Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most frequently used cloud environments for business use, but a place in the Amazon cloud is not exactly cheap. Now Amazon is raising the traffic limits and thus responding to new competitors. […]
Free Tier is the free traffic package for AWS customers, which refers to the allowed amount of network traffic, both out of the cloud and into the cloud. And these free allowances are to be significantly increased from November 1, as Amazon announced in the AWS News Blog. So far, one gigabyte per month of data from AWS was free, in the future it should be 100 GB. In the future, 1 TByte of data per month can be transferred free of charge via the AWS Content Delivery Network Cloudfront, up to now it was 50 GB. The number of HTTP requests included in the base price will also be increased from 2 million to 10 million.
Reaction to competitors
Experts see this step as a reaction to new competitors, especially to the new very low-priced offer R2 from Cloudflare. This is exactly tailored to AWS customers willing to switch, the provider promises full AWS compatibility. AWS has so far been considered rather high-priced, especially in terms of the cost of net traffic. Critics accuse Amazon of charging 80 times what they cost the company itself for these services.
In order to benefit from the new traffic free limits, AWS customers do not have to do anything. The new free volumes will be automatically taken into account for the next billing. Amazon assumes that many AWS customers will no longer have extra items for traffic costs on their monthly bill in the future. For other customers, the costs will be correspondingly lower in the future.
*Frank Kemper joined the team in 2001 and headed the print edition of INTERNET WORLD BUSINESS from 2013 to 2020. The graduate of the German School of Journalism in Munich can look back on over 30 years of editorial experience and has been online for almost as long.
