How To Choose The Best Support Level

The core of AWS’s value proposition is to provide AWS managed services, which dramatically reduce the users’ costs of managing cloud resources by offloading the majority of administrative technical work on AWS, such as patches, upgrades, backups or hardware replacements in case of equipment failure.

However, no matter how well AWS manages these services there will always be situations where a user needs AWS assistance. These include a user-caused managed service misconfiguration, managed service bug or unexpected problem, or clarification requests on how to best use AWS or a particular service for a given use case. The more business-critical workloads a user runs on AWS, the more imperative it is to restore the operations in case of downtime as soon as possible. For these reasons, any serious AWS user needs to purchase an AWS support plan.

There are five different AWS support plans – Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise On-Ramp and Enterprise with different included services as follows:

Basic

Developer

Business

Enterprise On-Ramp

Enterprise

When to use

The service includes only account and billing questions including requests for service limit increases.

This is unsuitable for any production workload.

Suitable for experimenting with AWS only.

The very basics for any production workloads in AWS.

Recommended for business critical workloads in AWS.

Recommended for mission critical workloads in AWS.

Monthly Cost

$0

Max($29, 3% of monthly AWS charges)

Max of $100 or

* 10% of monthly AWS charges for the first $0–$10K
* 7% of monthly AWS charges from $10K–$80K
* 5% of monthly AWS charges from $80K–$250K
* 3% of monthly AWS charges over $250K

Max($5,500, 10% of monthly AWS charges)

Max of $15,000 or

* 10% of monthly AWS charges for the first $0–$150K
* 7% of monthly AWS charges from $150K–$500K
* 5% of monthly AWS charges from $500K–$1M
* 3% of monthly AWS charges over $1M

Support Channels

Non-prioritized responses on AWS re:Post

Business hours email access to Cloud Support Associates.

Prioritized responses on AWS re:Post

24×7 phone, email, and chat access to Cloud Support Engineers

Prioritized responses on AWS re:Post

Response Times

General guidance:

System impaired:

General guidance:

System impaired:

Production system impaired:

Production system down:

General guidance:

System impaired:

Production system impaired:

Production system down:

Business-critical system down:

General guidance:

System impaired:

Production system impaired:

Production system down:

Business/Mission-critical system down:

Architectural Guidance

None

General

Contextual to your use-cases

Consultative review and guidance based on your applications

AWS Trusted Advisor Best Practices Checks

General

Full set of checks

For the AWS Enterprise support plans, AWS also assigns a pool of AWS Technical Account Managers or a designated Technical Account Manager for proactive guidance and further assistance. For the Business and Enterprise support plans, AWS provides access to AWS Infrastructure Event Management.

In summary, the more your business is driven by AWS, the more you are likely to need to purchase an AWS Support plan. The decision between Business, Enterprise On-Ramp, and Enterprise AWS support plans depends on how rapidly you need assistance and how extensive the assistance should be in case of a problem. The AWS Enterprise support plans also include direct access to AWS architects for pro-active optimization of your AWS infrastructure.