Premium Support FAQs

Q. What is Amazon Web Services Premium Support (AWS Premium Support)?

AWS Premium Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel to help you build and run applications on AWS Infrastructure Services. It offers technical assistance from the Amazon Web Services team whenever and as frequently as your business demands. With pay-by-the-month pricing and an unlimited number of support cases, you are not constrained by long-term support contracts or limited support privileges. AWS Premium Support covers issues related to your use of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon SimpleDB, and Amazon RDS. Whether you are experiencing operational issues or have technical questions during development, test or integration, you can contact our team of AWS developer support engineers and count on predictable response times and personalized support to help bring your issues to resolution.

Q: How is AWS Premium Support different from Basic Support?

AWS Basic Support offers access to our Resource Center, Service Health Dashboard, Technical FAQs, and Developer Forums – and is free of charge to all AWS customers. Customers who desire a deeper level of support can subscribe to the AWS Premium Support options described below.

Our two AWS Premium Support offerings (Silver and Gold) provide fast, predictable response times, an unlimited number of support cases, and personalized support from AWS developer support engineers (with as-needed escalation to Service Specialists). You can also ensure around the clock (24×7x365) coverage and telephone support for your most mission-critical applications when you sign up for the Gold Support plan.

Q: What types of issues are supported?

AWS Premium Support covers the following six infrastructure web services: Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon EC2, Amazon VPC, Amazon SQS, Amazon SimpleDB, and Amazon RDS. You can contact us with any development or production/operational issue related to the use of these services. If you have multiple AWS accounts, you can choose to cover some accounts (for example, your production account) with Gold support, others with Silver, or some, such as your test accounts, not at all—depending on the requirements for each individual account. For more details about scope of coverage, please refer to our AWS Premium Support Guidelines.

Q: I only use one or two of the services included in this program. Can I purchase support only for the service(s) I’m using?

No. Our support offering covers the suite of five services described above. As many of our customers are using multiple infrastructure web services together within the same application, we’ve designed AWS Premium Support with this in mind. We’ve found that the majority of support issues, among users of multiple services, relate to how multiple services are being used together. Our goal is to support your application as seamlessly as possible.

Q: I’m using a service that isn’t included in this program. How can I receive support?

At this time, AWS Premium Support is available for Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, and Amazon RDS. We also understand that customers of other AWS infrastructure services could benefit from this offering, and we plan to expand the scope of services supported over time.

Q: How many support cases can I initiate with AWS Premium Support?

As many as you need.

Q: How quickly will you get back to me if I contact you?

You can contact us anytime you have a question or issue. On “high” severity issues, we promise to respond within four business hours; for “normal” severity issues we’ll respond within one business day; and for “low” severity issues, we’ll respond within two business days. As a Gold customer with an “urgent” issue, you can contact us at any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and we’ll respond within one hour at the very most.

Q: How quickly will you fix my issue?

The types of issues that application or service developers encounter vary widely in nature and complexity, making it difficult to predict issue resolution times. We will work closely with you throughout the duration of your case to bring your issue to resolution as quickly as possible.

Q: What contact methods are available to me?

From the AWS Support Center, Silver and Gold customers can click “Web Support” to open a new case online. Similarly, Gold customers can click “Phone Support” to call AWS Premium Support using the same popular Click-To-Call feature available for Amazon’s retail customers. You click a button, AWS calls you back. AWS Premium Support will also send you e-mail notifications any time the status of one of your ongoing cases changes.

Q: I’m a non-US customer. Can I sign up for AWS Premium Support?

Yes. Any Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, or RDS customer may sign up for and use AWS Premium Support.

Q: My business needs more than 2 or 3 named support contacts. Can I add more?

At this time, customers are limited to a total of two named support contacts on the Silver plan and three contacts for the Gold plan. If you register an account for AWS Premium Support, you will also be automatically assigned as one of its named support contacts (and so you could contact us with an issue immediately after signing up, if you needed to).

Q: Who can use AWS Premium Support?

AWS Premium Support is available to developers who build applications using Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, and RDS. Consistent with our AWS Basic Support practices, AWS Premium Support does not provide support directly to the end users of AWS applications built by our customers. For example, if a developer builds a backup solution for other businesses, AWS Premium Support is available to the developer, not to those businesses using that solution. Developers who wish to request support on behalf of their customers may do so (please see "I want to offer support for my end customers’ AWS-related issues. Can I contact you on their behalf if I subscribe to AWS Premium Support?" below).

Q: I am an end user of an application built by someone else on top of Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, or RDS. Can I use AWS Premium Support?

AWS Premium Support is offered only to developers who are building applications on top of our services, not to end users of those applications. Depending on how the application is architected, however, the developer of the application you are using may contact us on your behalf (please see "I want support for my end customers’ AWS-related issues. Can I contact you on their behalf if I subscribe to AWS Premium Support?" below).

Q: I want to offer support for my end customers’ AWS-related issues. Can I contact you on their behalf if I subscribe to AWS Premium Support?

Yes – though how you do this will depend on how you’ve architected your application or service. If your end customers access Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, or RDS using your own AWS Identifiers (AWS Access Key ID, AWS Secret Key, X.509 certificates), then you may report to us any issue related to your application’s use of our APIs that your customers report to you, as long as you are subscribed to AWS Premium Support. If your customers use their own credentials to use AWS, your customers can subscribe to AWS Premium Support, and list you or someone from your organization as a named support contact. If they experience problems, they can contact you, and you can in turn contact us to troubleshoot your customer’s account.

Q: How can I get started with AWS Premium Support?

If you wish to receive access to AWS Premium Support for your Amazon Web Services account, simply follow the steps below:

1. Review the Gold and Silver plans outlined on the AWS Premium Support detail page.

2. If you’re a current customer of Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, and/or RDS, click the appropriate sign up button at the top of the detail page (being sure to login with the e-mail address and password associated with the AWS account for which you wish to receive support).

   As a new AWS customer, you can add AWS Premium Support to your account during the Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, or RDS sign up process. Once you’ve purchased AWS Premium Support, it will cover your use of all five services, even if you sign up for some of these services after you have subscribed for AWS Premium Support.
3. After you’ve completed the signup process and received your AWS Premium Support confirmation e-mail, please log in to the AWS Support Center to identify any additional named support contacts, or to open a new technical support case.

Q: How much does AWS Premium Support cost?

All AWS Premium Support plans include an unlimited number of support cases, with no annual contracts. Also, with the Gold plan, as your AWS usage grows, you earn volume discounts on your AWS Premium Support costs.

Q: How will I be charged and billed for my use of AWS Premium Support?

A minimum monthly service charge will be billed upfront, first upon signup, and then on the first of every subsequent month while you subscribe to AWS Premium Support. If your usage-based charges exceed the minimum monthly service charge for a particular month, we will bill you for the difference at the end of the month.

Reserved Instance customers will have their non-refundable one-time fee included in the usage-based component. If a Reserved Instance customer signs up for AWS Premium Support after Reserved Instances have been designated, the one-time fee will be prorated according to the amount of time remaining in the term of each Reserved Instance.

For any month, we’ll compare what you’ve already paid upfront with the product of your total monthly Amazon S3, CloudFront, EC2, VPC, SQS, SimpleDB, and/or RDS charges and the appropriate $0.20, $0.15, or $0.10 rate (depending which plan you’ve selected, and if Gold, the size of your monthly bill for the five covered services). If the total applicable charges for the month are more than what you’ve already paid upfront, we will simply charge your account for the difference between the two. The tiered pricing for Gold is charged incrementally. For example, if your monthly bill is $15,000, you’ll pay $0.20 per dollar on your first $10K of monthly usage (i.e. $2,000), and $0.15 per dollar on the final $5K (i.e. $750).