--- title: Amazon EC2 Reviews meta_title: 'Amazon EC2 Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 1201 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Amazon EC2 works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.6 review_count: 1201 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-10-02' parent_category: name: IT Infrastructure url: https://www.g2.com/categories/it-infrastructure ---

Amazon EC2 Pros and Cons: Top 5 Advantages and Disadvantages

Quick AI Summary Based on G2 Reviews

Generated from real user reviews

Users value the ease of use of Amazon EC2, allowing quick server setup and flexible scaling options. (54 mentions)
Users love the elastic scalability of Amazon EC2, enabling quick adjustments to meet dynamic traffic needs. (36 mentions)
Users value the flexibility of Amazon EC2, enabling easy adjustments of resources for varied workloads and seamless integrations. (30 mentions)
Users appreciate the wide range of scalable and reliable services offered by AWS, making it a comprehensive cloud solution. (25 mentions)
Users value the superior performance and security of Amazon EC2, enhanced by various advanced and flexible features. (25 mentions)
Users feel that Amazon EC2's high costs can be burdensome, especially for students and those managing multiple services. (25 mentions)
Users find the configuration complexity of Amazon EC2 overwhelming, especially for beginners navigating its features and pricing. (24 mentions)
Users often find cost issues with Amazon EC2 due to unclear pricing and potential for unexpected expenses. (18 mentions)
Users struggle with pricing issues in Amazon EC2, finding costs hard to estimate and manage effectively. (16 mentions)
Users find the steep learning curve of Amazon EC2 challenging, particularly for those without prior cloud experience. (14 mentions)

5 Pros or Advantages of Amazon EC2

5 Cons or Disadvantages of Amazon EC2

MD
Marco D.
Product Lead Technology
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Flexible, Well-Documented Scaling - But Pricing Can Get Steep"
3.5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

First: Amazon EC2's wide availability allows for a large number of first and third party tools for integrating the service with other services. Everything is well documented by Amazon themselves or by third parties.

Second: For our use case we needed to scale to a large number of compute instances rapidly which EC2 made possible. I also appreciate the flexibility of scaling down as quickly as we scaled up if needed.

Third: We initially focussed on a single European market, but Amazon's global reach allows our tech stack to easily enter different markets to, for example, be compliant with that markets compliance requirements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

Pricing can be rather steep if you don't use the lowest and EC2 instances, especially if compared with static resources like traditional dedicated servers.

The AWS console used to manage EC2 instances through a graphical user interface is mediocore at best. Nowadays we therefore manage our EC2 instances mostly through Terraform and Ansible. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hrithik V.
HV
Hrithik V.
Software Engineer - Trading Systems
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Flexible and Reliable Infrastructure for Containerized Services"
4/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

The flexibility and control are the biggest benefits. EC2 makes it straightforward to run and manage containerized services, choose the right instance type, access hosts directly for debugging, and scale infrastructure seamlessly across different environments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

The main downside is operational complexity. Managing instance configuration, networking, permissions, external integrations, and container dependencies across multiple hosts can be time-consuming. Troubleshooting host-specific differences is also harder than with a more fully managed platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Telecommunications
UT
Verified User in Telecommunications
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Easy and Effective way to gain a computing presence in the cloud!"
4.5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

I love that you can pay as little or as much as you want to gain the resources you need for short term or long term projects, lessening the startup cost for any new project. EC2 services are also highly integrated with the AWS cloud environment as a whole, streamlining access to s3, and other key resources. Efficiency is a big plus! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

It is somewhat complex to start a network environment, you really need to plan first before you start creating an instance. There are some odd costs as well relating to networking that can really catch you off guard if your application transfers a lot of data in and out of the environment. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jatin S.
JS
Jatin S.
Sr. SDR
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
"Flexible and powerful, but pricing transparency could be better"
4/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

The flexibility to scale instances up or down based on actual workload is probably what I appreciate most. We run a mix of on-demand and reserved instances, and being able to right-size our compute without over-provisioning has noticeably cut down our monthly bill. The variety of instance types is genuinely useful — we use memory-optimized ones for our database workloads and compute-optimized for batch jobs. Auto Scaling groups have also been solid for handling traffic spikes without manual intervention. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

The pricing model can be genuinely confusing, especially when you factor in data transfer costs, EBS volumes, and Elastic IPs on top of instance costs. We've had a few billing surprises early on before we got a proper tagging and cost allocation strategy in place. Also, the console UX hasn't aged that well — navigating between regions or finding the right AMI can be clunky. Documentation is thorough but sometimes hard to navigate when you're troubleshooting something specific. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Reetiraj G.
RG
Reetiraj G.
intern
Computer Software
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Powerful Resource Management, Excellent Flexibility"
5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

I like using Amazon EC2 for managing physical servers and having control over my computer resources, which makes launching a server quick and easy, taking just minutes. I appreciate how I can choose CPU, RAM, storage, and OS with ease. These features are incredibly valuable to me because they directly affect performance costs and how quickly I can iterate on projects. Whether I'm working on lightweight tasks like a REST API or shifting to heavier workloads such as running simulations and models, EC2 offers the flexibility I need without redesigning the system. The ability to scale, optimize, and maintain consistency is crucial, and EC2's storage flexibility allows me to attach and store independently. I love that it moves rigid constraints and lets me adapt as my project evolves, rather than being tied down to fixed hardware. I also find the optimization process smooth and appreciate that aspect. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

Since I'm a first-time user of Amazon EC2, I can't make better assumptions, but I think customer support could be better. Navigating the Amazon Web Services ecosystem can be confusing for beginners due to fragmented fields like VPCs and security groups. Full understanding is required for proper use, and the system trades simplicity for control. It offers good accessibility and low-level access but is less convenient for quick, fully managed development with minimal configuration and better optimization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kaleb-John L.
KL
Kaleb-John L.
Senior Software Engineer
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Flexible, Easy Service Deployment with Amazon EC2"
5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 allows users to easily deploy services in a variety of ways. There are a lot of different options that can be used to best serve your particular use case. There are default images that can be used as a starting point if you need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

The state management of an instance can sometimes be confusing. In order to properly cleanup an EC2 instance manually, you have to make sure that you properly turn off, disable, and delete in one by one steps. Ideally there would be better options to just completely wipe an instance without having to manually cleanup multiple spots. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

tejashri p.
TP
tejashri p.
Data Scientist
Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)
"Easy to access for beginners"
5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

As we can easily create virtual server instances also keeping compute power, memory at optimum. It's pay as you go feature helps you manage resources mindfully. It becomes easier for me to connect it to redis or S3 storage for my infrastructure needs. It is scalable service. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

There's nothing to dislike I used it in most of my projects. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Retail
AR
Verified User in Retail
Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)
Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.
"Reliable and scalable compute infrastructure"
5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 is helpful because it provides flexible, scalable compute capacity without needing to manage physical servers. I like the ability to quickly provision and resize instances based on workload requirements, integrate with other AWS services and support high availability and automation. It also provides with range of instance types, making it easy to optimize performance and cost. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

The main downside is the ESC2 can become complex to manage as the environment grows. choosing the right instance type, monitoring resource utilization, managing patches, and controlling costs require ongoing effort. Unexpected usage or poorly optimized instances can also lead to higher than expected costs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

ANUJ J.
AJ
ANUJ J.
Analyst
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"My professional journey with Amazon EC2"
5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

There are quite a long list of points which may define my personal alignment with/ interest with Amazon EC2 ,upon which I would list a few which are like :-it offers hundreds of distinct instance types optimized for different workloads. For example when we talk of the following,we get a series of fitted options .

​Compute Optimized (C-Series): For heavy mathematical modeling, batch processing ; Memory Optimized (R and X-Series): Essential for running massive in-memory databases (ex- SAP HANA) and open-source data frameworks ; Accelerated Computing : Packed with cutting-edge GPUs etc Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

Few problems/concerns are there because of which my liking of EC2 differs like for its pricing prediction related issues as even we are billed for moving data out of the server, and critically, are even billed for transferring data across different availability zone Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MS
mani s.
data engineer
Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)
"Amazon EC2: Flexible, Scalable Power for ETL Workloads"
5/5
What do you like best about Amazon EC2?

The best thing I like about Amazon EC2 is how flexible and scalable it is when it comes to handling data loads. We mainly use it to execute Python-, Spark-, and SQL-based ETL jobs that extract from and load data into different sources. It scales well and can handle large amounts of data easily, without me having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Amazon EC2?

There isn’t much to dislike about Amazon EC2; it’s a good product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.