It really depends on what you are planning to do. 1. If you need a server for a longer term - or need to make serve web pages on demand then ec2 doesnt seem like a very good option - not that cheap, server might trip and you might loose state, and respnose times are not that great. 2. It is good for batch processing tasks that you can pile on multiple machines and then let go of the machines. You get work done faster (parallel) and is cheaper than any other option out there.