Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. Amazon Web Services vs. AWS CloudFormation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.9 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 Web Services
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$100
per month
AWS CloudFormation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudFormation gives developers and systems administrators a way to create and manage a collection of related AWS resources, provisioning and updating them in a predictable fashion. Use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run an application. Users don’t need to figure out the order for provisioning AWS services or the subtleties of making those dependencies work.…
$0
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
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)
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
Free Tier - 1,000 Handler Operations per Month per Account
$0.00
Handler Operation
$0.0009
per handler operation
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Free Trial
NoYesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.There is no additional charge for using AWS CloudFormation with resource providers in the following namespaces: AWS::*, Alexa::*, and Custom::*. In this case you pay for AWS resources (such as Amazon EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, etc.) created using AWS CloudFormation as if you created them manually. You only pay for what you use, as you use it; there are no minimum fees and no required upfront commitments. When you use resource providers with AWS CloudFormation outside the namespaces mentioned above, you incur charges per handler operation. Handler operations are create, update, delete, read, or list actions on a resource.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Considered Multiple Products
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
We have been using EC2 for so much longer, that even though we use Azure's other features and services more then the equivalent AWS features and services, we don't usually go for Azure's VM offerings first over EC2. I guess that that means this recommendation is mostly based …
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for me is the easy choice for servers. There are so many tools out there, specifically terraform and packer, that allow easy integration with EC2. It is great for any sized company. I have also used Google and Digital Ocean, but my first …
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
AWS is by far the most mature platform, but others are catching up. We will be keeping a close eye on the competition and using them whenever they're a better fit for the workload than AWS.
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
It is better than other products in terms of their support team, documentation and initially, you can set up your services almost without paying anything. Apart from them, AWS services do have the best availability in any region in compared to other cloud products available …
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
When it comes to AWS EC2, the technical aspects are about equal to many of the other cloud services, but where AWS EC2 shines at is its management, and growth capabilities. You can start your web based business using AWS for literally zero start-up costs: you use the same …
Amazon Web Services
Chose Amazon Web Services
AWS provides a vast array of services and, compared to Microsoft Azure licensing costs, is a cheaper alternative.
Chose Amazon Web Services
OCI and Google Compute Engine are a bit cheaper than AWS but AWS has better chargeback and more granular monitoring of various KPIs. But at the same time, AWS has a learning curve while GCE especially is much easier to use. Microsoft Azur has a much better partner and developer …
Chose Amazon Web Services
Azure is the other product that we have used for some of our clients. In certain places Azure was very competitively priced and clients chose to go with Azure as a platform. Billing by the minute is definitely a competitive advantage in certain cases. AWS pricing structures …
AWS CloudFormation

No answer on this topic

Features
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
8.8
27 Ratings
7% above category average
Amazon Web Services
8.4
78 Ratings
2% above category average
AWS CloudFormation
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.525 Ratings9.172 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.226 Ratings8.873 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.625 Ratings9.369 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.726 Ratings7.166 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.225 Ratings8.473 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.625 Ratings8.266 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support8.526 Ratings7.972 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.626 Ratings8.674 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.216 Ratings8.325 Ratings00 Ratings
Configuration Management
Comparison of Configuration Management features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
-
Ratings
Amazon Web Services
-
Ratings
AWS CloudFormation
8.2
2 Ratings
2% above category average
Infrastructure Automation00 Ratings00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
Automated Provisioning00 Ratings00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
Parallel Execution00 Ratings00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Node Management00 Ratings00 Ratings7.52 Ratings
Reporting & Logging00 Ratings00 Ratings7.52 Ratings
Version Control00 Ratings00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
HashiCorp Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Ansible
Ansible
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(73 ratings)
8.0
(90 ratings)
8.0
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(11 ratings)
7.8
(21 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(12 ratings)
7.2
(24 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Suitable for companies that are looking for performance at a competitive price, flexibility to switch instance type even with RI, flexibility to add-on IOPS, option to lower running cost with the regular introduction of new instance type that comes with higher performance but at a lower cost.
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Amazon AWS
This is something that is actually common across most cloud providers. A comprehensive understanding of one's use cases, constraints and future directions is key to determining if you even need a cloud solution. If you are a 2-person startup developing something with a best-scenario audience of 1k DAU in a year, you would very likely best served by a dirt-cheap dedicated Linux server somewhere (and your options to graduate to a cloud solution will still be open). If, however, you are a bigger fish, and/or you are actively considering build-vs-buy decisions for complicated, highly-loaded, six-figure requests per minute systems, global loadbalancing, extreme growth projections - then MAYBE you solve all or part of it with a cloud provider. And depending on your taste for risk, reliability, flexibility, track record - it might be AWS.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
I still give it an 8 because it's one of those tools that just quietly does the heavy lifting for you but it can really test your patience when it breaks esp with deep nested stacks. It's perfect for projects where we need clean consistent environments every time. It's less ideal for quick experimental setups like new EC2 configs or Lambda permission tweaks.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Huge Diverse range of machine shapes are available which cater to our demand.
  • Ability to combine the machines and integrate them with any other service in AWS (Ex: RDS, S3)
  • Handling performance and scalability using auto-scaling, ELB configuration and high performance machine shapes.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • During the month-end, we experience high resource utilization; however, with AWS's scalability, we can effectively tackle the peak load.
  • With AWS IAM, we don't need to set up complete infrastructure for identity and access management, as AWS provides end-to-end IAM services.
  • With AWS, development has become very easy as it's very quick to spin up and destroy the environment, which saves costs.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • All resources can segregated based on stacks which provides greater visibility
  • A complete audit trail of what went wrong while deploying a particular resource
  • Automatically rollbacks if any service as part of CloudFormation results in an error
  • The UI tool is useful
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
  • The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
  • The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • When there is any misconfiguration of EC2 related to SSM Connect. It doesn't clearly states that what particular configuration is missing.
  • Debugging networking related issues could be improved.
  • From the security group page, it's difficult to determine which resource a security group is associated with.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
  • Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
  • Slow to create, delete or update.
  • Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
We are almost entirely satisfied with the service. In order to move off it, we'd have to build for ourselves many of the services that AWS provides and the cost would be prohibitive. Although there are cost savings and security benefits to returning to the colo facility, we could never afford to do it, and we'd hate to give up the innovation and constant cycle of new features that AWS gives us.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Usability
Amazon AWS
You an start using EC2 instances immediately, is so easy and intuitive to start using them, EC2 has wizard to create the EC2 instances in the web browser or if you are code savvy you can create them with simple line in the CLI or using an SDK. Once you are comfortable using EC2, you can even automate the process.
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Amazon AWS
AWS offers a wide range of powerful services that cater to various business needs which is significant strength. The ability to scale resources on-demand is a major advantage making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. The sheer volume of options and configurations can be overwhelming for new users leading to a steep learning curve. While functional the AWS management console can feel cluttered and less intuitive compared to some competitors which can hinder navigation. Although some documentation lacks clarity and practical examples which can frustrate users trying to implement specific solutions.
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Amazon AWS
It's easy enough to get a shared template & apply it. You don't even have to download-then-upload or copy-and-paste, a publicly-accessible url works.
Diving deeper, it has enough powerful capabilities to make the life of a platform / DevOps engineer bearable.
However, you need equally deep knowledge to troubleshoot issues, when they inevitably pop up. This is the same for all IaC technologies, as they are additional abstraction layers on top of the native API provided by the cloud providers.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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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
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon EC2 is super flexible compared to the PaaS offerings like Heroku Platform and Google App Engine since with Amazon EC2, we have access to the terminal. In terms of pricing, it's basically just the same as Google Compute Engine. The deciding factor is Amazon EC2's native integration with other AWS services since they're all in the same cloud platform.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
Amazon Web Services fits best for all levels of organisations like startup, mid level or enterprise. The services are easy to use and doesn't require a high level of understanding as you can learn via blogs or youtube videos. AWS is Reasonable in cost as the plan is pay as you use.
Read full review
Amazon AWS
Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Cloning a virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information. Management guide.For information copy of the original. The new virtual Cloning virtual machine creates a virtual machine that is a copy of the original. The new virtual machine is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information is configured with the same virtual hardware, installed software, and other properties that were configured for the original virtual machine. For information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management Guide. For information
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It reduced the need for heavy on-premises instances. Also, it completely eliminates maintenance of the machine. Their SLA criteria are also matching business needs. Overall IAAS is the best option when information is not so crucial to post on the cloud.
  • It makes both horizontal and vertical scaling really easy. This keeps your infrastructure up and running even while you are increasing the capacity or facing more traffic. This leads to having better customer satisfaction.
  • If you do not choose your instance type suitable for your business, it may incur lots of extra costs.
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Amazon AWS
  • Using Amazon Web Services has allowed us to develop and deploy new SAAS solutions quicker than we did when we used traditional web hosting. This has allowed us to grow our service offerings to clients and also add more value to our existing services.
  • Having AWS deployed has also allowed our development team to focus on delivering high-quality software without worrying about whether our servers will be able to handle the demand. Since AWS allows you to adjust your server needs based on demand, we can easily assign a faster server instance to ease and improve service without the client even knowing what we did.
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Amazon AWS
  • + We can standup a VPC in minutes
  • - It took a lot of inital time to set up
  • + With logging/rollback, made testing much easier.
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudFormation Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudFormation - How it works overviewScreenshot of CloudFormation - High level how it worksScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template exampleScreenshot of CloudFormation - Template inputs overview