre-installed with specific services in the AWS Marketplace.
The range of instance types can support the usage from a student's exploration (inexpensive general-purpose nano instances) to an enterprise's most intense workloads (memory or storage-optimized instances with terabytes of memory and ultra-fast network connection).
The pricing options, from regular instances, reserved instances to spot instances allow users to get the job done and make smart choices about how much they want to pay and when they want to pay.

Cons

The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.

Likelihood to Recommend

EC2 is really standing out when a team is committed to the AWS stack and wants to deploy production jobs on the long term. Reserved instances have competitive pricing and in general the reliability is guaranteed. Spot EC2 instances are also good, when a one-time backfill or feature generation workload needs to be performed.

For users who want to use a managed service, for example a Hadoop platform, I would recommend going with Cloudera and similar companies to get the best support possible.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Internet company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

EC2 is my First choice for cloud

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 21, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) across the whole organization for multiple web applications and custom software running in the cloud. EC2 is our first choice to run our applications as it helps auto-scaling and elasticity. It reduces the maintenance of an in-house data center and can spin up new servers in less than 5 minutes.

Pros

Auto scaling
Security
On demand

Cons

I wish amazon come up with a GUI interface for EC2's

Likelihood to Recommend

EC2 is my first choice for all my application deployments in the cloud as it has great features like auto-scaling and multiple categories like reserved instances, on-demand, and scheduled ones.

Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering (Publishing company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Amazon EC2 - Best Cloud Hosting Provider on the market

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 18, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The engineering department uses Amazon EC2 to host all the servers we run our applications on. EC2 is a fantastic product because it is very cost effective and easy to use. If you need to quickly provision a new server, you can use the admin console to create whatever you need, from very small simple setups to extremely large, complex systems.

Pros

Very cost effective
Easily scalable. Can increase or decrease servers in minutes.
Very easy to use. Amazing admin console giving you full control of your servers.

Cons

You have the option to do 1 or 3 year reserved instances, but nothing in between.
AWS CLI (command line interface) can be tricky to learn and use.
There are a very large amount of services and configuration options, it's sometimes hard to keep track and understand them all.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend using amazon EC2 in any scenario where a company or individual needs to run a server. Because of the ease of use and configuration, there is hardly a reason to buy and manage your own hardware. Anything from a very simple website to a complex application with hundreds of servers can be setup using EC2.

Gabriel Samaroo

Senior Software Engineer in Engineering at Rocketrip (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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