Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon EC2 VS Stackato

Compare Amazon EC2 VS Stackato and see what are their differences

Amazon EC2 logo Amazon EC2

Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

Stackato logo Stackato

Enterprise ready private PaaS based on the Cloud Foundry open-source project and Docker.
  • Amazon EC2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-06
  • Stackato Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

Amazon EC2 features and specs

  • Scalability
    Amazon EC2 allows you to quickly scale your resources up or down based on demand. This flexibility helps you manage your compute needs efficiently without overcommitting resources.
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing
    With Amazon EC2, you only pay for the instances you use. This usage-based pricing model can help reduce costs, especially for businesses with variable compute workloads.
  • Wide range of instance types
    EC2 offers a variety of instance types optimized for different use cases, such as compute-intensive or memory-intensive applications, allowing you to choose the most suitable instance for your needs.
  • Global availability
    Amazon EC2 is available in multiple regions around the world, enabling you to deploy your applications closer to your users for reduced latency and improved performance.
  • Integration with other AWS services
    EC2 integrates seamlessly with other AWS services such as S3, RDS, and VPC, providing a comprehensive cloud infrastructure for your applications.
  • Security and compliance
    Amazon EC2 provides a range of security features, including VPC, IAM roles, and encryption, to help you protect your data and comply with regulatory requirements.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon EC2

  • Complexity
    Managing EC2 instances can be complex, especially as your infrastructure grows. This may require specialized knowledge and skills to properly configure, monitor, and maintain the instances.
  • Cost management
    Although the pay-as-you-go model can be cost-effective, it can also lead to unexpected expenses if resources are not managed carefully. Overprovisioning or forgetting to shut down instances can quickly increase costs.
  • Performance variability
    While EC2 offers high performance, there can be variability in resources allocated to your instances, especially in the shared tenancy model. This can lead to occasional performance inconsistencies.
  • In-depth knowledge required
    To fully leverage Amazon EC2, a good level of expertise in AWS services, cloud computing concepts, and best practices is required. This can be a barrier for organizations without adequate technical skills.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Amazon EC2 can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to alternative platforms or cloud providers without significant effort and potential downtime.
  • Privacy concerns
    Although AWS provides robust security measures, some organizations may have concerns about storing sensitive data on a third-party managed service and prefer managing their own infrastructure.

Stackato features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Stackato provides an easy and user-friendly interface for deploying applications on the cloud, making it accessible for beginners and professionals alike.
  • Multi-language Support
    The platform supports a range of programming languages, providing flexibility for developers working in different language ecosystems.
  • Scalability
    Stackato enables seamless scaling of applications, allowing businesses to handle increased workloads without performance degradation.
  • Enterprise-grade Security
    Stackato offers robust security features to protect applications and data, which is crucial for enterprise users.
  • Private Cloud Deployment
    It allows deployment on private clouds, offering more control over the application environment compared to public cloud solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Stackato

  • Cost
    As a commercial product, Stackato can be expensive, which might not be suitable for small businesses or startups with limited budgets.
  • Complexity for Advanced Features
    While basic features are easy to use, utilizing more advanced functionalities may require a steeper learning curve.
  • Limited Community Support
    Stackato may have less community support compared to larger open-source platforms, limiting peer resources and community-driven innovation.
  • Vendor Lock-in Risk
    Using a commercial product like Stackato can lead to vendor lock-in, making it tricky to switch platforms without significant rework.
  • Potential for Obsolescence
    Given market dynamics, there's always a risk that smaller platforms may not keep pace with rapid technological advancements.

Analysis of Amazon EC2

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Amazon EC2 is generally considered good for hosting scalable and robust applications in the cloud. Its ability to adapt to various computing needs while ensuring security and flexibility makes it a popular choice among developers and businesses.

Why this product is good

  • Amazon EC2 is considered good because it offers scalable computing capacity in the cloud. It provides flexible configurations, a wide range of instance types, reliable performance, robust security features, and a strong ecosystem of AWS services to support diverse workloads. Furthermore, the pay-as-you-go pricing model ensures cost efficiency, making it accessible for startups, enterprises, and everything in between.

Recommended for

  • Startups looking for cost-effective cloud computing solutions.
  • Established businesses needing reliable and scalable infrastructure.
  • Developers requiring a customizable environment to run applications.
  • Companies wanting to leverage a broad selection of complementary AWS services.
  • Organizations aiming for a hybrid cloud approach with seamless integration.

Analysis of Stackato

Overall verdict

  • Stackato was a solid enterprise-grade Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) built on Cloud Foundry and Docker, designed to help organizations deploy and manage applications across private, public, and hybrid clouds. However, it's important to note that Stackato was discontinued by HPE (which acquired it from ActiveState) around 2017, so it is no longer an actively supported product.

Why this product is good

  • Built on open standards like Cloud Foundry and Docker, reducing vendor lock-in concerns
  • Supported multiple programming languages and frameworks, offering polyglot flexibility
  • Enabled deployment across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments
  • Provided enterprise-grade security, scaling, and management features
  • Simplified application deployment and lifecycle management for development teams

Recommended for

  • Enterprises that previously sought a private or hybrid PaaS solution (though now discontinued)
  • Development teams wanting Cloud Foundry-based application deployment
  • Organizations exploring container-based and multi-cloud strategies (should now consider modern alternatives like Cloud Foundry, OpenShift, or Kubernetes)

Amazon EC2 videos

Introduction to Amazon EC2 - Elastic Cloud Server & Hosting with AWS

More videos:

  • Review - What is Amazon EC2? (Part 1) | AWS Training

Stackato videos

No Stackato videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon EC2 and Stackato)
Cloud Computing
98 98%
2% 2
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Infrastructure
100 100%
0% 0
Containers As A Service
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon EC2 seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 81 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon EC2 mentions (81)

  • Fine-Tuning 14B SLMs for 3GPP Root Cause Analysis on Amazon SageMaker
    For production deployment, the fine-tuned SLMs can run on SageMaker Real-Time Endpoints, self-hosted EC2, or even AWS Outposts for on-premise telco edge deployments where data residency is required. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • The hosting setup nobody talks about anymore
    In this post we are using an Amazon EC2 T3 Micro instance running Ubuntu with an nginx web server. We'll use AWS Systems Manager to help set up a CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions. We'll then configure AWS Certificate Manager with Amazon CloudFront and have it connected to our domain with Amazon Route 53! We'll be using a Vue Nuxt 4 application as our web app. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Cut AWS Bills by 50–75% with EC2 and RDS Parking
    Cloud compute spend is one of the most visible and controllable components of AWS infrastructure costs, yet many organizations still pay for idle resources. Development, testing, UAT, QA, sandbox, and demo environments often run 24/7 out of convenience, even though they are only needed during business hours. Automatically stopping (“parking”) resources such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS during off-hours is a... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • 16 hands-on exercises to prepare for the AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate certification exam
    I believe that learning only theory or cramming these configuration options might not be enough to pass the exam. Also, and let's put your hand over your heart, memorizing EC2 or S3 settings will not make you a better cloud professional. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Optimizing AWS Costs for AI Development in 2025
    Compute: This is the big one. It's the cost of running EC2 instances with GPUs (like the g5 or p4 series) for model training and deployment. It also includes the compute for services like Amazon SageMaker and AWS Batch. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

Stackato mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Stackato yet. Tracking of Stackato recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon EC2 and Stackato, you can also consider the following products

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

Vultr - Global, automated cloud infrastructure from the broadest array of AMD and NVIDIA GPUs to virtual CPUs, bare metal, Kubernetes, storage, and networking solutions.

Mesosphere DCOS - Mesosphere DCOS organizes your entire infrastructure as if it was a single computer.