Amazon DevPay Functionality

Amazon DevPay allows you to use Amazon’s infrastructure to manage customer subscriptions and billing for your Amazon EC2 Machine Images (AMIs) or applications that use Amazon S3. To use Amazon DevPay, you simply:

• Develop your software application using Amazon S3 or an Amazon EC2 Machine Image (AMI).
• Use the simple Amazon DevPay web interface to register your application or AMI with Amazon DevPay, provide a product description and configure your desired pricing.
• Embed the Amazon DevPay purchase pipeline link into your web site to allow your customers to purchase your product.
• Integrate with Amazon DevPay’s authentication mechanism to ensure that only authorized users access your application.
• Monitor your business on the Amazon DevPay Activity page.

Service Highlights

Easy-to-Use Online Billing and Account Management System

Amazon DevPay lets you easily leverage Amazon’s proven billing and account management infrastructure, removing the pain of having to create or manage your own billing and subscription management systems, or figuring out how to charge for an on-demand application. The service provides you with a simple web interface to register, describe and price your application. Amazon DevPay provides you with a link that you can place wherever you wish on your web site, leading customers into the purchase pipeline that Amazon DevPay manages for you. Amazon DevPay automatically tracks your customers’ usage of AWS services, calculates their bills based on the prices you have set, and ensures only paying customers have access to your application. Amazon DevPay leverages Amazon Payments to charge your customers and then deposits the appropriate funds directly into your dedicated Amazon Payments Account, which you create when you sign up for Amazon DevPay.

Flexible Pricing Options for Your Product

Amazon DevPay provides you with the flexibility to choose how you want to price your application. You can charge your customers one-time or recurring monthly fees. In addition, Amazon DevPay meters your customers’ Amazon Web Services usage and lets you charge your customers based on that usage. Amazon DevPay also lets you change your pricing at a later time if needed.

Trusted Experience for Your Customers

Amazon DevPay, leverages the Amazon Payments infrastructure and provides you with an easy way to charge Amazon’s tens of millions of customers. Amazon customers can pay using the same login credentials and payment information they already have on file with us. This helps Amazon customers keep their payment information secure and removes the friction you would face if you required customers to enter their payment information before they could make a purchase.

Pricing

• Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee.
• 3.0% of your value-add per customer. Your value-add is the amount you charge on top of the cost of underlying AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3). You pay no fee on cost of AWS services that your customers consume.
• $0.30 per application for each bill collected from your customer.

(Amazon DevPay is sold by Amazon Web Services LLC.)

Resources

Developer Resources

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• Documentation
• Release Notes
• Sample Code & Libraries
• Community Forum

Additional Product Information

• FAQs
• Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement
• Amazon Payments User Agreement

Related Services

• Amazon Simple Storage Service
• Amazon Elastic Compute Service

Detailed Description

Register Your Application and Set Its Price

Click the “Sign Up For Amazon DevPay” button above to register your application with Amazon DevPay. During the registration, you describe your application and specify the price your customers will pay for consuming it. Your pricing can contain any or all of the following types of charges:

• One-Time Charges – One-time sign-up fees billed to your customer on the day they sign up for your application.

• Recurring Monthly Charges – Monthly fixed fees for using your application, billed to your subscribed customers at the beginning of each month. Your customers are charged a prorated portion of the monthly fee when they first sign up for your application.

• Metered Amazon Web Services Usage Charges – Charges tied to metered usage of Amazon Web Services. You can choose to charge your customers for any usage dimension that Amazon Web Services measures (e.g., per GB-Month of storage used, per GB of all data transfer in, etc.), or entirely hide that dimension from your customers by setting the price of that dimension to $0. For example, you could charge your customers $0.50 for each GB of data transferred in using Amazon S3, and $0.40 for each GB-month of storage used in Amazon S3 – even though your actual costs to use Amazon S3 are $0.10 for each GB of data transferred in and $0.15 for each GB-month of storage used. Amazon DevPay charges your customers based on the pricing plan you define and bills you for the cost of the AWS services used at the regular AWS prices. All metered charges are billed to customers on the first of the month following the period in which they were accrued.

Integrate Your Application with Amazon DevPay

Integrating your application with Amazon DevPay is simple.

To integrate your Amazon S3 application with Amazon DevPay, you need to add two parameters to the Amazon S3 API calls you’re already making. The two parameters are: “product token” and “user token.” A product token is an identifier for your application and is obtained when you’re done registering your application with Amazon DevPay. A user token is an identifier for your customer who will be using your application and will be billed by Amazon DevPay for this usage. You obtain the user token via either the ActivateHostedProduct or ActivateDesktopProduct API calls.

To integrate your AMI with Amazon DevPay, you need to associate a “product code” with your AMI. A product code is a handle to your application and is obtained when you’re done registering your application with Amazon DevPay. You associate the product code with your AMI by using an Amazon EC2 command line tool or the ModifyImageAttribute API. Your customers can then purchase this AMI through Amazon DevPay and launch your AMI using the same Amazon EC2 APIs that they would use with any other AMI.

Once your application or AMI is integrated with Amazon DevPay, Amazon DevPay makes sure that only customers whose accounts are in good standing with your application are able to use your application. This integration also enables Amazon DevPay to automatically meter your customers’ usage and charge them based on the price that you have defined when you registered your product with Amazon DevPay. For more information on integrating with Amazon DevPay, please see the Amazon DevPay Getting Started Guide (part of our Technical Documentation).

Sell Your Application

Once you have registered and integrated your application with Amazon DevPay, you are now ready to start charging for it. After you complete the registration process, Amazon DevPay provides you with a link to a purchase pipeline for your product. Embed this link in your web site to allow your customers to purchase your product through Amazon. Customers can sign in with their Amazon.com credentials and select a credit card that is stored in their Amazon.com account. After your customers purchase your application, they are directed back to your web site.

Pay AWS Service Charges

After billing your customers, Amazon DevPay charges you for the cost of underlying AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3). We charge you these costs for each customer, only up to the amount that the customer has actually paid. If a customer does not pay, we do not charge you these costs.

Based on how you set your price, the amount a customer owes you could be lower than the cost of AWS services that the customer consumed. If this happens, you are required to cover the difference, even if the customer does not pay.

After billing your customer, Amazon DevPay also charges you fees of 3.0% of the value-add that has been collected per customer (see Amazon DevPay Pricing section below).

Monitor Your Business and Adjust Prices

After you start selling your application via Amazon DevPay you can view your Amazon DevPay Activity page to monitor the money you are earning.

Amazon DevPay also provides you with a web interface to adjust your pricing if necessary. Using this interface you can specify a new price and effective date for that price for your application. Amazon DevPay allows you to customize the e-mails that your customers get informing them of the price change. All usage from the effective date onwards is charged to your customers at the new price that you have set.

Amazon DevPay Pricing

Amazon DevPay charges you 3.0% of your value-add per customer. Your value-add is the difference between the revenue collected from a customer and the cost of AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3) that the customer consumes. Amazon DevPay charges the 3.0% fee only if the revenue collected from a customer is greater than the cost.

In addition, Amazon DevPay charges you $0.30 per product for each bill collected from your customers. We don’t charge the $0.30 fee if we are not able to collect from a customer.

The following simple example illustrates these charges:

• Revenue collected from one of your customers: $150.00
• Cost of AWS services consumed by the customer (e.g., Amazon S3): $70.00
• Your value-add for the customer: $150.00 -$70.00 = $80.00
• Amazon DevPay fee for the customer: (3.0%* $80.00) + $0.30 = $2.70
• Your Net Proceeds for the customer: $150.00 – $70.00 – $2.70 = $77.30

Intended Usage and Restrictions

• Your use of this service is subject to the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement and Amazon Payments User Agreement.

• Sellers of Amazon DevPay applications must be able to do business in the United States. Funds earned through the sale of Amazon DevPay applications can only be withdrawn to U.S. bank accounts.

• Buyers of an Amazon DevPay application can be based anywhere in the world.