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AWS Saving Plans

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leading provider of advanced cloud computing services in the world. AWS has well over 1 million active enterprise users who are provided top-class but extremely affordable cloud computing and storage services.

The company maintains an impressive global cloud network spanning over 190 countries and collaborates with more than 8,000 network partners and 1,800 third-party software products for the best cloud computing service in the world.

Thanks to its incredibly innovative and excellent services, AWS has a list of clients with the who’s who of the business world. Netflix, BBC, ESPN, etc are just some of the top clients of Amazon Web Services from around the globe. Apart from the excellent quality of services, another major reason why AWS enjoys such popularity is because of its considerably lower and heavily-discounted rates.

The AWS Savings Plans have enabled clients to get even more significant cuts in the hourly rates for AWS cloud computing services.

What is an AWS Saving Plan?

Originally, AWS used to provide Reserved Instances (RIs) to implement cost savings by making users commit to the usage of a specific type of instance and OS with a single AWS Region.

However, things have changed drastically ever since AWS launched its Savings Plans. The AWS Savings Plans is a flexing pricing model for Amazon’s cloud computing services. Lowered rates under the AWS Savings Plans are applicable for Fargate and EC2 instances for the duration of the term plan (1 or 3 years). The rates are measured in dollars per hour of usage. When users sign up for the AWS Savings Plans, they are charged the discounted price for the entire duration of the chosen term plan.

There are two different types of Savings Plans offered by AWS:

Compute Saving Plans

AWS Compute Savings Plans are the most flexible and can get discounts of up to 66% and are automatically applied to EC2 and Fargate usage. This pricing model is significantly simple and easier than the earlier RIs pricing model. Under this, users get the discounted rate irrespective of the type of instance, family, tenancy, Region, Zone, or size of the instance.

The AWS Compute Savings Plans saves the time and effort otherwise wasted in calculating and predicting the configuration required for the remainder of the term plan.

AWS EC2 Instance Saving Plans

The AWS EC2 Instance Savings Plans offer the lowest possible rates and get users a discount of up to 72% in exchange for committing to use an instance family in the specific Region. Thus, this AWS plan automatically lowers the cost of the chosen instance family and also allows users to change configurations, such as the tenancy, size, operating system, AZ, etc.

How to Buy AWS Savings Plans?

Users can directly purchase the AWS Savings Plans directly from the AWS Cost Explorer management console, or they can choose to use AWS API/CLI.

Amazon offers its Savings Plans through three different payment options:

  1. No Upfront – Under the no upfront payment option, the user is not required to make any initial payments but is charged monthly on the usage at an hourly rate.
  2. Partial Upfront – Under the partial upfront payment option, the users will have to pay at least 50% of the term plan amount upfront while the remaining half is charged on a monthly basis.
  3. All Upfront – Under the all upfront payment option, the users are required to pay the complete cost of services upfront at the time of buying the term plan. However, this provides users with incredibly low rates and higher savings in the long run.

Always remember to consider the balance of Financial Operations while choosing to buy any of the AWS Savings Plans.

Conclusion

The AWS Savings Plans are incredibly efficient and simple solutions to get the best cloud-based computing and storage services anywhere. The impressive discounted rates and flexibility of features offered by Amazon make AWS Saving Plans a must for small enterprises and startups.

This is especially true for those enterprises where developing, operating and maintaining in-house IT infrastructure is not feasible.

See Also

AWS Convertible Reserved Instances

AUTHOR

Steve is a product-marketer and Engineer at Cloudysave who works with Cloud Management and Adoption team. Over the past years, he has collaborated with multiple teams to provide a robust and cost-effective architecture patterns to influence business and engineering decisions. His key areas of interests include Cloud Costs Management, Security and DevOps Best-Practices.