The overview of AWS Support plans

Volodymyr Rudyi

• 5 min read
The overview of AWS Support plans

AWS Support offers an efficient combination of tools, technologies, employees, and various programs that proactively help your organization optimize performance, cut down costs, and apply innovations at a faster pace. Despite the size of your business or industry you work in, Amazon Web Services allows moving faster in the cloud and focusing on core operations. That also brings the opportunity to save a lot of time. 

Thus, AWS aims to make its clients successful during their cloud journey and deal with relevant requests. Such requests include answering best practices questions, guiding on configuration, break-fixing, and resolving different problems. To do that, AWS has four Support plans that allow troubleshooting issues, lowering costs, and using AWS services appropriately. 

In this blog post, we will briefly analyze the following AWS Support plans that can satisfy your company’s requirements:

  • Basic
  • Developer
  • Business
  • Enterprise 

Basic Support

Each customer automatically gains AWS Basic Support that is free. This tier includes:

  • Customer service & communities - around-the-clock access to customer service, relevant documentation and whitepapers, support forums, and communities like AWS re:Post. Thanks to Basic Support, your organization may also contact AWS to ask billing questions or increase service limits. 
  • AWS Trusted Advisor - access to a limited number of AWS Trusted Advisor checks, along with guidance for provisioning your AWS resources depending on best practices. That allows increasing performance and improving security. 
  • AWS Personal Health Dashboard - this tool offers a personalized view of your AWS services’ health. Also, it provides alerts and remediation guidance if your AWS resources are affected. 

The mentioned features require no cost for all customers. However, if your company starts moving mission-critical workloads into Amazon Web Services, you should consider higher tiers of support to satisfy your business needs. 

Developer, Business, and Enterprise Support

These three tiers include all the advantages offered by Basic Support, along with the ability to open an unlimited number of different technical support cases. Such Support plans provide pay-by-the-month pricing that requires no long-term contracts. In terms of pricing, the Developer plan is the cheapest, while the Business one is in the middle. Of course, the Enterprise plan is the most expensive.  

Developer Support

With the Developer Support plan, your organization can email client support directly and get a response to critical questions within 24 hours. Also, you may even receive a response within less than 12 hours when your system is impaired. The Developer tier is perfect for companies that experiment with Amazon Web Services or set up testing or proofs of concept. 

Clients using the particular Support plan obtain the following features: 

  • Best practice guides;
  • Customer-side diagnostic tools;
  • Building-block architecture support that involves guidance on using AWS offerings, features, and numerous services together.

For instance, let’s imagine that your organization is exploring AWS services. No doubt that you have already known or even worked with some of them. But you do not understand how to use such services together for building applications that will satisfy your company’s requirements. That is when the building-block architecture support comes in handy since it allows defining opportunities to combine specific services and features. 

Business Support

When customers start running production workloads on Amazon Web Services, they should advance to the Business Support plan. This tier includes everything offered by the previous ones. But here, Trusted Advisor will open up the whole set of checks for your AWS account. Thus, you obtain direct phone access to the AWS support team that provides a four-hour response time depending on SLA (service-level agreement). However, when your system is impaired, you will get a response within only one hour. 

In addition, as an important component of the Business Support plan, AWS allows accessing infrastructure event management. For the additional fee, Amazon Web Services can help your company plan for different massive events such as brand new launches and advertising blitzes. 

Clients using this tier gain access to extra features, including: 

  • Use-case guidance for identifying AWS offerings, features, and services which can satisfy your organization’s specific requirements;
  • All checks offered by AWS Trusted Advisor;
  • Limited support regarding third-party software (like common operating systems or application stack components).

For example, your organization has the Business tier and plans for installing a common third-party OS onto the relevant Amazon EC2 instances. Therefore, you can contact AWS Support to install, configure, and troubleshoot this OS. But for advanced topics like how to optimize performance, use custom scripts, or resolve security issues, you should contact a third-party software vendor directly. 

Enterprise support

Lastly, for organizations that run mission-critical workloads, it is critical to use the Enterprise Support plan. The Enterprise tier involves everything from the previous plans. Also, it provides a 15-minute response time for critical workloads. 

Customers using this plan will obtain features like: 

  • Application architecture guidance that serves as a consultative relationship for supporting your organization’s specific use cases or apps;
  • Infrastructure event management that is considered a short-term engagement with AWS Support. It allows gaining a better understanding of the company’s use cases and offers appropriate architectural and scaling guidance;
  • TAM (Technical Account Manager).

Technical Account Manager 

If your organization has the Enterprise Support tier, the TAM becomes your primary point when contacting Amazon Web Services. They provide necessary guidance and architectural reviews, along with constant communication with your business while you are planning, deploying, and optimizing your apps. 

Besides, your technical account manager provides expertise through various AWS services. They help with designing solutions that can apply numerous services together effectively using an integrated approach. 

For instance, your company wants to develop an application that requires using some AWS services together. In this scenario, your TAM will provide valuable insights into how to use such services correctly. That can be achieved by aligning with predefined requirements your organization hopes to address via its new application. 

Scope of AWS Support plans

AWS Support tiers deal with development and production problems related to AWS products and services. Also, they cover other critical components:

  • “How to” questions regarding AWS services or features;
  • Common best practices that allow integrating, deploying, and managing apps in the cloud efficiently;
  • Resolving API and AWS Software Development Kit (AWS SDK) issues;
  • Addressing operational and systemic issues related to AWS resources;
  • Problems with AWS Management Console and other AWS tools;
  • Issues identified by EC2 health checks;
  • Numerous third-party applications, including operating systems, web servers, databases, VPN, or storage configuration

On the other hand, AWS Support does not involve:

  • Developing code
  • Debugging custom software
  • Conducting system administration operations
  • Configuring database queries
  • Cross-account support

The bottom line

Amazon Web Services is focused on addressing different toughest challenges faced by its customers in their cloud journey. Of course, that may require troubleshooting a relevant issue sometimes. But in most cases, that involves finding ways for clients to use AWS services better, answering practices-related questions, and providing guidance of configuration. After all, AWS aims to help your company achieve the desired outcomes for making your business successful. 

How AgileVision can help

As an official AWS Consulting Partner, AgileVision helps companies to manage their AWS resources. Are you considering switching to the new Support plan to meet your specific business requirements or need advice on your current one? Feel free to contact us and we can help you to make the right decision.