Support Tiers

AWS Support Tiers – Certification

~ Last updated on : ~ jayendrapatil ~ 1 Comment

AWS Support Plans

⚠️ Major Update: AWS Support Plans Restructured (Dec 2025)

At AWS re:Invent 2025, AWS announced a fundamental restructuring of Support Plans. The legacy Developer, Business, and Enterprise On-Ramp plans will be discontinued on January 1, 2027.

New Plan Structure:

  • Basic (free) — unchanged, included for all accounts
  • Business Support+ — replaces Developer and Business (from $29/month)
  • Enterprise Support — enhanced with AI capabilities (from $5,000/month)
  • Unified Operations — new top-tier for mission-critical workloads (from $50,000/month)

All new plans combine AI-powered capabilities with AWS human expertise for proactive, rather than reactive, support.

Current AWS Support Plans (2025+)

AWS now provides four Support tiers — one free tier and three paid plans. Support is per AWS Account (except Enterprise and Unified Operations which aggregate across accounts).

Basic Support (Free)

  • Included for all AWS customers at no additional charge
  • Customer Service: 24/7 access to account and billing questions
  • AWS re:Post community access
  • AWS Health Dashboard — personalized view of service health
  • AWS Trusted Advisor — core checks only (service limits)
  • Documentation, whitepapers, and best-practice guides

Business Support+ (from $29/month)

  • All features from Basic Support
  • AI-powered contextual recommendations — 24/7 intelligent troubleshooting
  • AWS DevOps Agent integration — credits equal to 30% of Support charge
  • 24/7 phone, web, chat, and email technical support
  • Unlimited support cases and contacts
  • Response times:
    • Business/Mission-critical system down: < 30 minutes
    • Production system down: < 1 hour
    • Production system impaired: < 4 hours
    • System impaired: < 12 hours
    • General guidance: < 24 hours
  • Full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks
  • Contextual architectural guidance for your use cases
  • Third-party software support
  • AWS Support API for automated case management
  • AWS Support App in Slack
  • AWS Support Automation Workflows
  • AWS Health API access
  • IAM for controlling access to AWS Support
  • Pricing: Greater of $29/month or tiered: 9% (first $10K), 7% ($10K-$80K), 5% ($80K-$250K), 3% (over $250K)

Enterprise Support (from $5,000/month)

  • All features from Business Support+
  • Designated Technical Account Manager (TAM) — deep AWS knowledge with data-driven insights
  • AWS DevOps Agent integration — credits equal to 75% of Support charge
  • AWS Security Incident Response — included at no additional cost
  • Response times:
    • Business/Mission-critical system down: < 15 minutes
    • Production system down: < 1 hour
    • Production system impaired: < 4 hours
    • System impaired: < 12 hours
    • General guidance: < 24 hours
  • AWS Trusted Advisor Priority — prioritized and contextual recommendations
  • AWS Well-Architected Reviews
  • Proactive security reviews
  • Infrastructure event management and planned events support
  • White-glove billing concierge
  • Personalized strategic support plan
  • Consultative architectural reviews and guidance
  • Interactive programs and hands-on workshops
  • Pricing: Greater of $5,000/month or tiered: 10% (first $150K), 7% ($150K-$500K), 5% ($500K-$1M), 3% (over $1M)

Unified Operations (from $50,000/month)

  • All features from Enterprise Support
  • Designated team: TAM + Domain Specialist Engineers + Senior Billing and Account Specialist + Incident Management Engineers
  • AWS DevOps Agent integration — credits equal to 100% of Support charge
  • Response times:
    • Business/Mission-critical system down: < 5 minutes (from Incident Management Engineer)
    • Production system down: < 1 hour
    • Production system impaired: < 4 hours
    • System impaired: < 12 hours
    • General guidance: < 24 hours
  • 24/7 proactive workload monitoring
  • Continuous architectural reviews with designated domain specialists
  • Customized proactive services and resiliency reviews
  • Critical Workload Reviews
  • AWS Countdown Premium included (one subscription per month)
  • AWS Incident Detection and Response included
  • Global TAM coverage
  • Pricing: Greater of $50,000/month or tiered: 10% (first $1M), 6% ($1M-$5M), 5% (over $5M)

Legacy Plans (Discontinued January 1, 2027)

⚠️ The following plans are being discontinued on January 1, 2027. Existing subscribers can continue using them until that date or transition to new plans at any time.

Developer Support (Legacy)

  • All features from Basic Support
  • Best-practice guidance
  • Client-side diagnostic tools
  • Building-block architecture support
  • Business hours email access to Cloud Support Associates
  • Migration path: → Business Support+ ($29/month minimum)

Business Support (Legacy)

  • All features from Developer Support
  • Phone/Email/Chat support, 1 hour response time for production system down
  • Use-case guidance
  • AWS Trusted Advisor — full set of checks
  • Support API access
  • Third-party software support
  • IAM for AWS Support access
  • Migration path: → Business Support+ ($29/month minimum, improved 30-min response time)

Enterprise On-Ramp (Legacy)

  • All features from Business Support
  • Pool of TAMs (shared, not designated)
  • 30-minute response time for critical issues
  • Concierge support team
  • Migration path: → Enterprise Support ($5,000/month — automatic upgrade during 2026)

Support Plan Comparison

Feature Basic Business Support+ Enterprise Unified Operations
Pricing Free From $29/month From $5,000/month From $50,000/month
Critical Response Time — < 30 minutes < 15 minutes < 5 minutes
Technical Support — 24/7 phone, web, chat 24/7 phone, web, chat 24/7 phone, web, chat
AI-Powered Assistance — ✔ ✔ ✔
Trusted Advisor Core checks Full checks Full + Priority Full + Priority
TAM — — Designated Designated + Team
Well-Architected Reviews — — ✔ ✔
Security Incident Response — Additional fee Included Included
Proactive Monitoring — — — 24/7 workload monitoring
Third-Party Software Support — ✔ ✔ ✔

Key Changes from Legacy to New Plans

  • Business Support+ replaces both Developer and Business Support
    • Lower minimum: $29/month (was $100/month for Business)
    • Faster critical response: 30 minutes (was 1 hour)
    • New AI-powered troubleshooting and recommendations
    • AWS DevOps Agent integration included
  • Enterprise Support (enhanced)
    • Lower minimum: $5,000/month (was $15,000/month)
    • AWS Security Incident Response now included at no additional cost
    • AWS DevOps Agent credits (75% of Support charge)
    • Enhanced AI-powered insights for TAMs
  • Unified Operations (new tier — replaces Enterprise On-Ramp position conceptually at the top)
    • 5-minute response time for critical issues
    • Dedicated team: TAM + Domain Engineers + Billing Specialist + Incident Engineers
    • 24/7 proactive workload monitoring
    • AWS Countdown Premium and Incident Detection & Response included
  • Enterprise On-Ramp discontinued — customers automatically upgraded to Enterprise Support during 2026

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

  • Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
  • AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
  • AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
  • Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.
  1. What are the four levels of AWS Premium Support?
    • Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise [Note: Legacy plans. New structure (2025+) is Basic, Business Support+, Enterprise, Unified Operations]
    • Basic, Startup, Business, Enterprise
    • Free, Bronze, Silver, Gold
    • All support is free
  2. What is the maximum response time for a Business level Premium Support case with a production system down?
    • 120 seconds
    • 1 hour [Note: With new Business Support+, critical response time is 30 minutes]
    • 10 minutes
    • 12 hours
  3. A company requires a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) and a response time of less than 15 minutes for business-critical system issues. Which AWS Support plan should they choose?
    • Business Support+
    • Enterprise Support
    • Unified Operations
    • Basic Support
  4. Which AWS Support plan provides AI-powered contextual recommendations and 24/7 technical support starting at $29/month?
    • Basic Support
    • Developer Support
    • Business Support+
    • Enterprise Support
  5. A large enterprise needs 5-minute response times for mission-critical incidents, designated domain specialist engineers, and 24/7 proactive workload monitoring. Which AWS Support plan meets these requirements?
    • Business Support+
    • Enterprise Support
    • Unified Operations
    • Enterprise On-Ramp
  6. Which AWS Support plans include AWS Trusted Advisor with the full set of checks? (Select TWO)
    • Basic Support
    • Business Support+
    • Enterprise Support
    • Developer Support
  7. Which AWS Support plan includes AWS Security Incident Response at no additional cost?
    • Basic Support
    • Business Support+
    • Enterprise Support
    • Developer Support
  8. A startup wants the minimum AWS Support plan that provides 24/7 phone access to cloud support engineers. Which plan should they choose?
    • Basic Support
    • Developer Support
    • Business Support+
    • Enterprise Support

References