We are running all of our application services on Amazon EC2.
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."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
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.
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August 2025

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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.
Buyer's Guide
Amazon EC2
August 2025

Learn what your peers think about Amazon EC2. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.
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Founder & CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Encryption of the data being saved and cloud storage very helpful
Pros and Cons
- "The Key Management Service (KMS) feature is very helpful for security. It encrypts the data that is being saved. Cloud storage is also very helpful, and it could be AWS S3, which a lot of people use."
- "They should fix the key pair name functionality and provide the ability to assign multiple key pair names to an EC2 instance. It is a key pair feature, and it provides you the ability to actually log into the server. It is basically like a password. In terms of new features, it should have the ability to increase and decrease the instance size based on certain times of the day. We should be able to do this without turning off the EC2 instance. Currently, you have to turn it off and then turn it back on. It should also have HTTPS or SSL integration."
What is our primary use case?
I build solutions in the infrastructure of my clients. I use Amazon EC2 in their AWS cloud.
With EC2, there are many different operating systems that you can use. If we were to talk about the size, I use the T2 and T3 instances and central apps for production and for Windows.
What is most valuable?
The Key Management Service (KMS) feature is very helpful for security. It encrypts the data that is being saved. Cloud storage is also very helpful, and it could be AWS S3, which a lot of people use.
What needs improvement?
They should fix the key pair name functionality and provide the ability to assign multiple key pair names to an EC2 instance. It is a key pair feature, and it provides you the ability to actually log into the server. It is basically like a password.
In terms of new features, it should have the ability to increase and decrease the instance size based on certain times of the day. We should be able to do this without turning off the EC2 instance. Currently, you have to turn it off and then turn it back on. It should also have HTTPS or SSL integration.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for five years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a very powerful platform. I feel very comfortable and confident while deploying on this platform. I also feel confident in telling my clients that it is very stable and very reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I know it can scale. I have no doubts about its scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have used their technical support, and I would say that they are pretty responsive and helpful.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
EC2 was the first service that I used. If we are talking about cloud platforms, I actually started with Azure eight years ago. I went for the AWS platform because it had a maturity of services over Azure in the past, that is, a year or two ago. If I were to do it over again, I would choose Azure based on what the customer needed at that point in time.
How was the initial setup?
I am pretty technical, so I kind of knew how to do it. I also use Hydra. When comparing both platforms, I would say that AWS is just a bit more confusing or complex.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend identifying the active directory configuration of your clients. The majority of client type integrations will have some active directory involved, and they also have Office 365 now. Getting a better understanding of that configuration will help the solution implementer in using the AWS platform.
I would rate Amazon EC2 a nine 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.
Service Delivery Manager / Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Good user interface with great built-in monitoring and very good documentation
Pros and Cons
- "All of my lower maintenance overheads are taken care of. I don't have to worry about it."
- "Technical itself could be a bit more helpful, especially when it comes to integration assistance. When we talk to the technical team, often it's some issue with integration and they'll tell us to talk to the other company. Often, the other company will look at everything and not see an issue from their end and then we are at an impasse."
What is our primary use case?
We've been using the solution basically for provisioning our development in a less production-heavy environment.
What is most valuable?
It's been quite easy for solutioning.
It's easy to manage.
There's a lot of support from the built-in framework.
The integration has been great.
The solution is very stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard.
The user interface is great.
The built-in monitoring is great. The reporting and analytics are pretty decent.
All of my lower maintenance overheads are taken care of. I don't have to worry about it.
There's great documentation available.
What needs improvement?
The issue that I have seen, earlier, not now, maybe around 2014, was that the ports that we wanted to deploy to weren't all open. In general, we need to have a specific request made to get these ports opened. We had to go through a little bit of analysis and it was not quite straightforward. We needed to raise a request to open such ports. That was the only problem I've not seen it in a long time, and that was with AWS in a special case. However, these days, I don't have any such port issues right now. We don't have any custom ports used at this point in time.
Technical support could be more helpful when it comes to dealing with integration issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been dealing with the solution for three or four years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is pretty stable. We haven't had any issues with it per se. It's not buggy or glitchy. It doesn't freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We build department dashboards for schools in the United States, so there are a number of users using it at any given time. It's likely in the hundreds of users.
How are customer service and technical support?
Support is okay. I'm not talking about the support from the team perspective, but rather from the framework. It's the mission framework side of it. The framework has got a lot of features, which supports the monitoring, and other things. It's all how you configure it.
If a person does need help troubleshooting, there's great documentation available for them.
Technical itself could be a bit more helpful, especially when it comes to integration assistance. When we talk to the technical team, often it's some issue with integration and they'll tell us to talk to the other company. Often, the other company will look at everything and not see an issue from their end and then we are at an impasse.
The technical support teams should understand how to give some pointers with their experience due to the fact that AWS is huge and vast and spread across different industries, and different regions. They should have some kind of knowledge or insights. We can't be the only clients facing these issues. I'm not sure if this is an issue across the board, or just a problem with the current team we're dealing with.
In the end, in a specific example, we were trying to use Monitor with AWS and we really tried to make it work. However, it did not. AWS did not help us, and from iMonitor's side, everything should have just worked.
How was the initial setup?
As long as you are prepared with the groundwork, the implementation is okay. You need to have the specifications ready in terms of what kind of environment you want to create.
Once you know what kind of environment you want to create it takes about five to ten minutes. That's all.
We only have one person that handled the deployment and maintenance. It was a pretty easy build, so it doesn't even really take up a person's full time.
We don't even really have any maintenance overhead. For us to actually deploy one particular individual or a resource for a full FTE isn't necessary. This is due to the fact that the infrastructure, the framework commission, has a lot of things that are already taken care of from a maintenance perspective and from a monitoring perspective. It's an easy job that isn't time-consuming.
We'll continue to use the solution in the future. We may expand its usage.
What about the implementation team?
We did not get someone to help us with the implementation. We handled the solution in-house.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is fine. It's not too expensive.
That said, if you don't have the right model in place, then the cost factor could be one thing that people need to think about because it's based on usage. For example, how long the server is up and running will contribute to the cost.
The model needs to be very concrete and work on how we want to use it. Based on that, if these factors are not known and if you don't take care of this, then the cost factor might go up as so it'll only take that one week to take care of any issues. We've never faced such a scenario because we are very clear on how we want to use it every time.
What other advice do I have?
We're just a customer.
I'd recommend this solution to others.
Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at a nine.
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.
Lead Data Engineer at Seven Lakes Enterprises, Inc.
Offers compute services with a stable and maintenance-free structure, but the upgrade process needs improvement
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to have standard operating systems along with the Windows, Linux operating systems, and their maintenance-free structure, which we prefer."
- "One of the challenges is the AMI upgrades."
What is our primary use case?
We are using this solution for relational DB servers, application servers, and IaaS. We are also using it for SMTP and HTTP services, for compute services.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to have standard operating systems along with the Windows, Linux operating systems, and their maintenance-free structure, which we prefer.
What needs improvement?
One of the challenges is the AMI upgrades. For example, EC2 is running on a different AMI, and when we are trying to upgrade, it has mandatory manual processes involved. This is a problem for us. This is an area that we are looking forward to being taken care of or augmented.
Also, when we start doing upgrades, we start losing network connectivity.
We have some issues with the cost, as it's expensive.
They don't have much in the way of optimized support or OS-level support. Also, there is not much visibility in terms of the upgrade. This is an issue that we are facing at the moment.
We would like to see it have something quicker. When we reboot the EC2 instance, the time it takes to come up is a little on the higher side. We are not sure if it is better on the reserved instance, but with the on-demand instances, it's not great. There is no easy way that a preliminary support guy can quickly check why the system is down, or whether there is a network issue or not. These are things that are still convoluted and could be simplified.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for more than eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is fine, we don't have any issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This solution is easy to scale, but it is not easy to change the generation or the instance title. If you are in the same generation it's fine, but upgrading older generations to new generations is painful.
We have more than 80 users in our company. Most of the users are using it daily. The Dev tech team uses it daily.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have a premium support license and they are efficient, but we have a few instances where the technical support was not very good. A few cases for support were not good but for the most part, they are efficient.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is simple with a few moderate complexities, but it's ok.
What about the implementation team?
We did not use an integrator or reseller, we managed ourselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The costs are quite high. For our usage, the cost is approximately $20,000 to $23,000 per month.
What other advice do I have?
Know your use cases. You have to analyze your load and use case before you select a particular EC2 machine. You also need to look into the availability and the stability of that particular version of EC2 that you are going for.
Mainly Windows is secure, but Linus and others are difficult to secure.
I would rate this solution a seven out ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private 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.
Solutions Architect at Chistats
Stable, with good potential, however security needs to be improved
Pros and Cons
- "What we have found most valuable is that we have not lost stability in the program."
- "I think the pricing needs to be adjusted and better security."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for Amazon EC2 is for front-end and back-end deployment.
What is most valuable?
What we have found most valuable is that we have not lost stability in the program.
What needs improvement?
I think the pricing needs to be adjusted and security improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon EC2 for a couple of months.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
My data science team is using TensorFlow.
How was the initial setup?
I like the setup with Azure more than Amazon EC2 because I am more comfortable there.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend any solution that helps solve the needs assessment. I would rate Amazon EC2 a seven 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.
Modern Data Center and Cloud Engineer II at IE Network Solutions PLC
Very user-friendly
Pros and Cons
- "This is a user-friendly solution."
- "The initial deployment was complex."
What is our primary use case?
We use EC2 for different kinds of websites that can be hosted, and for other directories.
What is most valuable?
I've found this to be a user-friendly solution and I intend to explore it further because I haven't had that much experience with it.
What needs improvement?
The first implementation we did was complex.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for six months.
How was the initial setup?
The first deployment was very complicated, but over time it became easier.
You have to understand the logic. The initial deployment took around two hours but after that we were able to deploy more quickly. It's preferable to use an integrator if you're in a production environment with many customers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This is not an expensive solution.
What other advice do I have?
I rate this solution nine out of 10.
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.
Director Software Engineering at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Good virtual applications, excellent scalability and a straightforward setup
Pros and Cons
- "The scalability of the solution is fantastic. It's one of our favorite features."
- "The customization could be simplified."
What is our primary use case?
Basically, whatever we're trying to do with physical VMs on-premise, we can directly replicate them on Amazon EC2.
What is most valuable?
The solution's most valuable features are the virtual applications and the scalability.
What needs improvement?
The customization and configuration could be simplified.
Updates could be automated and simplified.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of the solution is fantastic. It's one of our favorite features.
How are customer service and technical support?
We've never had to contact technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously we were using VMware. We decided to use the current solution to take advantage of its ability to scale.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was simple. Deployment was fast. We could do it in about 75 minutes. It might even take as little as five to ten.
We have about five people handling deployment and maintenance. Mostly, they're architects.
What about the implementation team?
We handled the implementation ourselves.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We're charged depending on the run time, but there are other costs as well, including costs for transactions and storage.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We also evaluated all of the other VM's.
What other advice do I have?
We use the cloud deployment model.
I'd advise others to understand the costs involved before implementing the solution. There are transaction and storage costs as well as running costs.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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