Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and run images on multiple systems.
$0.01
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) lets users provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud where they can launch AWS resources in a virtual network. Users have control over the virtual networking environment, including selection of one's IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways. Users can use both IPv4 and IPv6 in the VPC for secure and easy access to resources and applications.
$0.05
per month per NAT gateway
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Editions & Modules
Data Transfer
$0.00 - $0.09
per GB
On-Demand
$0.0042 - $6.528
per Hour
EBS-Optimized Instances
$0.005
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Carrier IP Addresses
$0.005 - $0.10
T4g Instances
$0.04
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES
T2, T3 Instances
$0.05 ($0.096)
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES (Windows)
IP Address Manager (IPAM)
$0.00027 per active IP address managed by IPAM
Hourly
Traffic Monitoring
$0.015 per ENI ($/hour)
Hourly
NAT Gateway
$0.045 per NAT gateway
Hourly
Standard
Free
Hourly
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThere is no additional charge for creating and using an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) itself, you can pay for optional VPC capabilities with usage-based charges. AWS provides features and services that give you the ability to customize control, connectivity, monitoring, and security for your Amazon VPC.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
9.1
18 Ratings
11% above category average
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
8.0
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.617 Ratings7.12 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.317 Ratings8.12 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.217 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Pre-configured templates9.517 Ratings8.12 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.117 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images9.817 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Operating system support9.617 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Security controls9.617 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Automation8.47 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Small Businesses
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Linode
Linode
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(65 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
I think nowadays, Amazon EC2 is best-suited for most app development and deployment use cases, especially if your resource requirements are not fixed over a long period of time. The flexibility provided by the on-demand pricing and rescaling option makes Amazon EC2 a great service, especially if your tech stack already runs on AWS. On the other hand, I think Amazon EC2 is not the best option if your tech infrastructure runs on another public cloud.
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Amazon AWS
If you are going to deploy within AWS, you need to know how to leverage VPCs. VPCs have several items you must configure for them to be usable and to even link one VPC to another. If you are only going to deploy a few resources or use some of the default configurations, you still need to have working knowledge of how a VPC functions. If you are used to working with VLANs and the ideology behind those, that is the best direct reference to how a VPC can be described, but with additional layers on top of that with route tables, internet gateways, etc.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • A great variety of choices in Amazon Machine Image (AMI) types. Users can select a more basic type to run generic workloads, but also have the choice to pick an AMI pre-installed with specific services in the AWS Marketplace.
  • The range of instance types can support the usage from a student's exploration (inexpensive general-purpose nano instances) to an enterprise's most intense workloads (memory or storage-optimized instances with terabytes of memory and ultra-fast network connection).
  • The pricing options, from regular instances, reserved instances to spot instances allow users to get the job done and make smart choices about how much they want to pay and when they want to pay.
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Amazon AWS
  • Pricing model & On demand service commitment.
  • Well, architectural infrastructure development processing before spending the money.
  • AWS VPC are providing hassle-free using with all others services from AWS very easily.
  • AWS business support is very helpful & [gives] the right direction according to client’s situations.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • This service is a bit difficult to consume. New users need a big learning curve to use this service effectively.
  • UI for EC2 service is a little complex and at many places, it misses detailed explanation.
  • Sometimes it takes too long to create images of EC2 instances. This keeps your EC2 up for that extra time. When instances are heavy, it penalizes a lot of money.
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Amazon AWS
  • The biggest issue with VPC networks is knowing how you can leverage VPC endpoints to ensure your resources within the VPC are not reaching out over the Internet to get to AWS services such as S3 and others.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows various ways of gaining incidents, such as slow growth, money, and the reserved ones, mostly depend entirely on the necessity, because it makes highly intelligent choices possible at these times, which enable considerable cost savings whilst addressing the situation as best I like.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
AWS's support is good overall. Not outstanding, but better than average. We have had very little reason to engage with AWS support but in our limited experience, the staff has been knowledgeable, timely and helpful. The only negative is actually initiating a service request can be a bit of a pain.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Azure VM and Google Compute Engine are alternatives to EC2. AWS EC2 is most matures and advanced of the 3. All these provide easy-to-deploy and automatically configured third-party applications, including single virtual machine or multiple virtual machine solutions.
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Amazon AWS
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • AWS has had a very positive return on investment for every client we have that uses it. They are saving money in the long run.
  • AWS includes the underlying operating system licenses with their EC2 instances so no longer do we have to navigate through Microsoft licensing headache.
  • EC2 allows us to easily create a golden image of servers and store them as AMIs. This makes spinning up new servers that need a particular set of software in the future extremely easy and cost-effective.
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Amazon AWS
  • AWS VPCs are actively used for following various compliance and regulatory needs such as network separation for PCI DSS. The ability to keep resources and access to those resources controlled through the initial steps of creating VPCs has helped tremendously.
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