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AWS support billing

DoiT calculates support at the AWS management account level, which is the AWS account you used to create your organization.

To understand how AWS support is billed, we need to consider your contract type and your support plan.

Contract type​

When you a sign contract, you choose what type of support you'll get on your management account level:

  • Partner-Led: This means that DoiT provides AWS support to you.

  • Resold: This means that AWS provides AWS support to you.

See also

To learn more about support types, visit AWS documentation on AWS Resold Support.

Support plan​

AWS support is calculated on your account level, generally. Each account should belong to one of the support levels AWS offers:

  • Basic Support
  • Developer
  • Business
  • Enterprise On-Ramp
  • Enterprise

On top of these plans, we offer Partner-Led enterprise support (PLES), which is a special deal on which you can get Enterprise support from AWS, but pay Business Support pricing.

To determine what support plan your account is on, we use the following sources, in hierarchal order:

  1. The account is part of our Partner-Led enterprise support program.

  2. The account's support plan is defined in the MPA Ops page, which only applies to the DoiT account on the payer.

  3. The account's support plan is defined on the CUR files.

  4. If none of the above is true, the support plan is set to Basic Support.

Now, if the account is labelled as Basic Support in the CUR files but as Enterprise in DoiT, then the account is considered as Enterprise for billing purposes.

If the account is labelled as Developer in the MPA Ops page but is part of our Partner-Led enterprise support program, then the account is considered as Basic Support.

How do we calculate support pricing?​

The base cost is the cost we use to apply AWS Support Plan pricing tiers on. Support base cost is before EDP, credits, and discounts (PPA is included for some).

Note

For Flexsave, we use the base cost of Flexsave applied (before EDP) as a 1 year rate. Flexsave comes before the support base cost.

There are several factors you must consider for support pricing:

  • Your contract type; resold or Partner-Led
  • Your billing account
  • The billing date
  • Discounts, EDP, and credits
  • Being on a shared payer
  • Reserved resources

Resold contracts​

Enterprise support is calculated on the aggregated cost of all the accounts under the MPA that aren't Basic or Developer. Accounts that don't have a strict definition of either Basic or Developer support are considered to be under the Enterprise aggregated cost.

For the Enterprise aggregated cost to take effect, the management account in the MPA Ops page must be labelled as Enterprise.

When the accounts' support plan is either Business or Developer, the base cost is calculated on an individual account basis.

If none of your accounts has Enterprise-level support, the actual support level of each account is as reported by AWS.

Note

The minimum fee to consider an account Enterprise is $15k, while there's no minimum fee to consider an account Enterprise On-Ramp.

Partner-Led contracts​

Enterprise support is calculated on the aggregated cost of all the accounts under the MPA that aren't Basic or Developer. However, if you're part of our Partner-Led enterprise support program, we charge you based on your Enterprise discount program (EDP) status.

If you're part of EDP, you pay a Business-level rate on all of your accounts as aggerated base cost. If you're not part of the program, you only pay a Business-level rate on the accounts marked as Enterprise in your Partner-Led enterprise support program as aggerated base cost.

Billing account​

Support charges have to be related to an account. When the cost of support is aggregated from several accounts, we attach the support charges to the account with the highest cost charges that's eligible for support charges.

Billing date​

The support billing is always set to the last day of the month.

Discounts, EDP, and credits​

Discounts are applied for all support levels and is shown in the billing as PPA savings on the support line description.

Credits and EDP related to support for your accounts are not passed to you, since they're part of the DoiT contract with AWS.

Shared payers and Cloud Health​

We can't change billing that comes from a shared payer.

Purchasing support for reserved resources​

When you prepay for reserved AWS resources and have a paid AWS Support plan, the upfront and recurring costs for these resources are included in your AWS Support fees.

If you already have reserved resources when you start a paid AWS Support plan, the prorated upfront costs are included in the first month of your AWS Support fee calculation.

See also

To see more about reserved resources and how they relate to support costs, visit AWS pricing documentation.

Final support cost​

To find out your support cost:

  1. Log in to the DoiT Console, select Analytics from the top navigation bar, and then select Reports.

  2. Select Create new report, and group by Billing account, Service, and aws/item_desc to get detailed information about why the cost is what you see.

    Tip

    If you switch to the Usage metric, you can see what the base cost was.

  3. Additionally, you can view the base cost used for support filtered by service/sku by using the Base Cost for Support metric.

  4. Use the doit/aws_support_group_id label to get the base cost of each support charge that was grouped under several accounts together.

FAQ​

I have a discount for support, how can I know it was applied?​

Go to Reports under Analytics and filter by aws/item_desc. If a discount has been applied, you'll see: With discount of X%.

Why do I see charges for $15K on one of my accounts?​

If you have a resold contract, you're eligible for minimum support charges. If any of your accounts has Enterprise support, you're charged according to the minimum support of Enterprise.

I only have Enterprise support on one account, why are the charges so high?​

If you have a resold contract and Enterprise support, the eligible cost for support calculations is based on all the support eligible cost of all the accounts.

Some of my accounts are part of the Partner-Led enterprise support program. How can I know that I got charged according to Business support rates?​

Business support rates for accounts belonging to Partner-Led enterprise support are only available for Partner-Led contracts.

If your accounts are charged with Business rates, in Reports under Analytics, you'll see the Charged as Business Support rate due to DoiT PLES program. description for the aws/item_desc values.

Why do I see a double charge for Enterprise support?​

If your management account has Enterprise support, and you have a Partner-Led contract, you can have 2 types of Enterprise charges.

As part of our Partner-Led enterprise support program, some of your accounts may be grouped together and get a special price, while others get the standard prices of our Partner-Led enterprise support program.

Does Business support have a minimum fee?​

No, there's no minimum fee for Business support.

Why am I charged for support on my Flexsave account?​

Flexsave accounts are charged for support.

Are flexsave account charges considered for the support base cost?​

Yes, Flexsave account charges contribute to the calculation of your support base cost.

Why do I see accounts with Basic Support in my reports?​

They're included to give you visibility on all of your accounts.

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