--- title: "Amazon EC2 Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra" description: "Is Amazon EC2 the right Virtual Machine solution for you? Explore 173 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice." source_url: "https://www.capterra.com/p/219781/EC2/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" publication_date: "2026-09-28" --- Amazon EC2 4.7 (170) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/219781/EC2/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated September 28th, 2026 # Reviews of Amazon EC2 Ease of use 4.1 Customer Service 4.1 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews SB Swaibu B AWS Solution ArchitectureInformation Technology and Services, 2 - 10 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Amazon EC2 offers flexible, scalable computing power and a wide range of instance options. While it offers strong performance, cost management and instance monitoring require attention.“ August 29, 2026 Ankita K Lead EngineerInformation Technology and Services, 11 - 50 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Its little bit costly for managing different servers.“ February 5, 2025 Monica G Cloud EngineerTelecommunications, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “The integration with auto scaling groups and ALBs are a must.“ May 28, 2025 vp vidya p Cloud engineerInformation Technology and Services, 201 - 500 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “It can get expensive if not monitored closely on the EC2 usage.“ April 10, 2025 Kushal K MERN DeveloperComputer Software, 11 - 50 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Amazon EC2 is one of the best web service for flexible cloud computing which supports the deploy of virtual machines so fast.“ December 5, 2023 Monica G Cloud EngineerTelecommunications, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “Searching for AMIs in the AWS console is clunky.“ May 28, 2025 HV Harish V Software EngineerInformation Technology and Services, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Scaling up and down the instances of EC2 can be really easy task which can can be cost effective.“ January 5, 2025 JO Joshua O Infrastructure EngineerInformation Technology and Services, 201 - 500 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “The cost of running an EC2 instance is too expensive, and Switching between different zones like US-East-1, US-East-2 and US-West-1 , US-West-2 can be confusing.“ June 9, 2024 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-25 of 170 available reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use Swahibu B. AWS Solution Architecture Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Flexible and Scalable Cloud Computing with EC2" September 3, 2026 5.0 Amazon EC2 is a powerful and flexible cloud computing service that makes it easy to provision, scale, and manage computing resources based on workload requirements. I particularly like the wide range of instance options and the ability to scale resources as application demand changes. The main challenge is managing costs and choosing the right instance types, but overall it provides a reliable foundation for running applications in the cloud. Pros Amazon EC2 provides flexible and scalable computing capacity with a wide range of instance types. It is easy to choose resources based on workload requirements and scale infrastructure as application demand changes. Cons The pricing and instance options can be complex, especially when managing multiple workloads. Effective cost management requires careful monitoring and selecting the right instance types and purchasing options. Review Source ☁️ 👩‍💻 M G. Cloud Engineer Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Good virtual machine service, AMI catalog needs work, auto scaling is magic" June 3, 2025 5.0 Overall, good virtual machine service. The initial setup is difficult, but once done the service is reliable. Easy to setup a highly available application with EC2. Pros The Auto Scaling Groups is where the magic happens. This helps with auto-healing and highly available applications. The launch templates are extremely customizable. The user data (pre boot scripts) are helpful. I appreciate the 3rd party integrations, like our CI/CD tool. The integration with auto scaling groups and ALBs are a must. Cons Searching for AMIs in the AWS console is clunky. There should be better ways to search. The initial setup is tricky, but once you build one image and launch an instance, the deployment process gets easier. Occasionally, I will have to stop/start an instance because the underlying host has an issue. Thank goodness for autoscaling. Review Source Richard R. IT Support Manager Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "EC2 automation/simplicity all in one platform" June 9, 2025 5.0 It is a great tool, easy to use, easy to setup, clonable and each task can have a deedicated instance to run. Pros The EC2 mechanism works great, rent when required, scalable and on demand computing makes this a great platform to use. Cons Whilst it is cost effective, there are times when the cost is prohibitive for some small tasks, but otherwise it works as expected Alternatives considered [Microsoft 365](https://www.capterra.com/p/227157/Microsoft-365/) Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 Cheaper and easier to use, overall a great perfomance boost was provied once implemented Review Source Software engineer Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "I was forced to leave after 6 years of happy use" September 22, 2020 2.0 What AWS don't tell you is that on top of your EC2 cost comes a whole range of other hidden costs. Costs that only creep up after you've been using the product for a long time. Almost as if it has been designed this way. Specifically, I ran into trouble with CPU and Disk IO credits. This is not a thing on any other platform. EC2 allows you to "burst" your processing power or disk read/write speed. This is done automatically with no control from the administrator. Once the tokens run out, which is seemingly incalculable, the servers crash. The only way to keep the servers up is to keep spending more money by increasing the tokens (by raising the capacity), even though I didn't need the extra capacity. My servers are running perfectly on another provider now, on the lowest capacity instances, with no concept of "tokens" to worry about. Pros EC2 is so easy to set up. It doesn't require any thought to what is happening "behind the scenes". Cons It doesn't require any thought to what is happening "behind the scenes". When something breaks, you're on your own (without a minimum $2,000/mo support contract). AWS slowly increase the cost of associated tech with no way to understand why. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 There was a free tier and, on paper, the prices looked the best value. Review Source MERN stack developer Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Scalable and Highly Available EC2 System" February 18, 2025 5.0 When I shift to ec2, it had many features like security groups, auto scaling and load balancer which made my application highly available and it was cost effective. Pros It made my backend very easy to scale and highly available without lagging. Cons It was not beginner friendly had many complex terminology. Switched from [PythonAnywhere](https://www.capterra.com/p/234268/PythonAnywhere/)[Netlify](https://www.capterra.com/p/154989/Netlify/)[Vercel](https://www.capterra.com/p/203626/Vercel/) 1)PythonAnywhere supported only python. 2)Vercel was not ideal for database or long running background tasks like cron, scheduler, etc. 3)Netlify was not suitable for backend application. Review Source Intern Used the software for: I used a free trial ### "My first Experience of EC2" February 18, 2025 4.0 I would like to rate it 8 out of 10 as my most of the work got done by using EC2 only. But there are still some complexity in UI as I mentioned above. Pros The thing I liked about EC2 is I can get any operating system image to run my projects. Also without worrying about cpu load I can get as high specifications as I want Cons The UI is little complex as I get to any options when I was just learning it got me too much confused. Switched from [Microsoft Azure](https://www.capterra.com/p/16365/Azure/)[Google Cloud Compute Engine](https://www.capterra.com/p/253623/Google-Cloud-Compute-Engine/)[Google Cloud](https://www.capterra.com/p/268690/Google-Cloud-Platform/) I have done some research and got to know about AWS is at 1st rank in world Alternatives considered [Google Cloud Compute Engine](https://www.capterra.com/p/253623/Google-Cloud-Compute-Engine/) Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 Cause it is more reliable that Google Cloud Compute Engine Review Source Nujan S. Managing Director Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Outstanding in terms of hosting and visual machines. " November 20, 2022 5.0 It's really responsive and there are variety of locations to choose from so, It's basically a best option among others considering the price we pay. Pros AWS's EC2 service is truly excellent. We'll have thousands of applications and operating systems ready to install. It's simple to use when configuring DNS or managing ports. It's incredibly straightforward, thanks to their clean UI. When we install software from the EC2 marketplace, everything is essentially pre-configured. Backup is simple with snapshots, but it will cost you money. We can choose the operating system and get an estimate of how much we'll pay. This will avoid unexpected charges. Cons When you stop and restart an instance on EC2, the IP address changes constantly, which makes setting up DNS records quite inconvenient. There is an elastic IP approach that will prevent such, but I believe they should supply it by default for the same cost of instance. Also, support is quite slow, and we must pay an additional fee for it. Switched from [Microsoft Azure](https://www.capterra.com/p/16365/Azure/) I personally didn't like the UI of azure it's confusing and you can easily expect surprise bill from Azure. Which made me switch to AWS which I find better in comparison. Review Source Samuel C. Engineer Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Cloud Computing that will scale from startups to large businesses" July 18, 2022 5.0 We are realizing the benefits of flexible cloud computing with superb reliability, scalability and uptime. As a startup, we can simply count on EC2 being sufficient on the long term. Pros Amazon EC2 is an extremely flexible cloud computing service. It is modern, complete, integrates easily with all other AWS services and comes at a great price with an ever-decreasing pricing that will simply give the customer more value. If it is your first cloud computing experience, you can start with a template that will facilitate the process of getting started, however, be mindful because templates may tie you up considerably in the future. EC2 is all about standards so you can expect to integrate absolutely everything in your infrastructure with ease. EC2 is the reason why I think bare metal servers do not make a lot of sense nowadays. Speaking about features, you've got them all and EC2 proves to be a nice gateway to keep using other AWS services. At first, it may be intimidating to implement since the interface is still a bit misleading. Once you understand it, you get your money worth by every penny. We started with EC2 almost 8 years ago and I absolutely haven't thought about replacing with an alternative for many years to come. Cons EC2 interface still has a lot of room for improvement. I think that since it is so expansive, fitting everything in concisely in an interface is hard. I think that it has gotten better over time but never to the likes of DigitalOcean that is a superb functional and well-designed UI. Also, documentation is not very developer friendly (have you seen Mailgun's dev docs?) but it serves you well. Something there is documentation that is referring to another version of the service you are intending to use without you having a lot of notice, that's a catch. You should also know that just like Apple's ecosystem, AWS is also playing the same game, very difficult to export things should you ever have the need, so make a commitment or find somewhere else. Switched from [Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform](https://www.capterra.com/p/248436/AtlanticNet-Cloud-Platform/) We made the switch because EC2 provides way more features and scalability. Alternatives considered [DigitalOcean](https://www.capterra.com/p/205055/DigitalOcean/) Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 Because of the AWS ecosystem apps. Review Source CTO Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "The best PaaS" November 9, 2021 5.0 I've been using AWS for over 10 years and I don't remember having any problems, except for the ones I caused myself. It's extremely reliable, safe and affordable. Pros Elastic Bean Stalk is a very simple and reliable platform as a service. You can configure various aspects of your application like deploy, autoscaling and database. Lambda is also an extremely useful resource for small service development without having to set up a complete framework for it. Cons Some functions are hard to learn like IAM for example. Also, managing costs well can be a challenge as there are many options to choose from. Switched from [Dreamhost VPS](https://www.capterra.com/p/237876/Dreamhost-VPS/) Pricing, Support, Reliability, and Features Available Only on AWS Alternatives considered [Microsoft Azure](https://www.capterra.com/p/16365/Azure/)[Google Cloud](https://www.capterra.com/p/268690/Google-Cloud-Platform/)[Heroku](https://www.capterra.com/p/158191/Heroku/) Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 Previous knowledge of features, pricing and startup program. Review Source Technical Lead Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "EC2 Leads the Industry for a Reason" May 21, 2021 5.0 We've hosted with them for many years. Despite some little drawbacks, we wouldn't consider switching to another cloud provider. A technical project can thrive in the AWS ecosystem, with EC2 as the foundation for server capacity. Pros Superb pricing. Very reliable. Lots of choices. Great dashboard tools. When connected with CloudWatch, monitoring is great. Tools for networking and security are very flexible. Perfect tool to pull out of the technical toolbox when you need a server. Cons The variety of choices and configuration options increases the level of complexity. Ideally you know what you're doing before you get started. Windows pricing is a bit steep, but one is better off not running servers on Windows anyways. For paying customers with a certain volume, they need to include a free support level that at least allows bug reporting. We pay them more than $10K/month, and it's crazy we can't even send them a support email or do a chat without paying hundreds more per month. Switched from Softlayer was very immature at the time. Compared to what AWS offered, it was like driving a model T versus a Ferrari. I'm sure Softlayer has improved by now, but they were so far behind (and it's IBM after all), that I can't imagine they've come anywhere close to catching up. Alternatives considered [Microsoft Azure](https://www.capterra.com/p/16365/Azure/)[DigitalOcean](https://www.capterra.com/p/205055/DigitalOcean/) Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 AWS had the most mature and comprehensive offerings at the time. Azure has caught up a lot and has some compelling offerings. But, the AWS ecosystem is still our preference for the best functionality, flexibility, breadth of offerings, and pricing. Review Source Cloud engineer Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "EC2 is the way to compute on cloud" April 10, 2025 5.0 Overall this is the first of its kind on cloud to provide compute service and it evolved since its introduced to finest levels Pros Amazon EC2 comes with wide range of compute capacity and processors including graviton which are cheaper bundled with performance Cons It can get expensive if not monitored closely on the EC2 usage. Review Source Lead Engineer Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Good Experience" February 6, 2025 5.0 Pros Server setup is so easy with this and also my website response is better with better with large services. Cons Its little bit costly for managing different servers. Switched from [Azure Virtual Machines](https://www.capterra.com/p/246720/Azure-Virtual-Machines/) Downtime is too much over their with azure. Review Source Ass. Engineer Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Best Cloud VM that can be used." September 13, 2022 5.0 My overall experience is very good I would definitly recommend using EC2 to any user whether its a beginner or experienced person anyone can use it ease. Pros I liked Elastice Load Balancer the most cause if there an issue with server the ELB takes care of Auto scaling the server. Cons There is as such no thing that I least liked I genuinely like EC2 that why I use it myself and also in my company. Alternatives considered [Azure Virtual Machines](https://www.capterra.com/p/246720/Azure-Virtual-Machines/) Review Source Associate Professor Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Amazon EC2: What Made Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service an Affordable Cloud Paradigm." August 3, 2023 4.0 Great experience. Deploying various types of servers on EC2 virtual machines makes the realization of enterprise applications very simplified. Pros I can't imagine not having Amazon EC2 for managing my development projects, server deployments, and research implementations. Amazon EC2 was the leader in IaaS since the cloud computing inception and it kept proliferating to support more and more cloud services from software services, to IoT, to machine learning, to databases, among many other. After initially setting the registration and authentication with a private/public key pair, creating and managing virtual machines is extremely simple with a streamlined web console. A mainly run my application and database servers on Linux VMs. Thanks to the free-tier in Amazon EC2 even my students can have the chance to inspect with cloud functionality and services using Amazon EC2. Very cost effective even with the paid tiers. Cons Better support of secure data processing in the cloud could be an enhancement that Amazon can invest in. Homomorphic encryption techniques for secure processing of encrypted data is improving and Amazon can be leading the research efforts on this front. Moreover, hardware-based data privacy mechanisms such as those employing cryptographic coprocessors in the cloud can be also a track to invest in. Switched from [Microsoft Azure](https://www.capterra.com/p/16365/Azure/)[Google App Engine](https://www.capterra.com/p/241822/Google-App-Engine/) Review Source Technical Support Specialist Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "reliable and scalable" January 2, 2025 5.0 Overall it is amazing to use as the best feature about EC2 is the auto-scalability which saves a lot of money compared to other solutions. Pros The biggest pro about using EC2 is that it is auto-scaling. So this allows for the most cost-efficient solution currently in my situation and allows for the ramp up in resources when necessary as well. Cons No cons about Amazon EC2, it is great and reliable for my use case. Review Source Joel B. Technology Consultant Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "The Standard for Cloud Computing" May 11, 2018 5.0 Pros The ability to spool up a server in a few minutes has always blown my mind. I had a recent server failure that resulted in me spooling up a new server to replace it. I was able to get the job done in under two hours. It would have been much faster than that if I had done it before, but there was some learning required in the process. I've documented the process, so the next time this happens, I will be able to get back up and running in minutes. Having been in IT my whole life, this ability is quite amazing. It was the stuff of dreams over a decade ago and now I get to live it out. There are way too many good things to say about EC2. I can have multiple servers spread across the world so I can service my customers locally, instead of them having to traverse continents and oceans to hit up a server. I can attach and detach storage so I can start working from where I last started. The list goes on and on. I want to say that there is a plethora of helpful information available to those who need support. The Amazon support information is great as well as YouTube and other informational sites. If you're Google-Fu is up to date, you can get the help you need without having to pick up the phone. Cons The biggest con to EC2 is the shear vastness of features, tools, and functionality. For people who are new and want to start off, there is not an easy or simple "get started here" path that I have found. There is so much to learn, and so much you will never know, that getting some help at the beginning should really be considered. Review Source Tanuj D. Software Engineer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Best webservice solution for cloud compute capacity " March 15, 2022 5.0 We use Amazon EC2 to host our services on the cloud platform to ensure thay they are highly available and are scaled up or down automatically without worrying too much. We also use the Amazon S3 storage which is a great add on to use with the cloud compute platform. Pros Amazon EC2 is a market leader in the cloud industry to provide compute capacity. You can host webservices on the Amazon EC2 cloud and pay as per what you use. It is the best solution as you don't have to think about maintaining servers and spend on web services hosting infrastructure. Also Amazon EC2 handles the security aspects of the hosted services via access controls. A lot of webservices written in different programming languages can be hosted on this platform. Cons There are no limitations for this product. They are a market leader and their services are highly configurable. Review Source MD Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "The easiest-to-use Cloud Computing Platform " May 4, 2023 4.0 I had to integrate my GCP with AWS EC2 of a partner company. I therefore tried the process by creating a server and testing out the VPN between both GCP and AWS before engaging the other business entity. Pros The entire process was very simple, required a few steps. The documentation was straight to the point. Cons I used the trial version but the price was a bit scary. There was no free credit as with GCP. The pros outweighed the cons Review Source Shubham K. Cloud Engineer Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Amazon EC2 - My favourite service in AWS." July 14, 2023 5.0 my overall experience has been a great one so far Pros It provide best firewall and security features. Cons I didn't find any drawback as of now. all good. Switched from [Google Cloud Compute Engine](https://www.capterra.com/p/253623/Google-Cloud-Compute-Engine/) Alternatives considered [Google Cloud Compute Engine](https://www.capterra.com/p/253623/Google-Cloud-Compute-Engine/) Review Source Software Development Engineer Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "The most elastic platform available." August 29, 2019 5.0 I never had problems with this platform, it is really very complete and useful, it has an extremely high level of security, it also integrates very easily and natively with other aws tools, it is a wonderful multipurpose tool, which can be used with or without the other tools of aws. Pros This tool is extremely versatile, serves as a vps, and as a base instance for many other aws tools, it allows me to connect to external aws platforms simply, it has a high level of configuration, customization and security. I can specifically choose each hardware component that is needed according to the needs of the projects, and the platform is ready to use in a few minutes, in addition to having a very extensive configuration panel, with many configurations, in addition to a console, which allows Work through commands directly, without opening the instance, its download and upload speed is very high and quite stable. Cons It is difficult for me to think of a negative aspect on this platform, however, what must be taken into account is that it is a fairly complete and complex tool to use, so the learning curve is quite steep. Review Source Paweł W. Software Engineer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Cloud computing done easy with EC2" August 10, 2022 5.0 I really enjoyed using EC2 and AWS overall, I have used it for many of my projects and it worked seamlessly. Pros EC2 was the core infrastructure in the Platform I have developed for a few months. It has provided computing sources for a Web App that was used extensively by hundreds of clients. It was reliable (no downtimes were recorded) and quite easy to set up. We have used different configurations of EC2 to meet our efficiency needs Cons The learning curve for EC2 and AWS overall is quite steep, so the first steps were quite hard, but it was worth the effort to learn administrating EC2. Alternatives considered [Google Cloud](https://www.capterra.com/p/268690/Google-Cloud-Platform/) Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 Previous experience with AWS platform. Review Source ARREYBESONG V. Coder Used the software for: 3-5 years ### "Amazon review " February 5, 2024 5.0 Pros Here it helps in the interactions with the machine for easy manipulation Cons Since I have been using it I have not seen the difficulties about it Review Source Rajshekhar S. Solution engineer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "Suitable option to develop and deploy your applications faster" May 19, 2022 4.0 It is very helpful service. Many organisations I have worked with have been using this. Pros It provides a variety of options to create machines with different type of configurations. It is safe, secure and scalable. I started using this service to learn some features. Cons Some time, my machine stayed open and I did not know about it. After some time I got a mail with certain amount of bill. I was using a free service with limited hours. AWS should have alerted me if I was going over the limit. Review Source Caroline S. Software Engineer Used the software for: 1-3 years ### "Simple access and no maintenance cost" May 31, 2019 4.0 Amazon EC2 has made it possible to carry out the implementation of services or applications in the cloud, thus saving time and money and being able to please any customer with their needs and all for a really fair price. Pros This Amazon tool is really useful since it has great advantages that is why I like it for several reasons being the main one that is extremely flexible, easy to use, easy to access, requires no maintenance and only pays for what is used, account with an interface that is very intuitive in addition to that in case of having doubts about it provides tutorials or a really compressible documentation so there is no way of not being able to understand its use, also it can be customized to cover each one of the needs that search the user thus being able to host any application, or web service of business or personal interest. Cons This tool works very well so finding faults as such is difficult, the only drawback is that locating a support team directly can be complicated but it is not impossible. Review Source Krishna P. software developer Used the software for: Less than 1 year ### "AWS EC2 - amazon cloud servers my review" October 11, 2022 4.0 overall experience with Amazon EC2 is satisfactory as they are easy to launch and use which reduces time to implement server but just keep an eye on the price and monitoring matrices . Pros AWS EC2 instances are easy to launch and use we can use any OS we need , AMI are available and we can directly launch them from dash board on AWS cloud . all type of instance are available as per the requirement like general purpose , and instances which are optimised in computation , Memory and Ram can be selected . EBS volume can be attached according to requirement . Cons when upgrade is required then we have to separately upgrade instance and EBS volume and run command to attach the EBS volume . Review Source Similar Products Featured ## Send me user reviews about this product ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox.