Posted On: Jul 1, 2010
Amazon Simple Queue Service now offers a free service tier that makes trying SQS risk free for developers. Starting July 1, 2010, developers and businesses can start leveraging Amazon SQS with no initial charge. Each month, Amazon SQS users will incur no charges for the first 100,000 Amazon SQS Requests. Many SQS applications may be able to operate within this free tier limit and pricing for additional requests continues to be $0.10 per 100,000 requests.
SQS now supports larger message sizes and longer message retention increasing the range of applications that can potentially use Amazon SQS. Previously SQS users were limited to a maximum message size of 8 kB, and this has been raised to accommodate a user configurable maximum of 64 kB. SQS message retention is also now configurable and can be set anywhere from 1 hour to 2 weeks (from a previous limit of 4 days). The option for adjustable message retention provides greater flexibility for application developers who need to accommodate varying message consumption rates or want to define specific message retention behavior.