TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Reviews & Insights

Score8.9 out of 10

344 Reviews and Ratings

Top industries

Based on 4,979,463 HG Insights installations.

Powered by

Community Insights for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Synthesised from 5 verified reviews.


Synthesised from 5 reviews | Last Published April 23, 2026


This product assessment of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) synthesizes insights from 5 recent reviews, focusing on overall satisfaction, specific strengths, and return on investment. EC2 is primarily used for scalable compute resources, with 4 out of 5 reviewers emphasizing its ability to handle request spikes due to its scalability. The platform's versatility is further supported by its wide array of instance types, allowing users to optimize infrastructure based on CPU and memory requirements. EC2 also serves as a reliable hosting solution for applications, including backend systems and web platforms, as noted by 3 of 5 reviewers. A key advantage of EC2 is its cost-effectiveness, with 3 of 5 reviewers citing cost reductions through the use of Spot Instances and rightsizing. However, performance experiences are mixed, with some praising scaling capabilities and CDN support, while one reviewer reported increased latency with EC2 microservices. The integration capabilities with other Amazon Web Services also received positive attention, with 2 of 5 reviewers noting its compatibility and ability to combine services.


  • Scalability to handle request spikes
  • Wide variety of instance types for optimal resource allocation
  • Cost reduction through Spot Instances and rightsizing
  • Integration with other AWS services
  • Reliable hosting for applications and web platforms
  • Potential latency issues with microservices implementation
  • Performance can vary based on specific implementation

From 5 reviews | Last Published April 23, 2026

Scalability and Performance

4 mentions

Positive reviews by 100% of reviewers


Why it matters:

  • A significant benefit of Amazon EC2, according to 4 of 5 reviewers, is its scalability and performance. Reviewers appreciate the ability to scale server usage as needed, particularly for handling request spikes. The availability of multiple instance types also contributes to the platform's utility, allowing for optimized infrastructure based on CPU and memory needs.

Our organization uses Amazon EC2 to operate highly scalable machines for various machine learning services.

Cost reduction

3 mentions

Positive reviews by 100% of reviewers


Why it matters:

  • A majority of reviewers (3 of 5) highlighted cost reduction as a significant benefit of using Amazon EC2. This was achieved through strategies such as leveraging EC2 Spot Instances, which one reviewer reported reduced costs by 39%, and rightsizing EC2 instances. Saving plans also contributed to lower infrastructure costs.

Positive Impact: Using EC2 Spot Instances reduced costs by 39%

Hosting Applications

3 mentions

Positive reviews by 100% of reviewers


Why it matters:

  • Amazon EC2 is used by 3 of 5 reviewers for hosting various applications. This includes hosting backend applications and web platforms. Reviewers depend on EC2 for its reliability in hosting client sites.

We use our EC2 instances to host our backend app.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Reviews

73 Reviews

Continuous Evolving Cloud

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) are being used for our production, sandbox, and development ERP environment, PRTG network monitoring and Veeam and Commvault backup solutions. It addresses the application performance issue comparing to other Cloud service provider which despite being configured with higher CPU and RAM resources still underperform Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Additionally, AWS regularly releases new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) with higher performance but at a lower cost.

Pros

  • Instance type
  • Storage options
  • Purchase model
  • Security

Cons

  • Allow Spot instances to auto switch to on-demand when the capacity is need, instead of sudden interruption

Likelihood to Recommend

Suitable for companies that are looking for performance at a competitive price, flexibility to switch instance type even with RI, flexibility to add-on IOPS, option to lower running cost with the regular introduction of new instance type that comes with higher performance but at a lower cost.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
8 years of experience

Honest Review - AWS EC2

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

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.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
3 years of experience

Excellent platform for scalable on-demand compute servers

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

For hosting our web platform on multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances with the use of launch templates and auto scaling groups. This helps whenever we get a spike in the requests during peak season to handle the platform. The availability of multiple instances types according to cpu, memory also helps in right fitting of the infrastructure. Also the availability of public AMI with updated packages also removes the installation overhead.

Pros

  • Customising virtual machines with your own scripts and packages.
  • Auto scaling the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances based on events and thresholds
  • Creating multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances in a single go with launch templates

Cons

  • Portal to check all Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances from different regions at single place
  • Configuration page for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances can be made simpler. Make required fields as mandatory.

Likelihood to Recommend

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances works well for hosting applications that can be monolithic or microservices. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) are easy to be provisioned with the features of launch templates and auto scaling groups which provides a way to handle load at peaks or spikes on platform. These can also be customized with the use of userdata for running user specific scripts.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
7 years of experience

userec2.aws.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

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.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
4 years of experience

Easy and flexible deployment solutions.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

EC2 allows us to scale our server usage as needed and automatically. There are a ton of price points and options for every need. We host several client sites on EC2 and can depend on it to be reliable and work. Upgrades and downgrades to server sizes are also straightforward.

Pros

  • Changing instance sizes.
  • Fast creation of new instances.
  • Automated backups.

Cons

  • Shutting down memory locked servers can be slow.
  • Upgrades between different architectures is very tedious.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is great for large-scale computing needs that need to scale up and down. However, it's not great for running virtual computers for Remote Desktop and similar tasks.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
12 years of experience

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

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

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.

Highly available, instant access servers for your workloads!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We primarily use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances for running our Splunk deployments on AWS, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) gives us the flexibility to choose from a wide range of server types at an hourly rate, or for even lower prices with upfront commitment - it allows us to quickly make changes to the instance types we are interested in and perform testing before then making long-term savings by committing to instances for the next 12 months.

Pros

  • Instant access to servers
  • Wide range of instance types available
  • Ultimate flexibility

Cons

  • Switching hardware types may require application changes
  • Security patching can be onerous if not automated
  • It is easy to end up having more running than you need

Likelihood to Recommend

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is particularly good for running monolithic workloads which are not easy to containerise or run on microservices with other AWS services. This includes off-the-shelf applications from vendors who supply closed-source software and expect a full server for installation. There are other benefits depending on instance types which are an advantage over function-as-a-service type resource, such as direct attached fast storage, high memory, network or graphics requirements.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
5 years of experience

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) - A Great Solution

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

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.

EC2 - All in one solution

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use EC2 to rapidly and efficiently scale up or down as needed for our customers while still providing a secure and dependable environment. It enables us to swiftly supply new instances and adjust resource allocation as necessary.We also use EC2 to provide high-performance computing, process data, and do analytics.

Pros

  • its pay-as-you-go pricing approach
  • effectively provide and manage compute resources
  • adjust resource allocation

Cons

  • nothing as such but some more cross functional policies can be added

Likelihood to Recommend

Good Scenario : EC2 is a wonderful option when you need to execute a lot of compute-intensive tasks, like producing videos or performing scientific calculations. It is the best option for applications that call for a lot of processing power due to its fast CPUs and potent GPUs.Bad Scenario : The best option for conducting lengthy tasks might not be EC2. Since EC2 instances are made to be quickly spun up and down, they might not be the greatest option for jobs that call for prolonged compute cycles.

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud review for Machine Learning Developers

Rating: 8 out of 10

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it for training machine learning models. I use the Deep Learning AMIs available to spin up Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances and then use that to train large models.

I use the GPU-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances, as for training large models good GPUs with high memory are required. I connect the instance to the S3 bucket where I store that data.

Pros

  • Deep Learning AMIs.
  • Ubuntu Instances.
  • Data Security by hiding Public IPs.
  • Support for VPN for data security.
  • Always ON, never slows down.

Cons

  • Documentation
  • Tutorials for beginners.
  • Simplifying Dashboard.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is good for training big models when getting access to GPU is not possible. If you've access to GPU, then training them on the computer makes more sense as it helps in reducing the cost.

Prefer it when you just can't manage on-premise machines as they require a lot of maintenance and get down quite often. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud takes off that burden from head, i.e. no worry of maintenance and is always ON. Also provide the functionality of scaling up when required.
Vetted Review
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
2 years of experience