# Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Reviews **Vendor:** Amazon Web Services (AWS) **Category:** [Enterprise IT Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/enterprise-it-management) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 135 ## About Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is a management service designed to help users automatically collect software inventory, apply OS patches, create system images, and configure Windows and Linux operating systems. ## Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Reviews ### 1. Centralized EC2 Management with Secure, SSH-Free Access via Session Manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Atharva P. | Cloud BI Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 08, 2026 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** What I like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is that it centralizes server management tasks such as secure instance access, patching, configuration management, and automation. It significantly reduces the need for direct SSH access and helps standardize operational procedures across large EC2 fleets. The Session Manager feature is particularly valuable because it allows administrators to connect securely to EC2 instances through the AWS console without maintaining bastion hosts or opening inbound SSH ports. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Initial configuration requires proper IAM permissions, agent installation, and networking setup. Some advanced automation workflows also require familiarity with Systems Manager documents and AWS security concepts. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon EC2 Systems Manager helps solve server administration, patch management, and operational consistency challenges. For example, instead of manually logging into dozens of EC2 instances to perform updates or execute scripts, we use Run Command and Patch Manager to automate maintenance activities across environments. This reduces manual effort, improves security, and ensures operational consistency. ### 2. The best place to monitor all the EC2 instances : EC2 Systems Manager **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Deep N. | Technology Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Its a single centralized place where I can manage and configure all of my EC2 instaces. This is the best feature. Also using the suite of tools it provided, We can do any automation such as patch management or any software installation as well as configuration changes.Also I can integrate this with any other aws services easily such as AWS cloud watch for monitoring,AWS skey management services etc. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It is little bit complex to use for a newbie for eg setting up any automation needs prior knowledge of AWS. Also We should always carefully review the price for EC2 systems manager features to avoid any additional costs. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** it is a centralised place to manage and monitor all the EC2 related resources and this significantly reduces the time and cost to manage all those instances. ### 3. Streamlining Operations with Amazon EC2 Systems Manager: A Comprehensive Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** VIKRANT S. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 22, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** One notable strength of Amazon EC2 Systems Manager is its ability to efficiently manage and automate operational tasks for EC2 instances at scale. This includes tasks like patching, configuration management, and system maintenance, contributing to a more streamlined and automated cloud infrastructure. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** One potential drawback is that the learning curve for configuring and utilizing the full range of features in Amazon EC2 Systems Manager can be steep for users new to the platform. Additionally, the interface could be more intuitive for certain tasks, potentially posing a challenge for those less familiar with AWS services. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon EC2 Systems Manager addresses various operational challenges in managing EC2 instances. It facilitates centralized control and automation of tasks like patch management, software installation, and configuration management. This helps in maintaining a consistent and secure infrastructure, reducing manual efforts, and ensuring compliance with desired configurations. The benefits include improved operational efficiency, enhanced security, and simplified management of EC2 instances at scale. ### 4. Streamlined cloud management excellence ! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bijayalaxmi S. | DevOps Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Amazon EC2 System manager is agame changer for anyone seeking efficient and centralized cloud management. The user friendly interface and automation capabilities simplify configuration, patching and security tasks, saving valuable time. Robust reporting and logs provide insightful performance metrics, while the seamless integration with AWS IAM and KMS ensures top notch security. Highly recommended for its simplicity and effectiveness. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** While Amazon EC2 System manager excels in functionality, there are occasional navigation challenges within the interface. Some features could be more intuitively placed, requiring a bit of exploration. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has transferred our AWS experience by tackling common cloud management challenges. The tool's automation steamlines repetitive tasks, ensuring consistent configurations and hassle free patching. With features like Run command and session manager, we have gained secure remote access without compromising on security. ### 5. EC2 Is Automation king **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Industrial Automation | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** First and foremost, the ease of automation is a standout feature. EC2 Systems Manager enables users to automate operational tasks at scale, reducing manual intervention and streamlining workflows. Whether it's patch management, software installations, or configuration updates, the ability to automate these processes efficiently contributes to operational efficiency and ensures that systems are up-to-date and secure. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** While Amazon EC2 Systems Manager offers robust features, some users may find its learning curve steep. Navigating the extensive functionalities and setting up automation tasks can be complex for beginners. Additionally, the documentation, while comprehensive, might require more user-friendly explanations. Some users have reported occasional latency in the execution of commands, impacting real-time responsiveness. Although EC2 Systems Manager is a powerful tool, addressing these aspects could enhance user experience and accessibility for those new to the platform. It's worth noting that user preferences and experiences may vary, and ongoing updates from Amazon Web Services could address these concerns. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** As an IT manager, Amazon EC2 Systems Manager has proven invaluable in resolving operational challenges. Its automation capabilities streamline routine tasks, from patch management to software configurations, ensuring our infrastructure stays current and secure. The centralized management console enhances visibility, facilitating efficient monitoring and troubleshooting of EC2 instances. This not only saves time but also boosts overall productivity. Security-wise, EC2 Systems Manager allows us to enforce policies, enhancing compliance and reducing potential vulnerabilities. Its adaptability across diverse environments ensures flexibility in managing our dynamic IT landscape. In essence, EC2 Systems Manager significantly contributes to operational efficiency, security, and the seamless management of our Amazon EC2 instances. ### 6. All in One place to manage your Resources **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mustafa T. | Associate, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Superb and effective place to manage all you virtual resources that you can manage. Just some Clicks to do a Big task (e.g create a VM or a System Image etc). The UI is user-friendly and informative with help text place to place. Also has Many inbuilt/accessible application to integrate. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** There are very few points to dislike not its not dislike but more of a experience thing. If you are new guy just opened an AWS console you have toooo many choices to choose from that be a dislike else i personally don't feel any. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** AWS solved the problem to mange our VM in just clicks its a direct console to find every detail about your active/inactive resources. ### 7. Systems Manager is really cool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rohit S. | Software Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 11, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It has a great user-friendly interface and is easy to implement. Integration was pretty smooth. I loved the customer support. Frequently used for managing complex and high-traffic systems. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Its extensive feature set could be overwhelming for smaller projects. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Systems Manager helps in my automation and configuration management ### 8. Simplest way to fulfill your needs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sanchita J. | Product Support Engineer | VSA, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Amazon EC2 interface is really good and very friendly and helps you automate and manage tasks in easiest way. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** There is no disadvantages as such but little bit issue in connecting to command prompt. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Do not need to logout and login again and again to reach different servers , interacting via command prompt can done on one place itself. Proper description of instance mentioned in one go. ### 9. Ease to automate the patching process using AWS system manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** With the help of AWS system manager we were able to automate the patching process. Each EC2 instances have tags which hold details of server environment whether its development or production. Then it has details of hosted application and it maintenance windows. Using system manager and tags we were able to automate the entire patching process. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** No dislikes so far. Its woringas expected. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using system manager we have automate dthe pacthing process. It has minimized the overall downtime required as maintenance window for patching. Hence increased application availability which ultimately benfits bisness. ### 10. AWS EC2 System Manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 22, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Amazon EC2 system manager has user friendly interface that helps you to effectively automate and handle your tasks and it is very good capability to integrate other Amazon services with it. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** No dislikes about AWS EC2 System Manager till now. Working fine. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Amazon EC2 is helping us to reduce time consumption for the tasks and it helps us with integration and automate the many AWS services in effective ways. ### 11. Ec2 system manger is a easy to use **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The dashboard gives a comprehensive look out of all the ec2 instances **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Not much. May be add some more features. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Monitoring the ec2 instances ### 12. The Place to Manage and Monitor the Resources **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Doolitha S. | Software Engineer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2021 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** We can easily monitor and manage all the instances in one place without issues. This approach saves a lot of time since we don't have to go one by one when a change or patch is needed—also, the interfaces are user friendly. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I have no complaint about the AWS Systems Manager. It does its task well and gives the insights we need. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** It's a must-use feature if you have multiple resources running. I can recommend others to use it to increase efficiency. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using the Systems Manager, we saved time and effort since we didn't have to go one by one and do the changes. It also gives control over all the resources and is efficient to manage. ### 13. We use this for our serverless functions to store config and keys in parameter store **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It is integrated with kms so you can secure a parameter such as api key or passwords instead of having them unsecure in the function or as a environment variable to the function. It is also versioned if something change we can check the changes **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Default key for kms should not be a option as it is not secure. Anybody or a function with parameter store access can dump the secured entries if you dont have separate kms keys with separate access **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** This is something you should use if you use serverless functions that needs to access keys and passwords **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Have password and sensative api keys outside of code or environment variables, basically a secure store for the code ### 14. Detailed system configurations **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ankit V. | Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** AWS Systems Manager gives me visibility and control of your infrastructure on AWS. Systems Manager provides a unified user interface so I can view operational data from multiple AWS services and allows me to automate operational tasks across your AWS resources. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** We could make updates to running instances via chef solo by invoking it using SSM, but we like the instances to be as immutable as possible - makes for very easy rollbacks and reduces the amount of unintentional change in the environment. If we need to make an update we build and test a completely new image and then deploy new instances based on it rather than updating running instances. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** IMO the biggest limitations with AWS features of this type are usually a lack of 3rd-party extensions or support. e.g. with Chef you have a massive resource of 3rd-party cookbooks freely available. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** SHORTEN THE TIME TO DETECT PROBLEMS EASY TO USE AUTOMATION IMPROVE VISIBILITY AND CONTROL MANAGE HYBRID ENVIRONMENTS ### 15. AWS Systems Manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Relations | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The ability to perform compliance checks. The ability to collect system inventory, including custom inventory. Patch Management capabilities. The ability to implement in hybrid environments. The ability to customize Documents. The ability to initiate commands from the AWS Dashboard. State Manager **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The lack of integration with other services within AWS GovCloud. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Patch Management, inventory management, compliance checks, mult-cloud availability. ### 16. I was really excited about it until I tried it. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Online Media | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2019 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I like that I can remote access machines from the AWS console directly. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I dislike that it is VERY hard to find the machine that I want to remotely access. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** If you are using linux, the value still feels limited to me. It is hard to see the value just by using the console. I've been able to find that value in other products, but not this one. The online training may help to find that value. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We just started exploring the features and became disenchanted. It felt more like a windows machine management system and we don't have any windows machines. ### 17. EC2 for SAP Workloads **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** christian W. | VP of Global Alliances, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Protera Technologies, specailizes in managed hosting services for SAP,. AWS EC2 allows our team to provision and right size compute resources on-demand. AWS EC2 gives access with no delay to the compute resourecs needed, and we only pay for what we use. This is a landslide change when compared to traditional hosting that required weeks of planning and deployment activities for even simple HW changes. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** In some cases upgrading or transitioning from from EC2 familly of instances to another has some adveser cost impact **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Amazon EC2 Systems Manager will give you the power of "yes", like in "Yes, I undersatnd what is going on with my systems and I feel I am in control" **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** EC2 Systems manager allows our team to effectively ajust compute requirements and consumption ### 18. Great For Learning or Business **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Robert J. | Associate Director of Computing Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** EC2 instances can range from free to expensive depending on what you want to do. I enjoyed the range and ease of deployment. Free tier is awesome for what you get access to. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The range. For new folks, the amount of choices is overwhelming. But if you like lots of options, it's not really a problem. There has to be some familiarity with the console to get started. THerea re so many choices, it can be hard to decide what you want to do. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Freedom to spin up and tear down machines for various purposes ranging from research to a simple web server and only pay for what I use. ### 19. Allows you to organize data from different AWS services and automate tasks in AWS resources **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gleyder C. | Full-Stack Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 06, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I like Amazon Web Services because is an excelent tool both for people and for companies, because a system or an application can be deployed in an very fast enviroment like EC2, and using any of their existing tools, such as S3. AWS is more reliable and also secure as most of the business data information would be passed and so it should be properly encrypted and follow other security measures to prevent any data from getting leaked while communicating between the applications. AWS is more flexible and scalable with more bandwidth and storage capabilities. AWS is highly customizable and is easy to use, the learning curve for its main functions is relatively easy and well documented, application programming interfaces (APIs) are accessible and also is available in many regions. It has variety of tools at your disposal and the S3 interface is being well laid out and easy to organize. It constantly innovates and iterates, announcing new features several times per year and the price is very competitive in the market. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** If you manage many accounts AWS, management can become somewhat disorganized bacause it does not offer many tools for internal control, also it has many tools at your disposal, but you may not know them all. They could see how to promote and introduce the tools that you use less to display its advantages. While the documentation is robust it is sometimes difficult to get access to an actual person who might be able to help with the design of your application and what Amazon service is most applicable. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a consultant, as such, I provide software solutions and consulting services to customers with different needs. AWS gives me the tools to cover much of their needs, so it is for me a key tool in the performance of my activities, I really like how clean is the S3 interface, it's simple and effective and allows me to do my post-weekend tasks easily and quickly and also AWS peremptorily lowers costs a couple of times per year. ### 20. Solves the challenge of remotely trying to manage WIndows workloads! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brian A. | Director IT & Cloud Operations, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** We can now automatically run powershell scripts across our entire fleet of instances at the same time! Additionally it can support automatically running tasks in "maintenance windows" replacing the need for hours of manual effort spent after hours on the weekend! **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Parameter store is a little difficult to navigate through. Believe improvements may be coming to that. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Before we had to manually remote into each machine and run commands, where now we can select the instances we want the run command to go against and it will simultaneously execute against all of them and bring back the results. ### 21. Great tool with even more potential **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike R. | Technical Project Consultant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** SSM allows us to manage servers and jobs at massive scale. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It is difficult to re-run a failed job. It requires that the job be re-instantiated, which is difficult when iterating rapidly in sandbox-type scenarios. Also, I wish there was a way to run a job on a set number or percentage of servers that match a set of tags. The use case is running a job that needs to run only once and with auto-scaling there may be many servers running at one time. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Go for it! **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** batch jobs, manual processes, save time ### 22. EC2 is excellent cost for performance **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David C. | IT Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** EC2 lets us scale to use and pay for just he compute power we need. We saved over 60% compared to hosting our own equipment in a data center. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Not much to dislike. Some extra steps are needed for on-the-road remote access unless you have a VPN solution. Still, better than the alternatives! **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Once you learn the basics of managing EC2 systems you'll never look back. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Server and fleet management, the ability to spin up instances for testing and then take them down. Scaling server usage without major capital costs. ### 23. Ssm it's good but needs work **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I like the integration found between run command, automations, maintenance windows, and parameter store. I have found these components work well together. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** User interface in the aws console is awful servers cannot be sorted by name when servers are sorted only 1 server's information can then be viewed logs do not sort easily 10 items per page limit adds unneeded frustration. Please redesign the UI to reduce the number of clicks to get information. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** It is a cost effective solution for managing servers at scale, but there is a learning curve to the product as well as limitations to understand and consider before committing to production environment **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We patch monthly windies updates, manage AMIs, and upgrade our software product line via automations ### 24. Excellent way to manage large groups of EC2 instances **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Security and Investigations | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** We used to have in house scripts used to run short CLI commands across a large number of instances. RunCommand gives us the capability to manage, throttle, and audit exactly how that particular script runs which makes it very powerful and useful. The sessions manager also gives us the ability to remove SSH access to our instances and use sesions manager instead **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I know that new features are still being added but I wish I could more seamlessly use the AWS SSM to reconnect to existing sessions. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Remove the need for SSH accessbut keep the flexibilty governed by IAM! **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Management of large number of EC2 instances, both operationally and security ### 25. EC2 Allows Us to be Hands off **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** EC2 allows us to not have to worry about the datacenter side of our infrastructure. It makes things much easier to scale and allows us to provide better support to our developers. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** EC2 definitely takes some time to get used to after having had physical access to the equipment itself.. The dashboard is easy to use but has many options that sometimes can confuse. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** It's definitely worth trying. The low cost of entry allows you to try it out and if it doesn't work for your business then you can give it up. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** EC2 allows us to reduce our datacenter footprint. It also allows us to scale more easily. ### 26. Easiest Setup of servers in a long time **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anthony F. | solutions architect, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The ease of deploying servers and being able to back them up. There is minimal latency and it really helps us to stand up new services and test applications on the fly. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** There isnt anything in particular that I can think of that I dislike. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We no longer need to host our own server stacks if neccesary it helps us reduce costs overall , ### 27. Enabled automated control for basic tasks **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Works like Puppet/Chef -remote control of system by allowing tasks to be done for on-premise and hosted servers **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Learning curve, not all system types supported, some templated wizards for common tasks would be good **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** One place to go to send config changes to many systems. Like updating a hosts file or pushing a new software package ### 28. EC2 review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pratima K. | Director software development, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** scalability and ability to spin up easily is aplus and abolity to use only when needed is a huige infrastructiure help. The fact that we don't have tp purchase servers is aplus to company. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** cost increses and adds up before you realize. Warning and heads up will help, abilituy to see what the useage is and then able to scale wil lhelp **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** infrastructure ### 29. Not as good as running Docker or my own VM's **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Convenience of tools for imaging, spectrum of sizes to choose from, ease of changing hardware spec on the fly **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The console interface is very restrictive. It is difficult to switch between regions for easily managing multiple environments. There is no way to recover from hardware "faults" that may occur on start-up, requiring a very expensive process to recover machines that may only need to do a quick fsck scan, for example. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Automate your own management of EC2's and expect to spend time with developing custom tools. Do not rely on AWS console management **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Rapid deployment and network management ### 30. Mostly satisfied user **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew B. | Lead Security Engineer, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The ability to manage EC2 through API, but also the capabilities in the UI to deploy. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Lack of configuring options in the UI when displaying Instances. For example, being able to display and sort on IP address (public and private) when dealing with a large list of Instances. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Deploying services where full access to the OS level is required. ### 31. EC2 on GovCloud **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael M. | Cloud Architect, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It works, for moving at a fast pace that works with your customers needs and time line. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Missing Tags from OS metadata in OS, would be ideal for adding automation and vlidation. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Do not dissmise it yet. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Migration of Legacy datacenter systems, In a rapped flexiable model tha requires low learning curve for Dev and admins. ### 32. Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Devon O. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** There are tons of tools for any imaginable feature who wish to expand. The elasticity feature is also very useful. It gives us the ability to save money on resources not we don't need **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Can't think of anything right now. It is working just as we had envisioned it. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We our redundancy and disaster recovery problem ### 33. EC2 System manager simplifies it all **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** EC2 System manager simplifies it all without the need to invest more. We tried several tools in our cloud adoption process, but assessing EC2 manager was definitively the smartest choice to start. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Once you start growing you'll find your own needs, you'll outgrow the tool really quickly. But the product is evolving, so you can go back to it really easily. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Start with it at once. You MUST have something for EC2 management. Then discover if you need something else. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our EC2 instances management wouldn't be possible without the tool ### 34. Easy to use and work with **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pranesh Sandeep P. | Embedded Software Engineer, Oil & Energy, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Everything is centralized. The EC2 manager is one spot to manage and compare performance of different EC2 instances **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The product is a little price., Would like to see EC2 be more of a service like lambda where everything is managed on it'w own **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing a large group of EC2 systems ### 35. easy to manage, highly available and less maintenance **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** karthik b. | senior service reliability engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** the ease to launch up the instances in minutes and reserve instances as needed **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** there isn't much to disklike as the product is bulletproof **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** ec2 has helped us a lot in terms of managing 1000's of servers and automating most of the daily tasks with the api ### 36. Easy to work with **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marc-Olivier B. | Systems Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It was fast for me, a new user, to spin up new vms. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I find there's a lot of back and forth with the documentation. I wish the page would have something to help new users. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are looking to build a quickstart for our customers. ### 37. Criminally Underused **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Systems Manager is a very under used product at AWS and it is quintinessential to using this service to manage of fleet of instances as cattle, verses Pet care (SSH/RDP care, etc.). **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The console is still immature. the SSM agent can be difficult to get rolling on existing servers don't have the agent installed (Red Hat). Session Manager is buggy/immature. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cattle vs Sheep Arguement - remove SSH keys (close port 22!!). Forensic logging with S3 and CloudWatch. Running commands for updates at huge scale. ### 38. way of the future **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** hossein j. | DevOps Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** fast deployment, easy to manage and integrate with. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** mostly price related, however over all this is a great solution. **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** it may be the right fit for you. give a try. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** heavily used for most key areas where traditional onprem hw is just too much work. ### 39. Great Flexibility **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph N. | Sr Systems Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Flexibility in providing resources we need quickly. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I haven't run into any dislikes yet, it is still new to the enivronment so it is difficult to gauge at this point. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Initially just for testing environments to quickly be able to provision resources. ### 40. It's Da Bomb **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** eyal l. | dev manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The fact I can stand up a server for as long as exactly as I need it for... on demand compute is amazing **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Remotely accessing the servers has been painful **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** none **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** K8's is running there and some home grown applications ### 41. SPG (single pane of glass) **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thomas F. | Enterprise Services Manager, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** The simplicity to manage system and do comparisons between Prod and QA **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** N/A,,,,There is really nothing that I can syat that I diskile about the system **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** You will not regret it **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** reviews are much easier in the condensed fortmat ### 42. ec2 **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** hariharan v. | Admin, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** performs very well and we have used in for many of our clients. Thes services are cost effective **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** different instance size, spot instances , the instance lanuch time, and the AMI factory method to create custom instances **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** on prem ### 43. Great **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel L. | Senior Software Developer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Love that I can do all of this with a UI instead of just on the command line. Thanks for making it easy! **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Sometimes the filtering doesn't work very well. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Checking in on Instances and visualizing where things are ### 44. Excellent way to provision compute for cloud compute needs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Raghav A. | Senior Associate, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** customizable compute capacity on the fly together with autoscaling **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Instances get terminated abruptly for which though AWS do not charge but got to start over all again **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** big data refined layer by using the AWS EC2 instances to compute ### 45. EC2 is a basic VM solution **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Justin P. | Software Developer, Oil & Energy, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** EC2 is an easy way to start a VM and experiment quickly. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It becomes difficult to manage for production purpose. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** In our organization, we have many online services that our customers need to send data and retrieve data. ### 46. EC2 **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Calvin N. | Cloud Infrastructure Admin, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I like the fact that ec2 is so flexible **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** I don't like how the screen refreshes as often as it does **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** The scalability of the ec2 instances allow us to have multiple production, QA and UAT environments ### 47. pretty good **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jarrod M. | Director of Informatics and IT, Biotechnology, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Easily manage instances, change instance types quickly **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** not much, it's pretty good and easy to use **Recommendations to others considering Amazon EC2 Systems Manager:** Better than managing in my own data center **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easily spin up and down instances rather than run them in my datacenter ### 48. ED2 Review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bill S. | Business Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** easy to build but had to manage. So we use software to do it. **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** too many AMIs confusing. N eeded only few so no confusion is there when you ready to choose them. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** MAchine LEarning ### 49. Its very beneficial and cost optimization **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohd D. | Cloud Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Robust Techonology and cloud agnostic to help our COmpute requirement **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** It;s very lenghty though to setupo and as i heard from team collegue,. **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** To solve SIlos problems we were facing in our enviro ment. ### 50. Ease of use **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Scott P. | Solutions Architect, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Coming from a data center perspective... EC2 has simplified the building of Linux and Windows servers` **What do you dislike about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager?** Tagging of resources has slowed down deployment **What problems is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager solving and how is that benefiting you?** taggin instances after builds has slowed down the process of integrating ## Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Discussions - [What is Amazon EC2 Systems Manager used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-amazon-ec2-systems-manager-used-for) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View Amazon EC2 Systems Manager pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-ec2-systems-manager/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-12+04%3A15%3A01+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=75cc8029-7ff6-448c-a0a6-b99ce4b1252b&secure%5Btoken%5D=c5c330b1fc0abb81582aa123fda7a474dbf8d09f2f853d93e08dafcce32e35b1&format=llm_user) ## Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Features **Analysis** - Threat Detection **Platform** - Unified Communications Platform - Remote Access - ITIL Policy Compliance - Asset Tracking - IT Knowledge Management **Security** - Endpoint Protection - Patch Management - Disaster Recovery - Service Management - Workflow Management **Agentic AI - Enterprise IT Management** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making ## Top Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Alternatives - [NinjaOne](https://www.g2.com/products/ninjaone/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (4,270 reviews) - [Freshservice](https://www.g2.com/products/freshservice/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (1,289 reviews) - [TeamViewer](https://www.g2.com/products/teamviewer/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (3,869 reviews)