Pricing for M3 instances

Hi Thomas, 

These are the numbers as of now: 

m3.medium      $0.181

m3.large      $0.338

m3.xlarge      $0.630

m3.2xlarge      $1.170

m3.xlarge (EBS)      $0.910

m3.2xlarge (EBS)      $1.750

m3.medium (dedicated)      $0.198

m3.large (dedicated)      $0.372

m3.xlarge (dedicated)      $0.693

m3.2xlarge (dedicated)      $1.287

Hey Tasha,

Why is the EBS-optimized option so much more expensive?

m3.xlarge: $0.630

m3.xlarge (EBS): $0.910

In contrast, for the old m1.xlarge the price difference is only $0.06 per hour ($0.78 vs. $0.84).

Thanks,

Thomas

Hi Thomas, 

I think we were just keeping with our standard pricing to all the instances; I'll ask. 

Tasha 

New pricing for M3s: 

BoxUsage:m3.medium  $0.14 

BoxUsage:m3.large  $0.25 

BoxUsage:m3.xlarge  $0.45 

BoxUsage:m3.2xlarge  $0.81 

DedicatedUsage:m3.medium  $0.15 

DedicatedUsage:m3.large  $0.28 

DedicatedUsage:m3.xlarge  $0.49 

DedicatedUsage:m3.2xlarge  $0.89 

Why are these prices DOUBLE what Amazon charges?  Is your markup that high on the old instances as well?

Hi Rob - 

The prices that you're seeing are combining AWS prices + EY Platform. When you say double, I assume you're referring to the fact that an m3.medium on AWS raw is $0.07, whereas we are $0.07 + $0.07 = $0.14. However, we are pricing for AWS pass-through + Engine Yard platform and support value. At a base, we feel that what we offer -- platform, regular updates, monitoring, support, provisioning, alerts, and more -- is worth $50/month on a medium instance. 

You will notice that this "multiplier" disappears as you look at larger instances. That is because we as a platform want to level out in cost as you grow as a company, rather than be a strictly linear cost growth. That is our goal in larger instance sizes, as you can see now, and also as you scale and add more instances to your environments. If you have a predictable spend on Engine Yard, you can contact your sales rep and do a "commit" for 6 months or longer, with accompanying discounts.

We plan to roll out a new pricing model in the next few months that will make this even more transparent, as we separate per-hour instance pricing on whichever IaaS and instance size you select from our PaaS cost. We will group pricing plans by number of servers and services you are using. This will still look like a larger mark up on smaller environments and instances, but our goal is to scale as you scale, staying affordable even when you have several to hundreds of servers.

I hope this helps to clarify what you're seeing on M3 mediums, and our outlook and plan going forward. We (I) always appreciate customer feedback, positive or negative, and please do let us know what you think.

Thanks, Tasha 

I think a transparent pricing model would really help so we can see what you charge on each size instance.  I think you guys are great and I'm glad to pay a premium to have all of the services you mention.  I just feel that when I'm looking at new instances, I'm comparing your prices to what Amazon actually charges and the differential always seems to change.  Part of that is Amazon slashed their prices recently and none of the other PaaS hosts seemed to pass on any discount.

It's good to know that the premium goes down as the instance size goes up.  What is the C3 instance size pricing?

bump for C3 instance pricing

Hi Rob - 

Sorry, I knew we were about to update our pricing webpage so I thought it would be easier to share a link that gets updated over time. All pricing for C3s, M3s, and other instances we support is now here: https://www.engineyard.com/pricing

Thanks! Tasha 

Why are you charging more for the C3 instances than the M3 instances, even though Amazon prices the C3 instances much lower than the M3 instances?  This makes no sense.  We need the C3 instances and with your pricing, it's hard to justify the expense.

M3: AWS charges $0.14, EY $0.25

C3: AWS charges $0.10, EY $0.29!!!

Thanks for your feedback on that Rob, I'll share it with my leadership.