Maximizing Your AWS Free Tier: Essential Tips

It’s no secret that Amazon Web Services offers many advantages to its customers and has risen in popularity. This cloud computing service currently has over one million users, with enterprise-scale customers making up about 10% of their clients. This shows just how widely used AWS is and gives a solid reason to try it out: it seems to work for most eCommerce businesses out there. Now, there’s a way to check out AWS for free and see if it works for your online business. We’re here to share all the details about it. Keep reading to learn how to get the most out of the AWS free tier! 

What is the AWS free tier?

As you probably already know, AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a cloud-computing platform offering services that facilitate the management and development of eCommerce businesses. Now, AWS Cloud Computing differentiates itself from its biggest competitors by using a service-based model and a particular price-calculating system. TAWS offers every functionality for a specific price, instead of charging a set amount of money per month for certain plans. This means your end-of-the-month billing can vary depending on which AWS Cloud Computing tools you use. 

So what is the AWS free tier? This is the tier where your usage tools remain free of charge, as long as you stick to those complementary features. Though keep in mind that you will need to facilitate AWS with a payment method in case you surpass the budget cap applying to those within the AWS free tier. Still, no upfront costs are involved and, if you manage to stay within the stipulated usage, you could potentially enjoy the benefits of AWS Cloud Computing forever. 

How many AWS free tier options exist?

While the AWS free tier is the one where you get the free-of-cost features and limited storage at no cost, there are also different ways to access this convenient offer. There are three different offers that you can take advantage of to use AWS in free tier mode. The offers are the following: 

1. AWS Free Tier trials: These short-term AWS free tier trials usually have fewer usage caps and tool restrictions, but run for a set and very limited time spam. The offers depend on the time of the year when they launch and the number of resources available for the trial. 

‍2. 12 Months of AWS Free Tier: A full year of AWS free tier sounds nice, doesn’t it? Well, this offer is available to new AWS customers for the first 12 months since they sign up for the cloud computing platform. Keep in mind that usage caps still apply and if you continue to use certain features after those 12 months you might get charged for them. 

3. Always Free Tier: This offer is available to both new and existing AWS customers but subject to usage caps. Still, if you stick to the allowed tools, you can access the AWS free tier for as long as you need to. 

What does the AWS free tier include?

The AWS free tier includes over one hundred AWS tools and cloud computing services that can be used at no cost. AWS EC2, S3, RDS, and DynamoDB are just a few of the best features. The tools offered for free on this tier include:

• Application Integration
• Business Productivity
• Analytics and database
• Compute services 
• Development tools
• Customer service and engagement 
• Front-end mobile and web apps
• Machine learning 
• Media services
• End-user computing 
• Store migrations
• Storage
• Serverless features 
• Security and identity verification 
• Content delivery 

AWS free tier tips to get the most out of it

Always use the AWS free tier pricing calculator. 

The first one of our AWS free tier tips to get the most out of it is to make sure it remains free. There are different ways to do this, but the easiest and most straightforward way is to use the AWS pricing calculator. This tool will help you stay within the limits of the AWS free tier and check whether your planned usage for the future falls in the free offer category. This will depend on which one of the three AWS free tier offerings you’ve chosen to try out. 

Start using Identity and Access Management. 

While we hope you trust your eCommerce development team enough to be able to relax knowing they’re in charge of managing your AWS Free Tier account, there are a few extra precautions you can take to avoid additional charges and boost your site’s security. The Identity and Access Management service is part of the AWS free tier offer and allows your servers to authenticate and authorize requests to the API. This allows store managers to restrict access to all o retain AWS services, facilitating better access management and helping you control the usage of your free tier benefits. 

Choose the right regions to work with. 

Sure, Amazon Web Services is available virtually anywhere. Yet not all AWS Free Tier services are available in all regions. So, before you begin using your AWS Free Tier, analyze which region/s hosts the most amount of the services you want to take advantage of. Another thing you should factor into your region decision is the latency, which will allow you to determine which one is closest to your existing or target customers. 

Automate your cloud infrastructure. 

Aiming for automation will allow you to start getting the most out of your AWS Free Tier, as it will help you save both time and resources by aiding your development team’s work. From maintaining a networking infrastructure to securing all your analytics and database information, AWS automation will help you take advantage of free resources and reduce administration costs and efforts. This will also help you in the case of an AWS outage. 

Be mindful of your free storage. 

When you’re getting the most out of the AWS Free Tier, the last thing you want is for the storage usage to cause you any extra charges. We know storage is vital for any cloud-based eCommerce site, but you still want to be careful about it. Lucky for you, Amazon Web Services facilitate storage usage metrics to keep track of your spending (or lack thereof). You can access this information through the AWS Management Console under the section My Billing Dashboard. 

Monitor any AWS performance problems. 

While you might hesitate to question the performance of a free Amazon Web Service, you should still track your AWS performance metrics to spot any underlying issues. If you’re enjoying AWS for free, why not ensure these amazing tools at no cost perform as efficiently as they can? 

This can be done through Amazon CloudWatch, which will allow you to solve any AWS performance issues as quickly as possible. You can track performance metrics in real-time and troubleshoot if there’s ever a reason to. 

Track your resource usage. 

We get it, the AWS free tier experience can lead you to try and get the most out of your limited resources at no cost. Still, you need to be very mindful of your usage unless you’re fine with unexpected charges at the end of the month. Once you sign up for the AWS free tier, you can keep track of your usage through the AWS Free Tier service table, under your billing and cost management console. From there, you can monitor the service you’re using, its actual price, your usage so far, and a prediction for how much of that service you’ll actually end up using. There’s also the option to enable email alerts when you’re about to surpass your AWS Free Tier limits, which will come in handy if you ever forget to track the usage of a certain tool but still want to avoid those extra charges. 

Ready to start using AWS for your eCommerce business?

As you can tell by the many ways you can make the most out of your AWS free tier, there are several reasons to switch to an AWS-based cloud infrastructure. At Resolve Digital, we recommend this strategy and offer custom eCommerce development services to aid you in the process. Whether you’re wondering about getting the most out of your AWS free tier subscription or want to build an online storefront from scratch, our team of seasoned experts is here to help. Contact us to know more about our eCommerce development services! 

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