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Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Docker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.5
Organizations save costs and time using Amazon Elastic Container Service with Fargate, enhancing financial gains and reliability.
Sentiment score
8.0
Docker offers cost savings by enhancing efficiency, reducing complexity, and enabling faster deployment with consistent environments and smaller hardware.
This saving is achieved since, with EC2, the entire virtual machine must be running regardless of workload, whereas Fargate eliminates this cost.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Feedback on Amazon Elastic Container Service's support is mixed, with fast response varying by subscription, affecting cost and expertise.
Sentiment score
4.1
Docker's customer service is praised for documentation, though many use community resources; support averages 7-8/10 in ratings.
We do not rely heavily on technical support from AWS as we have our own teams managing the infrastructure.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.3
Amazon Elastic Container Service offers impressive scalability with some limitations, excelling in high-traffic applications but lagging in auto-scaling reactivity.
Sentiment score
7.5
Docker efficiently scales applications, especially with Kubernetes and Terraform, despite limitations in disk space and local machine scalability.
Amazon Elastic Container Service users have limited access to AWS services and tiers compared to EC2 users, further restricting scalability options.
Scalability becomes an inherent capability in the cloud context, and this service does well in that regard.
Amazon Elastic Container Service has a scalability rating of ten out of ten.
Previously, only one or two applications could run on a server, but now it can handle hundreds of applications, scaling up or down as needed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.1
Amazon ECS is highly stable, with ratings 8-10, minimal bugs, 99.99% uptime, praised reliability, and some configuration issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Docker is highly regarded for stability and reliability, despite minor issues with Windows compatibility and occasional resource concerns.
The stability of Amazon Elastic Container Service is excellent.
Amazon Elastic Container Service is mostly very stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon ECS needs cost transparency, reliability, usability improvements, enhanced security, better integration, and streamlined monitoring and scaling features.
Docker needs improvements in stability, security, documentation, user interface, pricing, and support to enhance adoption and usability.
Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously.
When it comes to new-age services around AI, particularly in the areas of LLMs and genomics, these services are not fully available in our region's availability domain.
Docker is a time-tested, proven solution with industry-wide applications.
In terms of communication between services, perhaps the configuration within networks between containers could be improved.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon ECS offers flexible pay-as-you-go pricing, valued for scalability, though costs may rise unexpectedly due to misconfigurations.
Docker's open-source version is free, but licensing for Enterprise users starts at $24 per user monthly, prompting alternatives.
Our customers often do a trade-off between requiring services at particular SLA levels and being willing to pay a premium price to us as partners.
Amazon Elastic Container Service is quite cheap compared to Google, particularly for hosting databases.
I consider Docker's pricing to be affordable.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon ECS offers scalable, cost-effective container management with AWS integration, Fargate simplification, and reliable, secure, zero-downtime operation.
Docker's key benefits are security, ease of use, portability, quick deployment, and efficient resource management with extensive features and documentation.
It inherently offers scalability by default, without our IT teams needing to take the extra load to make the services available for our end users.
Amazon Elastic Container Service makes horizontal scaling easy and is especially effective when working under the ECS service.
Amazon Elastic Container Service allows the opportunity for low cost, as it is less expensive than EC2, to get used to all these concepts, paradigms, and techniques.
It allows the software to run on various machines without compatibility issues, saving a lot of time.
The most valuable feature is the simple containerization.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Elastic Container Se...
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Containers as a Service (CaaS) (1st)
Docker
Ranking in Container Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Development Platforms (1st), Software Supply Chain Security (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 1.4%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Docker is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Horizontal scaling is streamlined when deploying modern workloads
Currently, when scaling with Amazon Elastic Container Service, I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory usage to scale up or scale out; there is no option to monitor both simultaneously. This limitation makes it challenging to define a balanced scale-out automation since a well-written software should balance between processing and memory.
Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers application conversion to Docker image and a mature environment
The learning curve with Docker is huge and extensive. Adopting Docker is a bit difficult because it requires a lot of expertise and background, including an understanding of networking and security concepts. Many professionals are facing issues with the different architectures that interact with each other in Docker. Whenever in our company, we are working with the production environment, professionals are hesitant to adopt Docker due to the extensive learning curve, and most of the team members in our company are more accustomed to an environment like VMware instead of Docker. Docker runs on scripts, so if AI can automate most of the scripting process in Docker, it would be a great advantage in the future version of Docker. As of now, we can create scripts utilizing most of the functions within Docker, but that initial planning phase wherein to understand exactly how you will plan for the resources, how you will convert applications into a Docker-based image, and similar tasks needs to be simplified so that more professionals can adopt Docker.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Elastic Container Service?
Implementing the product has helped me monitor the parameters. I utilize tools like CloudWatch and AWS systems to track these parameters. If any issues arise, I alert our developer team to address ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Container Service?
The solution must improve backup and compatibility around OS like Windows and Mac.
What do you like most about Docker?
We are using Docker to host applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Docker?
Regarding the cost, Mirantis Container Cloud is cheaper than other solutions like Red Hat. The license costs around 10,000 Indian rupees per year.
What needs improvement with Docker?
Mirantis Container Cloud should have AI integration tools, which are not available right now. These tools should assist in app scalability and deployment error handling.
 

Also Known As

Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Docker and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.