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
|
Max($5,500, 10% of monthly AWS charges) |
Max of $15,000 or
|
|
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: < 24 hours System impaired: < 12 hours |
General guidance: < 24 hours System impaired: < 12 hours Production system impaired: < 4 hours Production system down: < 1 hour |
General guidance: < 24 hours System impaired: < 12 hours Production system impaired: < 4 hours Production system down: < 1 hour Business-critical system down: < 30 minutes |
General guidance: < 24 hours System impaired: < 12 hours Production system impaired: < 4 hours Production system down: < 1 hour Business/Mission-critical system down: < 15 minutes |
|
|
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 |
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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.