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I've learned that AWS pricing tends to improve over time, and I appreciate it. I just recently switched from a startup offering authorization to AWS Cognito be

I've learned that AWS pricing tends to improve over time, and I appreciate it. I just recently switched from a startup offering authorization to AWS Cognito because the startup kept raising their price(s). It's nice to see this drop, though I'm sure Amazon does it due to competition as well.

Supermancho 6y ago
This is an analysis from 2018ish - https://www.stayclassyinternet.com/articles/investigating-AWS-pricing-over-time/ https://www.stayclassyinternet.com/articles/investigating-AW...
astuyvenberg 6y ago
It's nice to see that AWS is using their economy of scale to reduce their own costs, and passing that on to the consumer.
- irrational 6y ago
  I don't think they are doing it to be nice to consumers. I think they are doing it to cost less than competitors.
  - astuyvenberg 6y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that they did it to be kind, I think it's clear they made this change to be more competitive in the market place. It's still great to see.
  - trisiak 6y ago
    Isn't that the same in practice? You get customers by being nice to them. Being nice to customers means competitive pricing, high quality support, good documentation, easy integration, etc. It's all driving towards the same goal.
    - bosie 6y ago
      Naming good documentation and high quality support in conjunction with AWS is a bit weird to me. Though parent was talking about using their scale to improve prices. They might just reduce their margins at the moment.
    - irrational 6y ago
      It's not necessarily the same in outcome. Undercutting competitors can be a temporary thing. As soon as the competitors are eliminated you jack the prices up. Doing it to be nice to customers can potentially last even after competitors go belly up. Then again, Google's motto used to be "do no evil" (basically be nice to customers). That obviously went the way of the dodo bird.
      - Lord_Baltimore 6y ago
        >>As soon as the competitors are eliminated you jack the prices up And then you provide a competitor or startup another opportunity.
        irrational 6y ago
        Eventually. But Amazon has the headspace to drop prices for as long as they need to kill the new competition. Only someone like Google or MS will be able to keep up as long as they can automate a lot and use money from ads or software licenses to prop up their cloud business.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    FWIW I was informed by an AWS employee that their internal philosophy is to keep pricing at cost+ levels, which is a strategic play - it forces the operations to remain lean and discourages many competitors from trying to wedge themselves into the cost-price gap. Fat profit margins attract competition, this is what happened when Oracle/Unix combo were chewed up by Microsoft Windows/SQL from the bottom, and then Linux/MySQL started chewing up Microsoft from their bottom. It's the dog-eats-dog world.
    - safog 6y ago
      "Your margin is my opportunity." - Jeff Bezos
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    I think everyone is already aware of the fact that AWS is a company.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    Are you implying that they are trying to make money?
    - irrational 6y ago
      I'm implying that they are trying to undercut competition to drive them out of business so they can then raise prices across the board.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- colechristensen 6y ago
  It’s more that computing gets cheaper over time because of advancements in cpu performance and lowering of storage costs. AWS doesn’t really ever have a reason to raise costs, it doesn’t have to lowball costs to attract customers in the first place.
Spooky23 6y ago
I used to own some internal services where we had a model very similar to AWS for cost recovery. It’s an interesting model because apps either optimize for or happen to fall into “loopholes” where some customers end up getting more value than others or may turn into a financial liability at scale. For example, think about authentication... charging per auth will mean that some use cases will be nearly free, as some external users may only sign in once per quarter. But charging a flat rate has the opposite effect. You have to design the service and tweak the metrics and rates to make it work.
Scarbutt 6y ago
I just recently switched from a startup offering authorization to AWS Cognito because the startup kept raising their price(s). Maybe because they know Cognito is horrible? ;) OTOH, I have never seen DynamoDB prices decreasing.
- Dunedan 6y ago
  The introduction of DynamoDB on-demand pricing was a huge price reduction for some workloads with the additional benefit of also reducing the complexity of scaling capacity as well.
- jacobra2 6y ago
  What don't you like about cognito? I've been able to solve every auth problem I've encountered with it.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  On demand pricing dropped our DynamoDB cost by ~20%.

Supermancho 6y ago

This is an analysis from 2018ish - https://www.stayclassyinternet.com/articles/investigating-AWS-pricing-over-time/ https://www.stayclassyinternet.com/articles/investigating-AW...

astuyvenberg 6y ago

It's nice to see that AWS is using their economy of scale to reduce their own costs, and passing that on to the consumer.

irrational 6y ago
I don't think they are doing it to be nice to consumers. I think they are doing it to cost less than competitors.
- astuyvenberg 6y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that they did it to be kind, I think it's clear they made this change to be more competitive in the market place. It's still great to see.
- trisiak 6y ago
  Isn't that the same in practice? You get customers by being nice to them. Being nice to customers means competitive pricing, high quality support, good documentation, easy integration, etc. It's all driving towards the same goal.
  - bosie 6y ago
    Naming good documentation and high quality support in conjunction with AWS is a bit weird to me. Though parent was talking about using their scale to improve prices. They might just reduce their margins at the moment.
  - irrational 6y ago
    It's not necessarily the same in outcome. Undercutting competitors can be a temporary thing. As soon as the competitors are eliminated you jack the prices up. Doing it to be nice to customers can potentially last even after competitors go belly up. Then again, Google's motto used to be "do no evil" (basically be nice to customers). That obviously went the way of the dodo bird.
    - Lord_Baltimore 6y ago
      >>As soon as the competitors are eliminated you jack the prices up And then you provide a competitor or startup another opportunity.
      - irrational 6y ago
        Eventually. But Amazon has the headspace to drop prices for as long as they need to kill the new competition. Only someone like Google or MS will be able to keep up as long as they can automate a lot and use money from ads or software licenses to prop up their cloud business.
- DenisM 6y ago
  FWIW I was informed by an AWS employee that their internal philosophy is to keep pricing at cost+ levels, which is a strategic play - it forces the operations to remain lean and discourages many competitors from trying to wedge themselves into the cost-price gap. Fat profit margins attract competition, this is what happened when Oracle/Unix combo were chewed up by Microsoft Windows/SQL from the bottom, and then Linux/MySQL started chewing up Microsoft from their bottom. It's the dog-eats-dog world.
  - safog 6y ago
    "Your margin is my opportunity." - Jeff Bezos
- staticassertion 6y ago
  I think everyone is already aware of the fact that AWS is a company.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  Are you implying that they are trying to make money?
  - irrational 6y ago
    I'm implying that they are trying to undercut competition to drive them out of business so they can then raise prices across the board.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
colechristensen 6y ago
It’s more that computing gets cheaper over time because of advancements in cpu performance and lowering of storage costs. AWS doesn’t really ever have a reason to raise costs, it doesn’t have to lowball costs to attract customers in the first place.

Spooky23 6y ago

I used to own some internal services where we had a model very similar to AWS for cost recovery. It’s an interesting model because apps either optimize for or happen to fall into “loopholes” where some customers end up getting more value than others or may turn into a financial liability at scale. For example, think about authentication... charging per auth will mean that some use cases will be nearly free, as some external users may only sign in once per quarter. But charging a flat rate has the opposite effect. You have to design the service and tweak the metrics and rates to make it work.

Scarbutt 6y ago

I just recently switched from a startup offering authorization to AWS Cognito because the startup kept raising their price(s). Maybe because they know Cognito is horrible? ;) OTOH, I have never seen DynamoDB prices decreasing.

Dunedan 6y ago
The introduction of DynamoDB on-demand pricing was a huge price reduction for some workloads with the additional benefit of also reducing the complexity of scaling capacity as well.
jacobra2 6y ago
What don't you like about cognito? I've been able to solve every auth problem I've encountered with it.
ashtonkem 6y ago
On demand pricing dropped our DynamoDB cost by ~20%.