Billing, Pricing, and Support Review
Review of AWS pricing models, Free Tier, Cost Explorer, Budgets, pricing calculators, and support plans.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Match pricing models to appropriate use cases
- Estimate costs using AWS pricing tools
- Set up billing alerts and budgets
- Select appropriate support plans for needs
Quick Review: AWS Pricing Models
Match the Pricing Model to Its Characteristic
Connect each pricing approach to how it actually works.
Examples
Choose one, then match it on the right
Characteristics
Select an example first
0 of 6 matched so far.
Pricing Model Scenarios
| Scenario | Best Pricing Model | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Steady-state production database | Reserved Instances | Predictable workload, maximum savings |
| Batch processing jobs that can pause | Spot Instances | Cost savings matter more than immediate completion |
| Development/testing environment | On-Demand or Spot | Flexible, no long-term commitment needed |
| Variable web traffic | On-Demand + Auto Scaling | Scale with demand, pay for what you use |
| 3-year steady application | Savings Plans | Flexibility across instance types + discount |
Micro-activity 1: Pricing Model Selection
Free Tier Review
Always Free (never expires):
- Lambda: 1 million requests/month
- CloudWatch: 10 custom metrics, 1 million API requests
- DynamoDB: 25 GB storage, 200 million read/write units
12 Months Free (from signup):
- EC2: 750 hours/month of t2/t3.micro
- S3: 5 GB standard storage
- RDS: 750 hours/month of db.t2.micro
- CloudFront: 50 GB data transfer
Key principle: Free Tier is for learning and small projects, production workloads will exceed these limits.
Micro-activity 2: Free Tier Awareness
Cost Management Tools
Match the Tool to Its Purpose
Connect each AWS cost tool to what it actually does.
Examples
Choose one, then match it on the right
Characteristics
Select an example first
0 of 6 matched so far.
Micro-activity 3: Cost Analysis Scenarios
Think about it
Your monthly AWS bill jumped from $200 to $800. Consider:
- Which tool do you open first to investigate?
- What dimensions would you analyze (service, region, time period)?
- What would you do if you discovered the increase was from:
- An unterminated EC2 instance left running?
- Unexpected data transfer charges?
- A misconfigured CloudWatch log retention?
Map your investigation workflow to the AWS cost tools reviewed in this lesson.
Support Plans Review
| Plan | Best For | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Basic (Free) | Learning, experimenting | Documentation, forums, health dashboard |
| Business Support+ ($29/month min) | Production workloads | 24/7 phone/web/chat, <30-min response for critical |
| Enterprise Support ($5,000/month min) | Mission-critical | 15-minute response, TAM, security incident response |
| AWS Unified Operations | Deep operational partnership | TAM + DSE, architecture guidance, event management |
Key principle: Support plan should match business impact of downtime.
Micro-activity 4: Support Plan Selection
TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) Considerations
Cloud vs On-Premises:
| Factor | On-Premises | Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront costs | High (hardware, facilities) | Low (just first month's usage) |
| Operational costs | High (power, cooling, staff) | Included in service price |
| Scaling costs | Buy new hardware (slow) | Auto-scale (instant) |
| Maintenance | Your team manages everything | AWS manages infrastructure |
| Hidden costs | Power, cooling, real estate, depreciation | Data transfer, storage growth |
Key insight: Cloud TCO is usually lower when you factor in staff time, facilities, and opportunity cost of slow procurement.
Synthesis: Cost-Optimized Architecture
Think about it
You're designing a cost-effective architecture for a growing e-commerce site:
Current state: 2 EC2 instances (t3.medium) running 24/7, RDS db.t3.micro, CloudFront for assets, S3 for images
Growth projections: Traffic doubles every 3 months for the next year
Consider:
- When should you switch from On-Demand to Reserved/Savings Plans?
- How do you handle traffic spikes (sales events) cost-effectively?
- What monitoring prevents bill shocks?
- Which services provide "Always Free" benefits you can leverage?
Apply the pricing concepts from this lesson to develop a cost-optimization strategy.
Summary
| Concept | Key Principle |
|---|---|
| On-Demand | Flexibility, no commitment, highest per-hour cost |
| Reserved/Savings Plans | Steady workloads, significant discounts for commitment |
| Spot | Interruptible workloads, up to 90% discount |
| Free Tier | Always Free (never expires) vs 12-Month Free (expires) |
| Cost Explorer | Analyze past spending, identify trends |
| Budgets | Set thresholds, receive alerts before overspending |
| Support Plans | Match support level to business impact of downtime |
| TCO | Factor in staff, facilities, opportunity cost, not just hardware |
Best practices:
- Use Pricing Calculator before deploying
- Set up Budgets on day one
- Monitor with Cost Explorer weekly
- Right-size instances regularly
- Use Reserved/Savings Plans for steady workloads