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Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Spot by Flexera comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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
3.3
Clients reduced costs significantly with AWS ECS, benefiting from efficient resource management and a pay-as-you-go model.
Sentiment score
7.6
Spot by Flexera enabled substantial savings in compute costs and enhanced efficiency, though ROI may take longer for some.
This saving is achieved since, with EC2, the entire virtual machine must be running regardless of workload, whereas Fargate eliminates this cost.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
I have seen a return on investment as I was able to reduce my compute cost by 60 to 65% for some of my applications that needed light temporary processing tasks with ephemeral storage and stateless applications.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Our technology predicts demand, selects the cheapest instance mix, sizes the workloads appropriately, and scales it automatically based on policy, resulting in significant savings by reducing manual work and enhancing our flexibility, which has helped accelerate our deployments.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Amazon Elastic Container Service support is responsive and helpful, but costly with occasional expertise gaps and limited documentation.
Sentiment score
8.4
Spot by Flexera's customer service is highly rated for its excellent technical support, responsiveness, and reliability, ensuring customer satisfaction.
AWS partnership provides access to their architects for guidance when needed.
Head of Products at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
We do not rely heavily on technical support from AWS as we have our own teams managing the infrastructure.
General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.
I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon ECS boasts strong scalability, praised for workload management, resource flexibility, yet noted for potential reactivity issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
Spot by Flexera is highly scalable, effectively supporting multiple users across environments, particularly with AWS services, boosting user confidence.
Amazon Elastic Container Service has significant limitations regarding scalability.
Lead Developer at Virtual Restaurant Solutions
Amazon Elastic Container Service has a scalability rating of ten out of ten.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
Scalability becomes an inherent capability in the cloud context, and this service does well in that regard.
General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.
Spot's scalability is quite good, and it can be expanded to multiple environments.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.1
Amazon ECS is highly stable with minimal issues, though configuration adjustments may require technical expertise for optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.0
Spot by Flexera is mostly stable and reliable, though some users report occasional bugs indicating room for improvement.
The stability of Amazon Elastic Container Service is excellent.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
Amazon Elastic Container Service is mostly very stable.
General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon Elastic Container Service struggles with reliability, user-friendliness, integration, and cost, requiring improved security and management simplification.
Spot by Flexera needs OCI support, better multi-cloud integration, and UI improvements, though it's stable and mature.
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.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
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.
General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.
A lower price for Amazon Elastic Container Service would be better, but it is comparable to other offerings in the market, so it is on par in that sense.
Head of Products at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot could be improved by adding features that help identify data to optimize storage costs by detecting datasets within our environment based on criteria such as age and usage.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Amazon ECS features pay-as-you-go pricing, praised for scalability but sometimes costly compared to competitors, with no license fees.
Enterprise users praise Spot by Flexera's pricing and setup, with structured management of licensing, via AWS Marketplace.
Amazon Elastic Container Service is quite cheap compared to Google, particularly for hosting databases.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
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.
General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.
The pricing is reasonable and convenient, and the value it offers is completely in line with what I am spending.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Valuable Features

Amazon ECS offers auto-scaling, cost-effectiveness, easy AWS integration, excellent security, and efficient resource management with Fargate support.
Spot by Flexera offers cost optimization, Kubernetes management, and security compliance with intelligent autoscaling, AWS integration, and AI-driven insights.
Main benefits that Amazon Elastic Container Service provides include saving maintenance costs in terms of saving time, and since it auto scales, we save on infrastructure costs by running at lower instances when it is not heavily used.
Head of Products at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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.
General Manager at Vodafone Idea Ltd.
Amazon Elastic Container Service makes horizontal scaling easy and is especially effective when working under the ECS service.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
The fact that it can mix dozens of instance families dynamically is something which the AWS native autoscalers simply cannot do.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot's automated cost optimization works by continuously analyzing the workload and applying policies to minimize cloud spend without sacrificing performance.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
One use case we plan to implement within the next few months is the overall commitment savings, which we used to manage manually, but with Spot, it automatically helps us detect when and what kind of instances to purchase, making it easier for us to manage our overall commitment for the savings plan.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Elastic Container Se...
Ranking in Containers as a Service (CaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (9th)
Spot by Flexera
Ranking in Containers as a Service (CaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (23rd), Server Virtualization Software (14th), Cloud Operations Analytics (1st), Cloud Analytics (2nd), Compute Service (9th), Cloud Cost Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Containers as a Service (CaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 16.5%, down from 38.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spot by Flexera is 8.5%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Containers as a Service (CaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Elastic Container Service16.5%
Spot8.5%
Other75.0%
Containers as a Service (CaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

AG
Lead Developer at Virtual Restaurant Solutions
Starts strong with functionalities but reveals cost limitations
The main challenge with Amazon Elastic Container Service is the significant learning curve. Everything mentioned took months to understand. It is not for the faint of heart. Though they have graphical interfaces and numerous dashboards that help create all the services graphically, learning to use Bash can be challenging. Because these are headless servers by nature, there is no graphical interface. It is not similar to Windows where you can hit the start button and look for your program, or Mac where you can look for programs on your desktop. Instead, users must understand this new paradigm of a Linux headless server, which requires using command-based prompts for builds and development.
KS
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Intelligent autoscaling has cut compute costs and now manages ephemeral workloads efficiently
I think overall Spot is quite good. The UI is powerful, but it can feel a bit dense for some new users. More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster, and deeper insights into Kubernetes resource usage would be beneficial. Overall, it is a really good platform that is quite mature and stable. I chose a rating of nine because it may sometimes be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, and there are also a few areas in which the EKS Kubernetes level granularity is a little missing. Overall, I think Spot is a really good and stable tool.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
7%
Performing Arts
6%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

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 Spot Ocean?
The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow.
What needs improvement with Spot Ocean?
Spot can be improved by adding deeper multi-cloud integrations, enhancing real-time security automation, and continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?
I have been using Spot for five years. My main use case for Spot is cloud optimization.We use Spot for optimization by leveraging real-time optimization as well as auto-optimization. The company al...
 

Also Known As

Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service
Spot Ocean, Spot Elastigroup, Spot Eco
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind
Freshworks, Zalando, Red Spark, News, Trax, ETAS, Demandbase, BeesWa, Duolingo, intel, IBM, N26, Wix, EyeEm, moovit, SAMSUNG, News UK, ticketmaster
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. Spot by Flexera and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.