# Amazon EC2 Software Reviews, Demo & Pricing - 2026 > Review of Amazon EC2 Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs. Source: https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Database Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/database-management-systems/) / Amazon EC2 Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. Overview [Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/reviews/)[Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/alternatives/) # Amazon EC2 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing Wondering if Amazon EC2 is right for your organization? Our Database Software selection experts can help you in 15 minutes or less. On this page - Overview - User Interface - Popular Alternatives - Pros and Cons - Pricing and Plans - Features - Integrations - User Reviews - Popular Comparisons ## Overview Amazon EC2 4.7 [(173)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/reviews/) Pricing Pricing available upon request ### About Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service designed to help businesses with cloud computing, video encoding, batch processing and big data analytics for developing graphic-intensive applications. Key features include data migration, SLA monitoring, load balancing, log access, network monitoring, configuration management, data security and performance monitoring. Teams using Amazon EC2 can manage their network's access permissions, launch instances with multiple operating systems and load them with a custom application environment. The Amazon Machine Image (AMI) provides pre-configured templates, which allow developers to create an image comprising data, libraries, applications, and associated configuration settings. Enterprises can also run the virtual computing environment in multiple locations, attach persistent block storage to existing instances and employ static IP endpoints. Amazon EC2 helps application managers with data warehousing, distributed file systems, NoSQL databases to ensure accelerated computing. Pricing is available on usage basis that is billed monthly and support is extended via documentation, FAQs and email. Wondering if Amazon EC2 is right for your organization? Our Database Software selection experts can help you in 15 minutes or less. ## Amazon EC2 User Interface ## Popular Amazon EC2 Alternatives Main Product Amazon EC2 4.7 [(173)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.09Ease of use - 4.26Value for money - 4.14Customer support - 4.69Functionality Pricing Available upon request Get Price Alternative Product [Microsoft Azure](https://www.softwareadvice.com/website-builder/microsoft-azure-profile/) 4.6 [(1960)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/website-builder/microsoft-azure-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.15Ease of use - 4.19Value for money - 4.23Customer support - 4.58Functionality Pricing Starting at $0.00 per month Get Price Alternative Product [Vinchin Backup & Recovery](https://www.softwareadvice.com/archiving/vinchin-backup-and-recovery-profile/) 4.6 [(166)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/archiving/vinchin-backup-and-recovery-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.72Ease of use - 4.58Value for money - 4.52Customer support - 4.55Functionality Pricing Available upon request Get Price Alternative Product [Google Cloud](https://www.softwareadvice.com/compliance/google-cloud-platform-profile/) 4.7 [(2290)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/compliance/google-cloud-platform-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.48Ease of use - 4.42Value for money - 4.31Customer support - 4.60Functionality Pricing Available upon request Get Price Alternative Product [Iperius Backup](https://www.softwareadvice.com/vdi/iperius-backup-profile/) 4.5 [(189)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/vdi/iperius-backup-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.60Ease of use - 4.68Value for money - 4.39Customer support - 4.54Functionality Pricing Starting at €29.00 one time Get Price Alternative Product [DigitalOcean](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/digitalocean-profile/) 4.6 [(159)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtual-machine/digitalocean-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.57Ease of use - 4.48Value for money - 4.29Customer support - 4.56Functionality Pricing Starting at $4.00 per month Get Price ## Amazon EC2 Pros and Cons We analyzed 173 verified reviews for Amazon EC2 to find out what actual users really think. Select to learn more Scalable Cloud Infrastructure Benefits With Amazon EC2, you can easily build, host, and scale applications in the cloud, reducing the need for physical hardware. The platform supports flexible provisioning, high availability, and robust reliability, making it suitable for diverse workloads and enabling efficient infrastructure management for businesses of all sizes. Responsive Support And Integrations Amazon EC2 offers helpful customer support and extensive documentation, making it easier to resolve issues and learn the platform. Integration with other AWS services and third-party tools is straightforward, and users appreciate the availability of 24/7 support and a wealth of online resources for troubleshooting and guidance. Customizable Instance Deployment Options Amazon EC2 makes it simple to launch, scale, and manage virtual instances with a wide variety of operating systems and hardware types. You can quickly tailor resources to your needs, clone setups, and control costs by paying only for what you use. The dashboard and automation tools help streamline management for both small and large deployments. Complex And Unpredictable Costs Amazon EC2's pricing can be difficult to estimate and manage, with hidden fees for data transfer, support, and additional services. Users often find costs higher than expected, especially without careful monitoring, and the free tier offers limited resources for testing more demanding workloads. ## Amazon EC2 Pricing and Plans Starting price: Connect with an advisor for pricing Free Trial Free Version Basic Pricing available upon request No plan information available Confused about pricing? We've got you covered. Get a personalized pricing breakdown tailored to your specific needs—no guesswork, no generic estimates. ## Amazon EC2 Features - Popular features found in Database Backup and Recovery Database Conversion Data Connectors Data Migration Data Replication Data Virtualization Multiple Programming Languages Supported Performance Analysis Secure Data Storage - More features of Amazon EC2 Access Controls/Permissions Activity Dashboard Activity Management API Application Management Cloud Application Security Cloud Computing Collaboration Tools Compliance Management Configurable Workflow Configuration Management Customizable Reports Dashboard Creation Database Support Data Dictionary Management Data Import/Export Data Mapping Data Security Data Storage Management Data Visualization Data Warehousing Forecasting Load Balancing Log Access Monitoring Multiple Data Sources Network Monitoring Performance Metrics Performance Monitoring Predictive Analytics Real-Time Analytics Real-Time Data Real-Time Monitoring Reporting/Analytics Reporting & Statistics Role-Based Permissions Search/Filter Server Monitoring Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management Templates Third-Party Integrations Threat Intelligence Trend Analysis User Management Virtualization Virtual Server Workflow Management ## Amazon EC2 Integrations Amazon S3 Integration rated 4.8 from 20 reviews Amazon RDS Integration rated 4.9 from 17 reviews Amazon CloudWatch Integration rated 4.5 from 16 reviews ## Amazon EC2 User Reviews Overall Rating 4.7 Ratings Breakdown 5 75% 4 19% 3 5% 2 1% 1 1% Secondary Ratings Ease of Use 4.1 Value for money 4.3 Customer support 4.1 Functionality 4.7 Matthew N. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed May 2021 EC2 Leads the Industry for a Reason 5 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. Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 3 Customer support 5 Functionality 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. 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. Reasons for switching to Amazon EC2 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. Read More Saulo A. Verified reviewer Retail 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed November 2021 The best PaaS 5 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. Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 4 Functionality 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. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 Previous knowledge of features, pricing and startup program. Reasons for switching to Amazon EC2 Pricing, Support, Reliability, and Features Available Only on AWS Read More VR Verified Reviewer Information Technology and Services 1001-5000 employees Used daily for less than 2 years Review source Reviewed September 2019 EC2 decreases significant amount of time to go live! 4 We are using EC2 with Elastic Beanstalk for our large web application with both Tomcat and Nodejs apps. It is being scaled when the traffic increases and scales up very efficiently. Yet, it is being expensive but it provides us to focus on development instead of maintenance. Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 4 Value for money 5 Functionality Pros: Amazon EC2 has broad choices of setup and configuration depending on your budget. It provides you a lot that you nearly dont need to maintain the instance at all. It also provides you load balancers that you can use it with and you can be sure that your application will scale when needed. If you are using the EC2 with Elastic Beanstalk it will be very easy to deploy and go live. Cons: It is an expensive service full plus. But you can consider that you are not going to need that much of maintenance power so you can decrease your cost by looking from that perspective. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Information Technology and Services 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed November 2022 AWS EC2 a great virtual machine service 5 The creation of cloud architectures with great cost management services. We are maintaining several clients' infrastructures on the Cloud, and we can use a common set of tools to do it all in the most efficient manner. The elasticity of services allows us to react to business requirements in no time. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: The ability to scale horizontally and vertically in automatic ways through configurations or by setting alarms. It is very easy to manage hundreds of instances from a central dashboard during stress' times for the application. It is also very easy to version and create templates to automate the creation of this resources and there are always ways of monitoring their health and even ways to avoid leaving instances on that don't represent income to the business. Cons: There is not an overwhelming bad point. The service works ok and makes what it must without complications. Since it is one of the first services from AWS, it has evolved and matured greatly. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 It was the perfect fit for the client's current architecture. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Publishing 51-200 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed May 2022 EC2 - the computing in cloud computing 5 I think EC2 was the first service we signed up for when we moved to AWS years ago. It was an eye-opening experience: we used to own hardware, and now we can just click buttons and make hardware appear? Insane. And yet, it worked. And still does. We have around 100 instances of varying sorts running at all times, most of them running either individual applications or (more recently) hosting a whole bunch of Docker containers via ECS. (This is the more powerful and better way to do things these days.) The other huge boon for us was when AWS announced their Application Load Balancer. What this allows you to do is inspect every request and route it to specific targets if the request meets certain criteria. Got a staging server at staging.example.com? Just add that route to your ALB, and send it to your staging machine. Done. It's so simple, but so powerful. Like much of AWS, the UI on EC2 has not quite kept up with the times. The almighty ALB, for instance, is hidden under a single small item in the left-nav, called "Load Balancers." Which is accurate, but doesn't exactly give them their due. Lots of other issues like that -- not always easy to find what you want to find, especially if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. But overall it's better than many other parts of AWS, so not complaining too much. If you're on AWS at all, you're likely using EC2 already. Definitely don't forget to integrate CloudWatch so you can easily get logging! Ratings Breakdown 3 Ease of use 5 Value for money 2 Customer support 4 Functionality Pros: \* ALB is a game-changer for managing multiple websites \* Instant scaling up if needed \* Spawn as many servers or instances as you like, in whatever categories you like \* Tag your instances to keep track of them Cons: \* Spawning instances is so much fun -- but it gets expensive \* The UI on huge services (like the ALB) is kind of crazy. Why is it hidden in the small left nav? \* Navigating to the right instance is not always easy Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 AWS offered so much more than Google at the time -- Amazon's whole suite of services just feels that much more robust and well-developed. Not always elegant to use, but works. Read More sagar j. Verified reviewer Information Technology and Services 501-1000 employees Used daily for less than 2 years Review source Reviewed May 2021 Get ready your instance with few clicks 4 Easy configuration Easy to access with go performance Easy to customized Easy to suspend and terminate Preferable to go with EC-2 anytime. Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 4 Value for money 4 Customer support 4 Functionality Pros: AWS EC2 allows you to create an instance i.e Elastic compute within a few clicks. For AWS EC2 you do not need to be worried about the installation and partitions and etc configurations. Instead of selecting the things you just choose your requirement and get it configured with fully installed Everything within few clicks. Here you get save your time Here you get to save you money as you have to pay only as you required. You have to option as well for free tier to the testing purpose of EC2. Even you have to option to choose a flavor as per your requirement you can have an option to choose the categories wise instance You can just say that: easy simple deployment with EC2 Cons: If you have to configure the instance-EC2 you have to pay as per the billing criteria. You are not allowed to configured or customized your free tier instance-EC2. If you are not paying for your instance-EC2 your instance will be suspended. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 AWS EC2 comes with Advanced features Easy to established connectivity with databases, firewalls, VPNs, Easy to install and experience good performance Reasons for switching to Amazon EC2 Better performance Easy to understand Easy to access cost saving - as pay as use Read More Carlos Alberto G. Verified reviewer Computer Software 2-10 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed September 2020 Experience to grow 5 I have been able to solve many types of problems, from simple hostings, to applications that have grown and needed to scale. The configurations are simple for the most part, and you can really grow without the need for large expenses or investments of time in implementing astronomical solutions. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: I think the whole EC2 environment is impressive, the set of tools allows for implementations of all kinds and on the scale that is necessary. Currently there are many configuration options, the user interfaces have improved making the use fluid and very easy to understand. All the implementations that I have had to carry out have been fast and the integrations with the existing resources have not been a problem. Cons: In my case, I would like to have some extra tool available to manage the operating system of the instances. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 The price commands many times, but in this case the amount of options and possibilities offered by the platform. Reasons for switching to Amazon EC2 Poor support and few tools Read More VR Verified Reviewer Computer Software 51-200 employees Used daily for less than 2 years Review source Reviewed February 2021 Very good cloud service to host application servers! 5 Amazon EC2 has allowed us to host our application server very quickly and easily without worrying about the setup process and security measures, as it takes care of that. Amazon EC2 also has a lot of services for server monitoring and the ability to scale up or scale down servers when required which reduces operational costs as we only scale up when there is heavy load & scale down otherwise only paying for what we use. I am happy with Amazon EC2 Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 4 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Amazon EC2 has a wide variety of instances with various operating systems and hardware options to choose from, this ensures that we are able to select the server we need and have to pay only for that which helps in cost saving. It has options to interact with the server via application libraries, command line terminal & its dashboard which helps in managing the server. Amazon AWS also has other products that integrate really well and easily with Amazon EC2 making it the go-to choice for hosting application servers. Cons: Amazon EC2 has a learning curve that a beginner may find difficult to grasp easily & quickly also its dashboard user interface is quite complex with a lot of options and it is easy for someone to get confused and overwhelmed by it. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 The variety of services offered by Amazon is much greater and the fact that it has a very wide user community Read More NL Nir L. Verified reviewer Telecommunications 51-200 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed August 2023 Top level elastic virtual machines 5 Overall I am, over the years, very happy with both the cost and quality of the EC2 platform specifically and the AWS services generally. It is my first choice for cloud infrastructure. Ratings Breakdown 5 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Easy to set up both manually and scripted, with a very wide variety of machine types so you can select the most cost-effective machines for your different needs. It's hosted on one of the most popular cloud platforms there are so expect to get high-quality infrastructure for a fair cost. Cons: Permissions are complicated to set up, and load balancing is rather costly. Also, changing instance type requires a restart which is less than optimal. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 In my humble opinion EC2 is easier to manage and set up than other platforms. Read More VR Verified Reviewer Computer Software 11-50 employees Used daily for more than 2 years Review source Reviewed May 2020 Extensible with Plentiful Integrations 4 EC2 gives us the ability to automate a lot of our infrastructure installations. Along with the ability to bid on spot machines to make our server costs low. Ratings Breakdown 4 Ease of use 5 Value for money 5 Customer support 5 Functionality Pros: Amazon EC2 handles a lot of our server infrastructure and has in incredible amount of features to help deploy our products in a fast and scaleable fashion. Having integrations with other software allows us to use EC2 in an automated simple "key-turn" clusters. Cons: The thing a least like about EC2 is how rigid creating resources are. Editing things like machine sizes, flavors, and such is not as intuitive. Along with having different sections/consoles for managing instance configurations like networks or security groups. Reasons for choosing Amazon EC2 EC2 had the most stable APIs at the time and seemed more mature than other cloud offerings. Read More Showing 1 - 10 of 173 Reviews [See All Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/reviews/) ## Amazon EC2 Popular Comparisons [Microsoft Azure vs Amazon EC2](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/vs/microsoft-azure/)[Vinchin Backup & Recovery vs Amazon EC2](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/vs/vinchin-backup-and-recovery/)[Scaleway vs Amazon EC2](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/vs/scaleway/)[MongoDB vs Amazon EC2](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/vs/mongodb/) [Compare All Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/virtualization/amazon-ec2-profile/alternatives/) ## Other Top Recommended Database Software [Google Cloud](https://www.softwareadvice.com/compliance/google-cloud-platform-profile/) **4.7** (2290) Recently recommended **0** times [Airtable](https://www.softwareadvice.com/project-management/airtable-profile/) **4.6** (2232) Recently recommended **0** times [MySQL](https://www.softwareadvice.com/machine-learning/mysql-profile/) **4.6** (2095) Recently recommended **0** times [Microsoft SQL Server](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bi/microsoft-sql-server-profile/) **4.6** (1977) Recently recommended **0** times Stuck Between Options? 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