Transparent pricing is one of the greatest selling points of the "cloud". Nobody in the startup scene wants to deal with traditional enterprisey "call us for a quote" pricing unless they really have no other choice.
So if what you're saying is right, that would be just another reason for most small companies to avoid Amazon. If you're wrong, other comments in this thread have also given a good reason for small companies to avoid Amazon.
Huh? It's totally transparent AND you can get a better deal if you pick up the phone and negotiate. They'll ask you to sign a commitment and (unenforceable) exclusivity clause.
Some people even take that "confidential" offer letter for volume pricing and shop it around to other cloud providers. Shocker!
I have trouble believing that this is actually true. I say this as a customer who spends a half million a month with AWS (and that spending is rapidly increasing).
There are some growth incentives (eg, prepay $3MM for next year, get 6% off all services), and there are some tiered savings (e.g. 5% off on more than $500k of RIs in a single region), but I've never seen a plausible, verifiable incident of people successfully negotiating AWS rates downward.
"You agree that the existence and terms of this Addendum and the Private Pricing Program are not publicly known and constitute AWS Confidential Information under the Agreement."
Maybe they're milking your investors. Maybe you've built some absurd contraption that they know you won't be able to move elsewhere. Or maybe you need to hire a better negotiator.
That text matches what we got from a growth commitment that included a pretty modest discount.
Given that we couldn't get it; and that nobody from our company's entire VC network could get it; and that nobody on my CTO email list could get it... I'm going to continue thinking that the anonymous HN commenter is talking out of his ass.
But if you can prove me wrong, I'd be thrilled to be wrong.
"the anonymous HN commenter is talking out of his ass"
Anonymous commenter versus 11-hour old throwaway account... who wins?
Looking at a few words in your rebuttal above and combining it with the tone you're using, I can come up with quite a few reasons you might not have gotten the discount you sought.
I'd suggest you put down the "CTO email list" and let an actual business person handle this for you. Handshakes and existing relationships still matter in this world. Good luck!
If you're going to complain about tone; don't be a rude son of a bitch in the first place.
That said, no point in arguing further with a liar and/or troll. You're not getting 10x discounts on your AWS bill. You're not fooling me or anybody else.
The median AWS based SaaS company spends around 6% of their revenue on AWS. (this compares to a median of 7% for those who choose to manage their own servers).
As such, $500k/mo isn't a terribly elite club. Essentially every SaaS company that does more than $10MM/mo of revenue is spending as much or more than we are.
So if what you're saying is right, that would be just another reason for most small companies to avoid Amazon. If you're wrong, other comments in this thread have also given a good reason for small companies to avoid Amazon.