Amazon Web Services (AWS) Inc. has offered two new payment options to its EC2 Reserved Instances users this week.
Reserved Instances was launched in 2009 to allow users to lock down guaranteed EC2 capacities for one- or three year periods. Users had to pay upfront when Reserved Instances first launched. Prices start at $325 for a 1-year term and $500 per year for a 3-year term. Users who request greater capacity will pay higher prices.
Users were offered a certain amount of compute capacity in exchange for upfront payment. This was also at a lower per hour price than the on-demand EC2 instances.
AWS announced Tuesday that, in addition to the 100 percent upfront option, it now offers users the option to pay a portion or the entire cost of Reserved Instances in installments.
The new “Partial Upfront Payment” option allows users to pay only a portion of the total cost at the outset and then spread the remainder of the payments over the course of their one- or 3-year term. Users can pay in installments over the course of their one-year term with the “No Upfront” option (this option is not available to three-year terms).
Both new options are still cheaper than buying instances on demand if they are broken down to hourly rates. Their cost savings are much smaller than if you pay everything upfront. Here is a breakdown of pricing for the new structure.
Jeff Barr, AWS evangelist, wrote in a blog that the company had implemented the new pricing options “[a]fter combinating customer feedback with an analysis on purchasing patterns that goes back as far as when we first launched Reserved Instances (2009).”
