AWS IOT service similarly changed pricing dimensions in a way that was overall cheaper for most, but much more expensive for some use cases, basically unbundling connections, messages, and transformation/routing.
“Never” is an exaggeration, though closer to literal truth for AWS than any other good or service I know of over that scale and timeframe.
My guess (no insider knowledge beyond the general attitude) is that price changes in the next few years will be a tightening of discounts and credits, rather than a top-line list price increase.
AWS IOT service similarly changed pricing dimensions in a way that was overall cheaper for most, but much more expensive for some use cases, basically unbundling connections, messages, and transformation/routing.
Thanks for pointing me to this! More info: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-iot-update-better-value-with-new-pricing-model/
This being in 2017 is also a lot more relevant for modern Amazon than something from 2007.
There's some speculation around whether AWS will need to raise their prices, as many tech companies announce inflation-driven increases. One consideration that people will sometimes give is that AWS has never raised prices before, except that this isn't quite true. The following is not actually important, but I want to write it up anyway out of pedantry.
When AWS S3 launched in March 2006 their initial pricing was:
Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage usedData Transfer
$0.20 per GB - data uploaded $0.20 per GB - data downloaded
In June 2007 they switched to:
Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage usedData Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data uploaded
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data downloaded
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data downloaded
$0.13 per GB - data downloaded / month over 50 TBData transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 is free of charge
Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests
They went from requests being free to a low per-request charge, lowering the data transfer cost at the same time. For very request-heavy workloads this was a price increase on balance, and some customers needed to make implementation changes to avoid sending so many requests.
That this was, as far as I know, the only time they've raised prices in 15+ years is impressive, and speaks well of their commitment to predictability. But it just annoys me when people claim they've never done it.