Question: What are the cost differences between AWS Business Support and Enterprise Support?

Answer

When choosing between AWS Business Support and AWS Enterprise Support, it's important to understand the cost structure and what services each tier offers.

1. AWS Business Support:

• Target Audience: Recommended for businesses with production workloads on AWS that need 24/7 technical support and trusted advisor features.
• Cost: The charges for Business Support are calculated based on the following sliding scale:
  • 10% of monthly AWS usage for the first $0–$10K
  • 7% for the next $10K–$80K
  • 5% for the next $80K–$250K
  • 3% for AWS usage that exceeds $250K

2. AWS Enterprise Support:

• Target Audience: Geared towards large enterprises with critical workloads and complex, high-value applications where downtime significantly impacts business operations.
• Cost: The Enterprise Support plan has a minimum fee of $15,000 per month or 5% of monthly AWS usage, whichever is greater. For monthly usage exceeding $1M, the cost percentage decreases:
  • 3% for usage exceeding $1M–$8M
  • 2% for usage over $8M

Key Differences Beyond Costs:

• Response Time: Enterprise support offers a faster response time compared to Business support. For example, critical issues (e.g., impacting production or business-critical workloads) have a response time of less than 15 minutes in the Enterprise plan, while Business support targets a 1-hour response.

• Technical Account Manager (TAM): One of the primary differentiators of Enterprise Support is the inclusion of a dedicated TAM who provides proactive monitoring, detailed cost management, and helps customers optimize their AWS environment.

• Architectural Reviews: Customers on the Enterprise Support plan get access to Well-Architected Reviews and Infrastructure Event Management (IEM) for large events like migrations or product launches.

• Enterprise-Only Tools: Enterprise subscribers have access to additional tools like IAM Access Analyzer and early previews of certain AWS features.

In short, Business Support offers a good middle-ground for production workloads and growing businesses who need round-the-clock technical help, while Enterprise Support is geared towards complex, mission-critical workloads that require extensive hands-on support and architectural guidance.