I installed the Windows server using EC2, and I set up some product programs.
General Manager at Yokogawa
Easy to use, saves on physical space, and capable of expansion
Pros and Cons
- "The product is easy to set up."
- "If the solution was cheaper, if the price was less, it would be better."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The product is easy to use.
It can scale up.
The product is easy to set up.
There is no need to have physical space to set up a server in.
What needs improvement?
If the solution was cheaper, if the price was less, it would be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for three or four years.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is quite a stable, reliable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution scales very well. People can expand easily.
I'm not sure how many people use the solution.
How are customer service and support?
I've never contacted technical support. Other colleagues may have; however, I haven't.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We only ever used an on-premises solution. We've never used anything cloud-related.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is very easy. It's not overly difficult.
I'm part of the setup and support team.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We'd like the solution to be cheaper.
We pay a monthly fee for licensing. I'd rate the pricing five out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Software Engineer at Streams Tech, Inc.
Good load balancing, useful features, and easily expands
Pros and Cons
- "We don't have to worry about scalability issues or maintenance or security. It's all taken care of."
- "The solution is pretty expensive."
What is our primary use case?
We're primarily using the solution for deploying our application.
What is most valuable?
We like that the cloud features are manageable. We don't need to do anything to manage them.
We don't have to worry about scalability issues or maintenance or security. It's all taken care of.
It's a powerful product, and we can do everything in just a few clicks.
What needs improvement?
They could try to improve everything incrementally. They're working on improvements all the time. It would be ideal if they could continue to refine the product so there were fewer and fewer things customers would have to worry about. They could improve their own people so that things like security continue to get better and better.
They could improve their images. They're working on doing that now.
The solution is pretty expensive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution in my current project. It's been more than six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze it is reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Most of the cases are using Amazon EC2 in our production deployment, so maybe most of the people are using Amazon EC2 with other features for containers. There are about 90 people on the product right now.
How are customer service and support?
I've never dealt with support. If someone needs to reach out to support, it would be my supervisor, not me. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful they would be.
How was the initial setup?
We go right to Amazon and create a machine. It takes ten to 20 minutes, so the process is pretty fast in terms of setting up.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost varies from machine to machine. When we create a machine, they estimate how much it will cost. It is more expensive than other products.
What other advice do I have?
We're an Amazon partner.
I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm on.
If a new user wants to use Amazon EC2 for their professional work or their deployments, then they need to think about the cost. The cost of the cloud is a bit higher compared to other things. They need to also consider the settings and functionality in Amazon EC2. They really need to look at their use case and scenario. However, it is something worth trying for testing purposes.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's made out life easier. We don't have to worry about scalability or maintenance any longer. It also offers good load balancing and other kinds of features.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Buyer's Guide
Amazon EC2
June 2026
Learn what your peers think about Amazon EC2. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2026.
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Technical Solution Manager - WebSphere SWG Services at IBM
A stable and scalable solution that is easy to manage
Pros and Cons
- "The most important aspects are that the solution is scalable and easy to manage."
- "The initial setup could be easier because many keys are required for access."
What is our primary use case?
Our company provides customers with business solutions for APIs, data warehousing, and process automation.
We have many clients and a hybrid model. Certain customers prefer on-premises and the rest run the solution from the cloud.
What is most valuable?
The most important aspects are that the solution is scalable and easy to manage.
Amazon provides great services.
What needs improvement?
The initial setup could be easier because many keys are required for access. A more concise or shorter cycle for setup is desired.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is definitely stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is definitely scalable because it is in the cloud. That is the benefit of moving to cloud-based solutions.
How are customer service and support?
We have not needed technical support.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is definitely complex.
What about the implementation team?
We implement the solution for customers. We have a skilled team so deployments are pretty fast with no challenges.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
Director at Data Connect Technologies Pte Ltd
Good value, easy to set up, and reliable
Pros and Cons
- "The product is easy and quick to set up."
- "The solution can scale, is very easy, offers excellent value, and we have found it to be stable and reliable."
- "The support could be more responsive."
What is our primary use case?
We typically use the solution for the web server.
What is most valuable?
The solution can scale. It's very easy.
It offers excellent value.
The product is easy and quick to set up.
We have found it to be stable and reliable.
What needs improvement?
The support could be more responsive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I’ve used the solution for four years. It's been a while.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It’s a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn’t crash or freeze. It is reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
We have at least 20 people on the solution currently.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is better if the customer signs up for the support package. If they do not have a support package, getting help takes longer.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward.
The deployment typically takes about two days. It does not take long. It can be handled by one department. We run it 24/7 and have it at about five financial institutions.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the initial setup in-house. We did not need any outside assistance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost of the product is reasonable. It’s not overly expensive.
What other advice do I have?
We are encouraging our customers to go to the cloud. It’s aligned with our business.
I would recommend the solution. I’d rate it eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
IT Systems Administrator at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Stable, scalable and simple to implement
Pros and Cons
- "This is a great solution that's stable, scalable and simple to implement."
- "Current inability to change the resource service levels."
- "We sometimes need to change the resource service levels, whether it's to expand or contract. Amazon doesn't offer that option so the way things work now, changes can't be made without scheduling downtime or preventing users from using the service for a period while changes are made."
What is our primary use case?
EC2 and VPC are two services that are quite interconnected. EC2 is the Amazon console that uses the host resources in the data centers to launch servers, instances and services with VPC as the networking part.
What is most valuable?
This is a great solution that's stable, scalable and simple to implement.
What needs improvement?
We sometimes need to change the resource service levels, whether it's to expand or contract. Amazon doesn't offer that option so the way things work now, changes can't be made without scheduling downtime or preventing users from using the service for a period while changes are made. I would like to see servers upgrading or downgrading on the fly without the end user even noticing the change. It would be life-changing for us.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for about four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable. There are instances storage servers distributed on multiple hosts in the data centers and even if there's a failure we're unaware of the disruptions. The solution is stable 24/7, 365 days a year, and we know we can rely on it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable, we have over 1,000 users.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing costs are paid monthly for the whole package. That includes the resources that the server is utilizing, plus the operating system along with any database license, such as Microsoft SQL, that you are using. It's quite expensive.
What other advice do I have?
This is an amazing solution although it's not suitable for every company.
They lose one point because the price is quite high so I rate this product nine out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Database Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Highly scalable, good performance, and secure
Pros and Cons
- "The best features of Amazon EC2 are its high performance and security."
- "Amazon EC2 is the right choice for cloud services processing."
- "Amazon EC2 could improve its dashboards and UI, they need to be more user-friendly."
What is our primary use case?
Amazon EC2 is used if you are looking for a process serving cloud service.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Amazon EC2 are its high performance and security.
What needs improvement?
Amazon EC2 could improve its dashboards and UI, they need to be more user-friendly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon EC2 for approximately five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Amazon EC2 is a stable and reliable
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon EC2 is a highly scalable solution.
We have over 100 users using this solution and we have plans to increase the usage.
How are customer service and support?
The support from Amazon EC2 is good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Amazon EC2 is straightforward. It only took us a few minutes to complete.
What about the implementation team?
We did the implementation ourselves.
We do not need a special team to implement this solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon EC2 has a pay-as-you-use cost model.
What other advice do I have?
Amazon EC2 is the right choice for cloud services processing.
I would recommend this solution to others.
I rate Amazon EC2 a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
CTO at Huber
Secure and stable product with great technical support
Pros and Cons
- "EC2 is secure and stable, and we have no complaints about it on AWS."
- "EC2 could be improved with easier migration."
What is our primary use case?
I mainly use EC2 for hosting our application as well as some of the user data caching mechanism and mailing services.
What needs improvement?
EC2 could be improved with easier migration.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using EC2 for around eighteen months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I'm satisfied with the stability of EC2.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
EC2 is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Amazon's technical support is great, we have no issues with it.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup wa straightforward and took around two weeks before configuration.
What other advice do I have?
EC2 is secure and stable, and we have no complaints about it on AWS. However, Microsoft is more helpful with our go-to-market strategy, which motivates us to use Azure more than EC2. I would rate EC2 as ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Enterprise Solutions Architect at OORWIN LABS INC
Excellent support, scalable, and straightforward implementation
Pros and Cons
- "Amazon EC2 has plenty of scalability options to decrease or increase the number we need. Based on our bandwidth usage we may go for a higher or downgrade level. We can do it ourselves."
- "Amazon's support is the best because the agents can react faster than competitors and they provide a very good service."
- "We're expecting to have Graviton instances. Graviton means it's not internal, it's a low-cost instance, but at present time, Graviton is not supported for a few packages."
What is our primary use case?
We are running all of our application services on Amazon EC2.
What needs improvement?
We're expecting to have Graviton instances. Graviton means it's not internal, it's a low-cost instance. At present time, Graviton is not supported for a few packages.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon EC2 for approximately five years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon EC2 has plenty of scalability options to decrease or increase the number we need. Based on our bandwidth usage we may go for a higher or downgrade level. We can do it ourselves.
Our applications are running on Amazon EC2 instances only, we have approximately 15,000 that can use on a daily basis.
We have been receiving a lot of customer sign-ups. There are user licenses with the application, based on users' usage count we may increase or decrease the server instances types if needed.
How are customer service and support?
Amazon's support is the best because the agents can react faster than competitors. They provide a very good service.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have previously used many other services.
How was the initial setup?
The initial installation was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
I have done the implementation of Amazon EC2 and I handle the maintenance and support.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There is a license required to use this solution and we pay on a monthly basis.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon EC2 a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Manager -Datacenter Planning and Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Scalable and flexible solution for configuring Kubernetes
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is EC2 is scalable, so when you want to move to market, you don't need to wait until your provision is fast, you can just go and provision it and then easily install your application."
- "The ease of migrating applications could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
We use EC2 to configure the Kubernetes environment clusters and to reconfigure Kubernetes by applications and microservices.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is EC2 is scalable, so when you want to move to market, you don't need to wait until your provision is fast, you can just go and provision it and then easily install your application. We can also size the instances correctly based on our requirements, so for example, there are multiple instance types and families, and we can choose according to the requirement, which is very convenient.
What needs improvement?
The ease of migrating applications could be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using EC2 for more than three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
EC2 is stable, but it depends on the architecture - if you don't protect it with other control and security mechanisms, it'll be cumbersome.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
EC2 is scalable, you can just go and provision it and then easily install your application.
How are customer service and support?
Normally when we have operations issues, we escalate tickets to the support team, and they've always responded on time.
How was the initial setup?
The amount of time it takes to install depends on how you configure and how many instances of EC2 you want.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a monthly primary account that pays for the licensing, with multiple accounts below it. So whenever we want to have a new solution, we create a new account under the paying account.
What other advice do I have?
I would give this solution a rating of eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Chief Technology Officer at Ongil Private Limited
The ability to bring up servers and then do the computation and deposit means we don't have to maintain a data center
Pros and Cons
- "The ability to bring up servers and then do the computation and deposit means we don't have to maintain a data center. Everything is virtual and the security is also taken care of. It helps us to achieve compliance. Being a small startup with the security features that AWS provides helps us with compliance."
- "In terms of the EC2 services, it's an amazing product, in terms of the computational power and the flexibility and then the number of features and services they provide, it's awesome actually."
- "In terms of improvement, they could build some client-side desktop tools that provide easier connectivity to Amazon."
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use Amazon AWS and EC2 services. The primary use case is to spawn servers quickly with a particular hardware memory, CPU, and storage footprint. It gives me a hardware service quickly, I can get a virtual machine with Linux installed with a particular storage configuration. I can also configure the security and bring it up.
Practically, it gives me a mini data center in one or two minutes.
We need to bring a large number of servers to do our jobs. We do a lot of crawling jobs hosted in AWS. We have templates available to us to bring a pool of servers up and running, hardware as a service.
In our use case, it's not the number of users using the solution, it's more the number of processes that respond. Based on the compressions and the jobs we do or sometimes we crawl, so the scaling is more in terms of the amount of data acquisition we do.
How has it helped my organization?
The ability to bring up servers and then do the computation and deposit means we don't have to maintain a data center. Everything is virtual and the security is also taken care of. It helps us to achieve compliance. Being a small startup with the security features that AWS provides helps us with compliance.
The encryption, storage, physical security, and data security features at the protocol and storage level, helps us as an organization to achieve greater compliance and keep our business running in a secure fashion.
What is most valuable?
The features I find valuable are EC2, the admin control, and the ability to add the elastic IPs and then attach storage; all of those features are valuable. Also, the Admin Control, Cost Explorer, and the billing features are valuable. That gives me the ability to understand the costs. Amazon AWS has some savings plans.
In cloud computing, people think the cloud is cheap, but you need to know how to use it and configure the right plans.
AWS Cost Explorer and the billing features are also valuable.
S3 buckets and fast storage are also very nice features.
What needs improvement?
In terms of improvement, they could build some client-side desktop tools that provide easier connectivity to Amazon.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon AWS for 3 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of availability and stability, they have not been an issue so far. I've used it in all previous organizations for very large-scale deployments and they're working fine.
We are not seeing any outages because of Amazon, except if we are using spot instances, they can go down at any moment. We will only use these when we can afford server downtime, so not for production. They sometimes can go down for an hour and so on, but other than that the EC2 instances are fairly stable and great, we have not had an issue so far.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scaling is not a problem because they themselves give you Amazon auto-scaling features. Very few users know how to use it properly. Our VM and images should be properly packaged and then you have to configure it. The load boxes have to be configured, you need to do some configuration, then you can basically vertically scale by choosing a server with a larger memory footprint, or you can go for horizontal scaling by adding more configuration into it. It's scaling over the box.
How are customer service and support?
I've never had to use Amazon support services yet. I've not opened any tickets so far, I don't have first-hand experience of going through the support process with Amazon. I have been supported by their enablement teams that work with startups, they are fairly good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've been using AWS for quite a while, there are some use cases where I have not directly used any other cloud product so far, I mostly stick to Amazon.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is more or less straightforward for a developer. For somebody who is not from a pure development background it obviously requires you to understand what a public IP address is. You need to understand what storage is and then how to use it. It's mostly for developers and administrators, not for a non-technical audience; for people who can configure a server and have technical background.
What about the implementation team?
We mostly implement everything on our own, we don't have to bring in a consultant. The only time we brought in a consultant from AWS itself was to take up the offer of a free review of our infrastructure and they will help us to optimize. They advise on which plan based on our use case. Other than that, most of the technical documentation is available and we can operate on our own.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If we already have the script and everything available, the deployment takes no more than half an hour. We already have the templates, but the template development, the scripts, all the tools development will take some time, maybe a month or so depending on the use case. But, once you have them set up, it's basically a matter of 15 minutes to half an hour.
There were no annual or monthly licensing costs as it's completely based on usage. Depending on how many hours of use, the instance we run, and the storage we use, you get a very detailed account of usage in your billing document.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not go through an evaluation process beforehand, mostly it was chosen by the organizations. I did evaluate other vendors on cost optimization to see whether switching to another vendor would improve cost.
I wanted to optimize the infrastructure to see whether the problem is with the way we use it or if Amazon itself is expensive. I was able to bring down the cost with some of the cleanups and saving plans they offer.
What other advice do I have?
We plan to increase usage as our business expands, we will grow with AWS as it expands.
In terms of the EC2 services, it's an amazing product, in terms of the computational power and the flexibility and then the number of features and services they provide, it's awesome actually.
I would rate it a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
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You may simply scale your EC2 instances up or down based on traffic or workload demands with AWS EC2 Auto Scaling. This makes it a very valuable feature because it helps to guarantee top performance and financial effectiveness.