Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. Amazon Web Services vs. Vultr

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 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
Vultr
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Vultr is an independent cloud computing platform on a mission to provide businesses and developers around the world with unrivaled ease of use, price-to-performance, and global reach.
$2.50
per month
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
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
Block Storage
$1
per month
Cloud Compute
$2.50
per month
Object Storage
$5
per month
Kubernetes Engine
$10
per month
Load Balancers
$10
per month
Managed Databases
$15
per month
Optimized Cloud Compute
$28
per month
Cloud GPU
$90
per month
Bare Metal
$120
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
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.Pricing is based on specifications chosen in each product category. Bandwidth is also included up to a certain amount per month.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
Considered Multiple Products
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
We tried a few other competitors on the web hosting side of our company and ultimately decided to go with AWS EC2 instances. AWS had the most flexibility, the most choices for different types of instances, a variety of Operating Systems, an incredible infrastructure across …
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 …
Vultr
Chose Vultr
Vultr is a dream to use after coming from AWS - the products are intuitively named, don't require gaining a certification to use, and have better documentation.
Vultr's documentation is a little less comprehensive and organized than google cloud's; however, its pricing and …
Chose Vultr
AWS and Google Cloud are great platforms, but the price is complex and their VMs are rather expensive for what they are. I believe these services may be better for more mission critical servers or taking advantage of being able to use their cloud servers rather than just run a …
Chose Vultr
Vultr comes in at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of the breadth of the services they provide compared to the larger vendors, but they are consistently demonstrating their commitment to growing their service offering and platform features. We selected Vultr because of …
Chose Vultr
Digital ocean is not an option. I find digital ocean's platform to feel better polished (even if it is not actually). while Vultr has a lot of promise, and definitely delivers, it still feels like an upstart where digital ocean feels more established. this was fine for a while, …
Chose Vultr
Cost of bandwidth and network quality for us is what mattered.
Chose Vultr
Vultr is cheaper than most providers. Only Contabo is cheaper, but they have lower uptime.
Chose Vultr
Vultr has a greater offering of servers whilst staying reasonably priced compared to some of the larger infrastructure providers. They may not have all the services as some of the other providers but they don't need it when they can do what they do with the services they provide.
Chose Vultr
Vultr has been a more cost effective solution in some areas. Compared to AWS EC2, Vultr has been a lot more cost effective for our environment. Vultr has the right vCPU, RAM, and storage for our needs. In the object storage space, Vultr has not been the best fit for our …
Chose Vultr
Vultr offers the same services as all the major cloud providers however Vulr offers a clear pricing modeling with no hidden fees. This has been incisive in deciding which provider to go with. I have never encountered any downtime with their services Technically, Vultr has the …
Chose Vultr
In its price range I would say Vultr is above the competition, while the "premium" providers are too expensive and don't bring significant improvement.
Chose Vultr
Vultr started out primarily as a VM-only provider, but has since expanded offerings and locations to be a serious alternative for a lot of businesses currently using a large, expensive cloud provider. Vultr may not be for everyone or every workload, but there are many …
Features
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
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
Vultr
8.4
59 Ratings
2% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.525 Ratings9.072 Ratings9.353 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.226 Ratings8.873 Ratings8.444 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.625 Ratings9.369 Ratings8.932 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.726 Ratings7.166 Ratings8.540 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.225 Ratings8.473 Ratings6.846 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.625 Ratings8.366 Ratings8.350 Ratings
Operating system support8.526 Ratings7.972 Ratings8.955 Ratings
Security controls8.526 Ratings8.674 Ratings8.248 Ratings
Automation8.216 Ratings8.325 Ratings8.238 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 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
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 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
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(73 ratings)
8.0
(90 ratings)
8.8
(61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(10 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Usability
9.2
(11 ratings)
7.8
(21 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(12 ratings)
7.2
(24 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Amazon Web ServicesVultr
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.
Read full review
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
Vultr
I've been with Vultr over 5 years hosting multiple businesses and email related services. I never experienced a significant outage or data loss. Migration has always been successful as well. Support is top tier and IP reputation is clean. I like the choices of OS, ease of platform use and multiple hosting/ region options.
Read full review
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
Vultr
  • Good performance from servers close to me and my customers
  • Ease of spinning up new servers
  • Great service levels of servers I spin up
  • Notifications of issues or downtime come through quickly, allowing me to handle client queries with knowledge in hand.
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
Vultr
  • The response times for support tickets is too high and a quicker response time would be appreciated
  • Availability of the VPS solution in Middle east and Africa would help
  • Abilito to connect SIP trunks would make it more easy to run active communictaion platforms on Vultr
Read full review
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
Vultr
Just a great product with no bells and whistles, which is the advantage. We spend very little time learning and using Vultr and more time using the systems we have in Vultr to complete our tasks. Not having to worry about the IT overhead is huge and saves a great deal of time
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Vultr
easy to use and configure. great bang for the buck. I need an affordable solution to host in the cloud data from systems installed at our client's site with the ability to drill down and change the configuration remotely. Vultr enabled us to do that in an efficient and affordable way.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
Read full review
Vultr
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.
Read full review
Vultr
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.
Read full review
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
Vultr
Vultr makes it easy to contact technical support. The techs are very competent. In a number of occasions they have bounced the responsibility back to me when they could have saved us all time and heartache by simply implementing the solution directly
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Vultr
Vultr implementation seemed based on open-source tools and basic cloud principles - some things were more complicated to do compared with more developed cloud providers, but on the other hand it was more extensible by open-source tools.
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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
Vultr
Linode is a more old-school offering. Linode pricing model and infrastructure rely on classic Virtual Machines. What we like about Vultr is that they offer the same at the front, but in the back, the machines are much more flexible and can be tailor-made to our needs, which of course also impacts the costs of running the infrastructure.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Vultr
Pricing is fair and did not increase
Read full review
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.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Vultr
  • We have experienced a 200% return on using Vultr products with a 100% Customer Satisfaction rating.
  • Vultr gives us the regions to deploy where our small business customers are located.
  • Vultr has helped us scale up our company and our cloud solutions.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Vultr Screenshots

Screenshot of Vultr's control panel helps users spend less time managing infrastructure.Screenshot of Vultr's services offer additional configuration and inside of the simplified control panel.Screenshot of a display of when peak activity happens on an application. The server health graphs provide insight from the moment the server is created.Screenshot of Vultr's interface, which allows users to deploy high performance servers worldwide from any device.Screenshot of how to reach the 24/7/365 technical support team that is available through Vultr's ticketing system.