Amazon Web Services on Thursday altered pricing for some of its services for businesses, expanded free support for others and added more features.
The changes add more support and capabilities to Amazon’s cloud services for businesses, an indication of the company’s increasing focus on attracting more enterprises to its cloud service.
The company added features for its Basic free support plan, allowing users around-the-clock customer service for billing, accounts and technical issues.
[Related: Cloud Wake-Up Call: Worldwide Survey Shows User Dissatisfaction]
Amazon renamed its other plans and adjusted prices in some cases.
The Developer plan, previously named Bronze, costs $49 a month and offers 12-hour response time to support cases, direct customer support and email access to technical support.
The Business plan, previously named Gold, offers reduced minimum pricing from $400 to $100 per month. A 3 percent usage-based pricing tier has been added to existing pricing tiers of 5 percent, 7 percent and 20 percent. The Business tier also offers chat capabilities and access to AWS Trusted Advisor, which monitors services, identifies usage patterns and notifies customers of ways to save money.
The Enterprise plan, previously named Platinum, offers new pricing based on usage. It gives users the same features as the Business tier, as well as a 15-minute response time for mission-critical issues and access to a Technical Account Manager. Pricing has been reduced from a flat usage fee of 10 percent to usage-based pricing pegged at 10 percent, 7 percent, 5 percent and 3 percent.
Amazon has recently taken other steps to make AWS more attractive for businesses.
In April, Amazon introduced AWS Marketplace, which allows customers to buy software and services that would help them manage their business on Amazon’s cloud.
Amazon last month said it plans to run SAP’s All-in-One applications for Windows and Linux in its cloud, a move that advances the availability of ERP business applications as an on-demand service.
