Amazon Web Services (AWS) is currently the biggest cloud service provider in the world, and it might retain that position for another decade or more. However, despite its tremendous resource and processing power, Amazon has a few cons that users can’t help but notice.

You’d agree that no company has a 100% customer satisfaction rate, but the low ratings are worth looking into if almost every dissatisfied user points out the same issue. In Amazon’s case, that issue is money oriented.

A quick survey on online communities such as Quora and Reddit showed immense dissatisfaction among individual AWS users regarding Amazon charges. Before digging into that, let’s discuss what makes Amazon so expensive.

Why is Amazon Web Services expensive?

Amazon Web Services isn’t the cheapest cloud provider out there. They’re expensive, and rightly so.

AWS offers incredible data transfer speed, 24/7 computing running time, multiple geographical operations, state-of-the-art security, and perhaps the best API in the cloud service industry. It’s also important to note that Amazon takes the most workload in the cloud computing industry, an undertaking that costs a lot to maintain.

Nonetheless, AWS is quite expensive compared to other cloud service providers that provide standard data center facilities and services.

Now let’s discuss the most pressing question.

Why do you incur extra charges on AWS invoices?

As an AWS user, it’s not unlikely to find extra charges on your monthly invoice, and like many others, you’re unsure of how they got there. Well, here’s how.

AWS cost descriptions are usually vague, making it quite difficult to calculate the cost of running specific applications and software on the platform. So in most cases, users go ahead with the services without making a thorough calculation.

The most complicated payment calculation on Amazon is the data transfer fee. As mentioned earlier, high transfer speed is one of the company’s highlights. Unfortunately, it’s the leading cause of extra charges on users’ invoices.

Amazon charges you for every bit of data you send in and out of the cloud platform, plus you also pay tax for every outbound transfer. So if you run applications that send out data regularly, you’ll pay more.

Outbound data transfers are inevitable, and while you might be able to control the amount of data you send out, you should know you also get charged a little extra when you send out data to more than one region.

What can you do?

AWS extra charges wouldn’t go away. That’s how the company thrives. However, you can use other standard cloud providers with a more budget-friendly policy.

AiNET provides fantastic cloud services with no hidden charges. Click the highlight to get started.