In 11 years of using it, I've never seen AWS increase the price for a service whose cost inputs they controlled entirely. It can happen, though. They increased AWS Pinpoint costs because their cost to send SMSes in India increased by 25% due to a regulatory action that increased the price for all SMS traffic in India.
Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it ensures your early adopters are those who get the most value, and it gives you a big buffer when discovering how much it actually costs to operate. This usually guarantees that prices have only one way to go. For example, AWS IoT Device Management had a 90% price cut after it was introduced.
> Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it ensures your early adopters are those who get the most value, and it gives you a big buffer when discovering how much it actually costs to operate.
I've thought about this concept a few times lately.
Like, I get the impression that a savvy business, when starting a new product with very little competition, should start with prices as bad and guarantees as low as they can get away with, because they can always improve their offer later, whereas going the other way runs into loss aversion and consumer alienation.
Eg it's better to start at 40$/month and lower to 30$/month after a year than to start at 20$/month and get a lot of angry users when you realize you need 30 to break even.
No, they have stopped reducing the prices of existing services once they become depricated, so they effectively become more expensive compared to other services but never increased.
Although reselling other products, such as RDS Oracle or MSSQL could potentially have increased if the licences fees went up.
But I don't think that is what you are referring to.
cldellow|5 years ago
Often, AWS's prices are _really_ high for new services. I think this is useful for two reasons: it ensures your early adopters are those who get the most value, and it gives you a big buffer when discovering how much it actually costs to operate. This usually guarantees that prices have only one way to go. For example, AWS IoT Device Management had a 90% price cut after it was introduced.
PoignardAzur|5 years ago
I've thought about this concept a few times lately.
Like, I get the impression that a savvy business, when starting a new product with very little competition, should start with prices as bad and guarantees as low as they can get away with, because they can always improve their offer later, whereas going the other way runs into loss aversion and consumer alienation.
Eg it's better to start at 40$/month and lower to 30$/month after a year than to start at 20$/month and get a lot of angry users when you realize you need 30 to break even.
I wonder if there's a name for that concept.
happymellon|5 years ago
Although reselling other products, such as RDS Oracle or MSSQL could potentially have increased if the licences fees went up.
But I don't think that is what you are referring to.