Question

Has your startup gotten any IaaS discounts on AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and more during the COVID-19 crisis?

Have you been able to negotiate discounts or free credit on cloud hosting to help your startup's costs?

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#Cloud Computing #Development #Amazon AWS #Microsoft Azure #Google Cloud #Heroku
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jcfuller's avatar
3 years ago

Yes, but in some roundabout ways. Some have required a bit of effort on both sides (i.e. "we can give you some discounts but you'll need to reduce calls to x by y,"... but it's not something to be taken lightly, and it also came amongst other cost cutting measures we've had to undertake, that, frankly, were more painful than AWS etc. were (i.e. redundancies and changes to headcount.) If you're up front and honest with AWS and GCP, they've been really helpful (and we have great relationships with our account managers too) but we're particularly in a tough spot compared to some others. SFDC, in particular, has been unwilling to do discounting as of now (but they've offered alternatives that feel like a poisoned chalice.) I would strongly advise against using this option unless you absolutely must, because like the boy who cried wolf, you may find yourself in a genuine time of need and they'll be less apt to help. I find there's a lot of work that can be done to streamline operations and calls and processes that will reduce costs dramatically short-term and for only slight pain or tradeoff, before having to enter into renegotiating commercials. Reduce the ability of engineers to spin up any service every time they have a whim, streamline some gatekeepers, be honest about what's running what and why first.

7 points
capiche's avatar
3 years ago

From an anonymous community member:

Google reached out to us to offer discounted training and I believe one or two free certifications, IF we bought a pack of ten. I believe the first five trainings were "buy 4 get 5" - we'd have preferred a 3 for 2 deal more and asked but were told it could only scale one way. The rep was quick to explain that the training vouchers don't expire, so we could buy more and just use them, whenever.

No free infrastructure / resource credit.

4 points
pablankley's avatar
3 years ago

Nothing C19 related but we also don't have increased compute needs because of the crisis.

4 points
maguay's avatar
@maguay (replying to @pablankley )
3 years ago

Great point; the benefit of the cloud is that you can scale down almost as easily as scaling up, and pay for just what you're using.

1 point
mike_seekwell's avatar
3 years ago

no.

3 points
awwstn's avatar
@awwstn (replying to @mike_seekwell )
3 years ago

Dang! Did you ask for it and get denied?

1 point
mike_seekwell's avatar
@mike_seekwell (replying to @awwstn )
3 years ago

havent asked, thought the question was about a proactive effort

1 point
invinciblesaad's avatar
3 years ago

At Cloudways, we have 5 partner cloud providers. DigitalOcean, AWS, Linode, Vultr and Google Cloud. Developers and digital agencies use our platform to easily deploy PHP based applications like WordPress, Magento, Drupal.

We have allocated an amount from our profits to a fund for the customers who are suffering from the current situation. And we are helping these businesses case by case.

3 points
maguay's avatar
@maguay (replying to @invinciblesaad )
3 years ago

That's great to hear! Has your team been able to help affected customers negotiate their cloud services down in addition to the financial assistance you're offering?

1 point
invinciblesaad's avatar
@invinciblesaad (replying to @maguay )
3 years ago

I am really sorry if my answer is not according to what I understood from your question above. I will try to answer anyway.

If you mean consolidation, then yes. The beauty of our platform is that like other hosting providers, we don't really bound anyone to host a certain number of websites on one server. So, if someone is running three servers and if the two servers can handle the load of three, then they already know how to do it.

We are even bringing a lot of new features to the stack that if a customer buy it outside, it will cost them around 15-30$ and it will be free on our platform FOREVER.

1 point
maguay's avatar
@maguay (replying to @invinciblesaad )
3 years ago

Oh man I'm sorry, I mistook what Cloudways offers—I thought you were managing customers' AWS and Google Cloud deploys, and missed that you're actually running a full hosting platform. Sorry for the confusion there!

That's fascinating your service is running on so many cloud services—and extra cool that you're taking care of customers during this time! Thank you for sharing!

1 point
onefisch's avatar
3 years ago

I thought we would be able to get more discounts than we have been receiving due to COVID. Most firms seem to be holding pretty firm on pricing / credits these days.

1 point
maguay's avatar
@maguay (replying to @onefisch )
3 years ago

Which companies has your team requested discounts from?

1 point
cleolanta's avatar
3 years ago

SolidWorks is waiving all backdating fees until April 30, 2020. Just renew maintenance on an expired license to reactivate it. We have not taken advantage just yet, and they are only giving a 3 week window to make a decision.

1 point
maguay's avatar
@maguay (replying to @cleolanta )
3 years ago

Interesting, that's similar to the assistance Cisco is offering their customers (though they're taking it further and defer 90% of their bills until next year).

Seems like that would essentially work out to a month or so free, which is inline with the other COVID-19 discounts SaaS companies are offering.

1 point
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