I use it for NextCloud and for developer purposes. Mainly, I've got pipelines and Go CD pipelines.
Environmental engineer at Coventry Building Society
Very expensive solution
Pros and Cons
- "I use it for NextCloud and for developer purposes."
- "The price could be better, and it could be more affordable. Because I run my own servers, the prices are quite high."
What is our primary use case?
What needs improvement?
It would be great if Amazon EC2 were available for free. Currently, I only use free resources. To explain, my servers cost me £50 to purchase and configure, resulting in a total cost of £100 per server. In contrast, Amazon EC2 charges me between £500 to £1000 annually for a server.
Therefore, the price could be better, and it could be more affordable. Because I run my own servers, the prices are quite high.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon EC2 for a year now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of the solution is okay. I would rate it a nine out of ten.
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable solution.
How was the initial setup?
It's not easy to set up, but I'm making it easier. I maintain the solution myself.
What about the implementation team?
For deploying the Amazon EC2, it's quick and easy. I use a system called Nixos, which creates the whole server for you based on your configuration.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Amazon EC2 is a pay-as-you-go service.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate the product a one out of ten. I wouldn't recommend other people to use the solution. My issue with Amazon is not with the product but with the company's ethics. I wouldn't trust them with anything so I would rate it a one out of ten. In January 2020, Amazon closed down a billion-dollar company just because it was a competitor to Twitter, and they thought Donald Trump would get an account on it. They broke all their contracts, destroyed the company, and left them unable to recover. That's why I don't trust Amazon as far as I can throw them.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

SR IT administrator at Cardinal Integrated Technologies Inc
Great auto-scaling and load balancing capabilities with useful access policies
Pros and Cons
- "The solution offers good access policies."
- "Pricing-wise, it is a bit high."
What is our primary use case?
It allows us to provision and handle our services. We also have load balancing and auto-scaling as well.
What is most valuable?
The auto-scaling is great. The solution can scale well.
The solution offers good access policies.
It's stable.
What needs improvement?
Pricing-wise, it is a bit high. They should lower costs. They raise it every year. It makes it hard to afford. You also have to pay separately for support.
In GCP, we have a console and can run scripts from it. There was browser access on the same window. On EC2, we could not find it. It's not intuitive, the layout of the product.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for three or four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's a stable product. I'd rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It is reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable. I'd rate it nine out of ten. It can extend rather well.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support from Amazon is a little expensive.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
It's very easy to set up, and you can easily set up your sizing.
What was our ROI?
We're looking for ways to find out how we can decrease the bill. We are running a smaller number of instances to lower our footprint.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
They raise prices yearly. You have to pay extra for support, which is also expensive.
What other advice do I have?
I am using the latest version as it is on the cloud.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
I would recommend the solution to others.
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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Executive Head of Technology at Imbali Customised Solutions (Pty) Ltd.
It is simple to install and deploy, but it makes installing an LLS certificate on WordPress difficult
Pros and Cons
- "The flexibility of the security features is what is interesting."
- "The only issue with EC2 is that it makes it difficult to install an LLS certificate on your WordPress website that you have deployed inside that virtual machine. That becomes complicated."
What is our primary use case?
We use Amazon EC2 for our virtual machines. For example, if a client wants thier website to work with WordPress, we can use EC2 to spin up a virtual machine and then run WordPress in that environment.
What is most valuable?
The flexibility of the security features is what is interesting.
What needs improvement?
The only issue with EC2 is that it makes it difficult to install an LLS certificate on your WordPress website that you have deployed inside that virtual machine. That becomes complicated. S3 is straightforward. But when you're hosting with EC2 then it becomes a problem.
I would like to see more user-friendly WordPress licensing. I am referring to WordPress LLS certificates. WordPress-hosted websites, otherwise, are very stable because the RDP never has these issues.
I am a software developer, I also use it to host my own application service. In our company, we also create systems. I use it to run other servers inside an EC2 virtual machine. It's accessible, and it is stable.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Amazon EC2 for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Amazon EC2 is very stable. I have no issues with the stability of Amazon EC2.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Amazon EC2 is a scalable solution.
We have two Amazon EC2 clients.
How are customer service and support?
I have never had to use technical support for Amazon Web Services in general.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am a consultant on all of the services that I have listed. F3, EC2, WorkMail. Obviously, F3 goes with Route 53.
I have been working with all of the products listed for three years.
I am starting from scratch with support and everything.
WorkMail is a bit expensive per user. That is something they must correct.
They provide excellent service, but it is too expensive for South Africans. We are losing clients because the price my clients pay for email alone is nearly equal to the price they pay for an entire Microsoft Office license, which includes email.
Where they will have Microsoft Word and other productivity tools, as well as email. And you will pay nearly that much for an email with WorkMail. It's far too costly. That is unaffordable.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
It works immediately. It's fast.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
You pay as you use it.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.
I would rate Amazon EC2 a seven out of 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 has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
IT consultant at mptechconsult
Enables organizations to increase storage according to their needs and helps with business continuity and disaster recovery
Pros and Cons
- "The scalability and elasticity are helpful."
- "Accessibility must be improved."
What is most valuable?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful. The elastic nature of the product helps us as our need for storage increases. I like the whole product. It gives us peace of mind. We are assured that we will not have performance issues due to hardware failure. I enjoy the freedom to have more space and increase my storage as and when I like. It's a stellar product.
What needs improvement?
Accessibility must be improved. It is important to know how fast we can get to the solution. It would be nice if the interface would pop up without much loading. The product must be faster and more flexible. It will make a big difference.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for around one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The tool’s stability is good. We chose the product for its stability. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool is very scalable. I can migrate, move, and convert it into a different machine. We have about 500 customers online. We also have internal users actively using, developing, and testing the tool.
How are customer service and support?
The support team is very responsive. We have a good in-house team. We receive support whenever we need it. It's never been a challenge. It's been a smooth experience.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is straightforward. The deployment took about a week.
What was our ROI?
We have seen an ROI on the tool. The cloud solution is more expensive than the on-premise products. However, the tool provides a lot of surety for infrastructure, business continuity, and disaster recovery. It would be much more expensive for me to deal with business continuity and disaster recovery in-house for an on-premise tool. We have not achieved break-even yet, but we are happy with how our customers respond and the service they receive. It is more important to us for now.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay a monthly subscription fee. The price can be improved.
What other advice do I have?
We deal with customers. The data is critical for us. People who want to use the solution must just start using it and get familiar with it. It will make all the difference in the world. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
Director of Product Management at SID GLOBAL SOLUTIONS LLC
Easy to use, high availability, and simple deployment
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features of Amazon EC2 are ease of use and the services offered."
- "The most valuable features of Amazon EC2 are ease of use and the services offered."
- "Regional acceleration could improve. If I am hosting a website and I want the experience to be faster they should have this feature to allow for increased speeds."
- "Regional acceleration could improve. If I am hosting a website and I want the experience to be faster they should have this feature to allow for increased speeds."
What is our primary use case?
I am using Amazon EC2 for computing applications in the cloud.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of Amazon EC2 are ease of use and the services offered.
What needs improvement?
Regional acceleration could improve. If I am hosting a website and I want the experience to be faster they should have this feature to allow for increased speeds.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Amazon EC2 for approximately eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution has been stable in my usage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Amazon EC2 is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have not used another similar solution to Amazon EC2.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Amazon EC2 is not difficult. We find out the requirements that are needed to then implement the solution to meet those needs.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Amazon EC2 could improve. The Google Cloud Platform is more cost-effective.
We pay for Amazon EC2 monthly.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Amazon EC2 a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Specialist at GIDARA Energy
Readily available with good cost savings and quick to implement
Pros and Cons
- "We find it easy to scale."
- "Nothing is really missing in terms of features."
What is our primary use case?
I'm using TCDs and OCDs, and these are the two high-performance systems.
We have our business applications running on EC2.
What is most valuable?
EC2 does have not many features. Normally, we do elastic load balancing, which is great.
The implementation is very easy. It's quick and easy to deploy.
It's quite stable.
We find it easy to scale.
What needs improvement?
We don't have any issues with the solution. Nothing is really missing in terms of features.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for many years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product is 100% stable. 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 quite well, and it is easy to expand.
It's very easy to add to what is already there. You just have to add memory and storage and restart the instance.
We have more than 100 people using the solution.
While we do not have plans to increase usage at this time, we may do so in a year.
How are customer service and support?
We've been happy with technical support. They are very helpful and responsive.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
The solution is straightforward to set up. It's not overly complex. We can deploy the solution in just ten to 15 minutes. It's very fast.
The maintenance is very easy. If we need help, we can always contact support for guidance.
What about the implementation team?
I was able to implement the solution myself.
What was our ROI?
We've seen some ROI. It's saved us a lot of time on our side.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost is moderate. It's not too high or too low. It's based on usage. While using AWS cloud ensures there are no hidden costs, if you use other clouds, there might be.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did look into other options before choosing EC2.
What other advice do I have?
We're customers.
I'm using a normal regular EC2. I'm not using containers.
On the cloud, we use both Amazon and Azure as our cloud.
I'd recommend the solution as it is scalable, readily available, and offers good cost savings. People who know AWS have been very happy with the experience.
I'd rate the solution 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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Chief technical officer at Solvezy Technology Kenya Limited
Ensures we can provision resources on demand, and we can grow and shrink them as per the traffic
Pros and Cons
- "There's a lot of encryption across the setups to ensure that database credentials and everything related to security are well managed."
- "We faced a challenge in regard to billing. It took a lot of time because our state is set up in Kenya, so we needed to pay in Kenya currency. We have to go around in circles."
What is our primary use case?
We have a business-to-business platform where we connect micro-enterprises to financial services. The solution is hosted in AWS and also has mobile components on the Google Play Store.
We use authorization on Kubernetes and various AWS services like S3 and databases. The entire suite can host a comprehensive ERP system within AWS.
What is most valuable?
Some of the good features are, first of all, due to scaling. It ensures we can provision resources on demand, and we can grow and shrink them as per the traffic.
There are definitely security features around IAM and WAF that ensure the information is secured. There's a lot of encryption across the setups to ensure that database credentials and everything related to security are well managed. Their database product is good, and we are making maximum benefit out of it.
What needs improvement?
We faced a challenge in regard to billing. There was a time when we were working on changing the mode of payment from card to wire. It took a lot of time because our state is set up in Kenya, so we needed to pay in Kenya currency. We have to go around in circles. There was a lot of documentation required, but we managed to go through successfully.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using it for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. It's a very stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a scalable product because it's IaaS and PaaS. You use it on demand, so it's computing on demand. That works for us. And there are also opportunities for enhanced cost savings in terms of serverless computing. We've used a couple, and at least it's good. So it's helping us to further reduce AWS costs.
The user base is approximately 120. As more users join the platform, the user base will definitely increase.
How are customer service and support?
I've had the best technical support experience I've ever had. Everything is resolved within the service level agreement. I'm happy.
How was the initial setup?
We did it ground up. We started from zero, created the account, set up the control tower, and started provisioning the resources. It was simplistic. It only requires you to have knowledge of AWS infrastructure, and from there, it's a straight sail.
What was our ROI?
I can't quantify ROI because it varies. Currently, my AWS bills from services that I use across various accounts.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay monthly.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.
I would suggest using the free tier first.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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 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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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