Item: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Rating: 5
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We do website design and development. We used AWS EC2 as a VPS server to host a variety of web applications, including Apache server, postfix-dovecot mail server. We also have an API server that orchestrates many of the different web services we make - ie. for analytics, billing, customer account management, etc.

Pros and Cons

Easy to use.
Integrates with other AWS services well.

Unstable for EC2 instances of small size.
Expensive compared to Linode, Digital Ocean.
Hidden charges such as network fees.

Return on Investment

Expensive to use.
Cost over-run.
Efficient provisioning of infrastructure.

Alternatives Considered

Linode, DigitalOcean Droplets and Rackspace Cloud Hosting

I did not select AWS EC2 as my final choice of infrastructure. I picked Linode. Linode, Digital Ocean, AWS EC2 all provide the VPS infrastructure we need. But because I'm a small company, the cost is very important. I also didn't need the other AWS features. I also want to make sure that there will be no surprises to my billing (ie. network costs). I found Linode to provide the best cost/dollar value. I also use Cloudflare CDN in front of my Linode to defend against DDoS attacks on my machine.

Key Insights

Do you think Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)'s feature set?

Yes

Did Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) go as expected?

Would you buy Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) again?

Other Software Used

Cloudflare, Cloudflare Access, Linode, DigitalOcean Droplets, Visual Studio IDE, FileZilla, DBeaver, MongoDB, Bitbucket, GitLab, GitHub

Likelihood to Recommend

You should stay away from EC2 if you want savings on your infrastructure bill. Only choose EC2 if you're a large corporation where you are using multiple AWS services and you want to integrate them together seamlessly - and also that infrastructure bill is of no concern to you. You want to also closely monitor your EC2 using cloudwatch (and set up alarms) for smaller instances as they tend to be less stable in my experience. Since I'm a small company, I prefer Linode or Digital Ocean, or OVH over EC2 any day.

EC2 is expensive - expect cost overruns - but works as advertised

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)