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Major updates for lower Amazon DevPay fees and shared risk of customer nonpayment.
New Features
| Feature | Description |
|---|
| Lower Fees |
Based on your feedback, we've lowered the fees to use Amazon DevPay so that instead of paying 3.0% of the entire customer bill, you pay only 3.0% of the value-add portion of the customer's bill. The value-add portion is the additional amount you charge on top of the cost of the AWS service (e.g., Amazon S3 or Amazon EC2). The $0.30 transaction fee per product per customer bill collected remains the same. No action is required on your part to take advantage of these lower fees. Your customers will not see any changes. For more information about the lower fees, see the FAQs below.
Important: This new fee plan goes into effect with your September revenue. If your product has a monthly charge or a sign-up charge, then we've already collected the 3.0% DevPay fees (according to the old fee plan) on the September monthly charges and any sign-up charges you've received in September. We'll give you a refund for those fees in late September. You'll see a line item for that refund in your DevPay Account History (it will be listed as "Refund of 3% DevPay fee for Sept. 2008 revenue (DevPay fee reduction)"). In early October, we'll use the new fee plan and charge you the 3.0% DevPay fee on your September value-add amount for each customer.
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| Shared Risk of Customer Nonpayment |
We've also changed how Amazon DevPay works so that we share the risk of customer nonpayment with you. With the previous release of Amazon DevPay, you were responsible for paying the costs of AWS services your customers used regardless of whether customers paid their bills. Now, you pay the costs of AWS services only up to the amount that the customer has paid. If, however, the customer's bill is less than the cost of AWS services the customer used, you are responsible for the difference, regardless of whether the customer actually pays the bill. No action is required on your part to take advantage of this new feature. Your customers will not see any changes. For more information about this feature, see the FAQs below. |
| New Columns in Revenue Report |
We've added four additional columns to the end of the monthly Revenue Report:
AWSCostsChargedCurrBillPeriodAWSCostsChargedPrevBillPeriodDevPayFeeChargedCurrBillPeriodDevPayFeeChargedPrevBillPeriod
For more information, see the section on the Revenue Report in the Amazon DevPay Developer Guide. |
| Information about Amounts Collected |
Your DevPay Activity page shows the revenue you expect to receive from your customers and the AWS costs and DevPay fees you owe. With this release, the page now also includes how much of the revenue, costs, and DevPay fees we've actually collected. For more information, see the section about DevPay Activity pages in the Amazon DevPay Developer Guide. |
Frequently Asked Questions
With the release of Amazon DevPay on 9/25/08, there are two primary changes. AWS has lowered the fees that it charges developers for Amazon DevPay and now shares the risk of customer nonpayment with developers.
With this release, AWS charges developers a fee of 3.0% only on their value-add for each of their customers. The value-add is the amount that you charge on top of the cost of AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3). With the previous release, AWS charged 3.0% on the entire customer bill. The reduced fee enables you to pass on the costs of AWS services to your customers without having to mark them up to cover the 3.0% fees that AWS used to charge. The transaction fee continues to be $0.30 per product for each bill collected from a customer.
Also with this release, AWS now shares the risk of customer nonpayment with developers. Previously, regardless of whether the customer paid or not, you were always responsible for the cost of AWS services your customers used. Now, you pay the costs of AWS services only up to the amount that the customer has paid. However, if the amount a customer owes based on your price is less than the cost of AWS services used, you're required to cover the difference, even if the customer doesn't pay. For an example, see "How has what I pay for the cost of underlying AWS services changed?".
We continue to listen to feedback we get from our developers. Many developers wanted to pass on the cost of AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3) to their customers but were reluctant to mark up their prices to cover the 3.0% Amazon DevPay fee or the possibility of customer nonpayment. With these changes we have made it financially more attractive to build and sell products and services on top of the AWS platform using Amazon DevPay.
You don't have to do anything to get the lower fees and shared risk that Amazon DevPay now offers. All new and existing developers have been automatically enrolled in the new Amazon DevPay model starting September 1, 2008. There's no action required on your part.
AWS now charges you 3.0% of your value-add per customer. Your value-add is the difference between the revenue collected from a customer and the cost of AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3) that the customer uses. AWS charges the 3.0% fee only if the revenue collected from a customer is greater than the cost. In the previous release of Amazon DevPay, we charged 3.0% on the total revenue collected from each customer.
The fee for each bill collected from a customer per product remains at $0.30.
Example:
| Revenue collected from the customer: |
$15.00 |
| Cost of AWS services used by the customer: |
$10.00 |
| Your value-add collected: $15.00 - $10.00 = |
$ 5.00 |
| The Amazon DevPay fee: (3.0% * $5.00) + $0.30 = |
$ 0.45 |
In the previous release of the service, your Amazon DevPay fee for this customer would have been: (3.0% * $15.00) + $0.30 = $0.75.
If your product's price results in a customer bill that is less than the cost of the AWS services used, then your value-add for the customer is less than zero. In this case, AWS does not charge you the 3.0% fee. However, as before, we always charge the $0.30 fee each time we collect from your customer.
With the previous release of Amazon DevPay, AWS also charged a fee on net liability if the net revenue (revenue minus Amazon DevPay fees) from all your customers was less than the cost of AWS services that your products used. With this new release, AWS no longer charges the Amazon DevPay fee on net liability.
With these changes, AWS is sharing with you the risk of customer nonpayment. With the previous release of Amazon DevPay, we charged you for the total cost of AWS services (e.g., Amazon S3) your customers used regardless of whether they paid or not. Now with the new Amazon DevPay release:
- We charge you the costs of AWS services per customer, only up to the amount that the customer has paid (see Example 1 below).
- If the amount a customer owes you based on your price is less than the cost of AWS services that the customer used, you are charged for the difference, even if the customer does not pay (see Example 2 below).
Example 1:
We charge your customers the monthly fee on the first of the month and the usage-based fees in arrears on the first of the following month. In this example, we've been able to collect the $4.00 monthly fee from the customer on October 1. Our initial attempt to collect the $21.00 in usage-based fees on November 1 was unsuccessful.
Because the customer's billed revenue ($25.00) for the month is higher than the cost of the AWS services that the customer used during the month ($12.00), on November 2 you are only charged for the cost of AWS services up to the amount that your customer has already paid ($4.00, equivalent to the monthly fee that the customer has paid). Later if your customer's pending charge for $21.00 succeeds, we charge you for the pending costs of AWS services (i.e., $8.00).
| |
Billed |
Collected |
Pending |
| Revenue from the customer: |
$25.00
($4.00 monthly fee
+
$21.00 in usage-based fees)
|
$ 4.00 |
$21.00 |
| Cost of AWS services used by the customer |
$ 12.00 |
$ 4.00 |
$ 8.00 |
With the previous release of Amazon DevPay, you would have been charged for the cost of AWS services that your customer used (i.e., $12.00) regardless of whether your customer paid or not.
Example 2:
We continue with the previous example, but this time you price your product so that the customer's billed revenue ($11.00) for the month is less than the cost of the AWS services that the customer used during the month ($12.00). We've been able to collect the $4.00 monthly fee from the customer on October 1. Our initial attempt to collect the $7.00 in usage-based fees on November 1 was unsuccessful.
Because the customer's expected revenue ($11.00) is less than the cost of the AWS services that the customer has used ($12.00), you have to pay that difference ($1.00), regardless of whether the customer pays. But you only pay the remaining $11.00 in AWS costs after the customer has paid to cover it. On November 2 you're charged $5.00 for the cost of AWS services for this customer ($1.00 for the cost of AWS services not covered by the customer's expected revenue and $4.00 for the cost of AWS services covered by the customer payment). Later if the pending customer's charge for $7.00 succeeds, we charge you for the pending cost of AWS services ($7.00).
| |
Billed |
Collected |
Pending |
| Revenue from the customer: |
$11.00
($4.00 monthly fee
+
$7.00 in usage-based fees)
|
$ 4.00 |
$ 7.00 |
| Cost of AWS services used by the customer |
$ 12.00 |
$ 5.00 |
$ 7.00 |
No. Customers of your products will not see any changes. The change is in the Amazon DevPay fees and the costs of AWS services that we charge you.
The fees you pay to use Amazon DevPay are lower. You also pay less to AWS (to cover the cost of AWS services) if your customers don't pay. In general, you'll see changes to the Amazon DevPay product registration process, and changes to the contents of your Amazon DevPay Activity page, Amazon DevPay Account Balance page, and Reports. For more information, refer to the New Features table above and the Amazon DevPay Developer Guide.
You'll also notice a change in the timing of when we collect the Amazon DevPay fees and the cost of AWS services. With the previous release of Amazon DevPay, we charged you 3.0% of the amount collected from your customer plus $0.30 at the time we collected the money from the customer. With the new release of Amazon DevPay, you still pay the $0.30 portion of the Amazon DevPay fee at the time we collect from your customer. However, we collect the 3.0% Amazon DevPay fee (along with the cost of AWS services) from you only after we have successfully collected money from your customer.
Yes, your Amazon DevPay Activity page provides tools that let you adjust your price and communicate any changes to your customers.
Yes. The Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement has changed to reflect the changes in the service. By continuing to use the service your are agreeing to the new version of the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement and to the Amazon DevPay Payment Processing Agreement (which hasn't changed).
Yes. With this release of Amazon DevPay, for chargebacks classified as "Unauthorized Payments", you can contact us at DevPay@amazon.com and we will refund you the cost of AWS services and the associated 3.0% Amazon DevPay fee that we have charged you for the charge in dispute. As before, you get to decide which chargebacks you want to contest. If you decide not to contest a chargeback or if you if you lose a chargeback, we charge your account for the disputed amount. For chargebacks other than "Unauthorized Payments", if you believe that the chargeback was because of AWS service-related performance, you can appeal to get a refund of the AWS costs based on the published SLAs.
Known Issues
| Issue | Description |
|---|
| Error in WSDL |
The License Service WSDL (at https://ls.amazonaws.com/doc/2008-04-28/AmazonLS.wsdl) incorrectly lists a child element called RequestId in the ErrorResponse element. The correct name of the element is RequestID (with a capital D). Our plan is to update the WSDL to match what the service actually returns (RequestID). |
| Limitation on AWS services used |
You can build an application that monetizes Amazon EC2 or Amazon Simple Storage Service, but not both. |
| Limitation on decimal places for prices |
You can set prices with a maximum of only two decimal places. |
| Throttling of License Service requests per developer |
Requests to the License Service are throttled as necessary. They are throttled per developer instead of per DevPay product. Therefore, if you have multiple DevPay products, the sum of the requests from all your DevPay products is used to determine whether your requests need to be throttled. |
| Information not available on the first of the month |
If you visit your DevPay Activity page on the first of the month, your revenue statement for the previous month might not yet be available. We instead recommend that you view the page after you've received the e-mail from AWS that indicates the revenue statement is available.
Also, the page might display zeros for all the values because the page has not yet been updated with the information for the first day of the month. We recommend that you return to the page on the second day of the month. |
| Value that is different than expected on the DevPay Activity page |
Your DevPay Activity page displays the expected revenue and costs incurred by each of your DevPay products during the month. For a given product, the total dollar amount listed for a particular dimension in the "Revenue" section of the table might be slightly different than expected based on the per-unit price and the number of units listed on the page. For example, the price of $0.10 per GB-Month and usage of 20 GB-Months for an Amazon S3 product is displayed, but the resulting revenue is displayed as $2.04 instead of the expected $2.00. This is by design and can happen for two reasons:
- If a customer incurs a very small amount of usage so that the total charge based on your pricing is less than a penny. We round each customer's sub-penny charge up to a whole penny.
- We round customer charges that are over a penny to the closest penny.
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| Withdrawal limit |
When you withdraw money from your DevPay account, the withdrawal amount must be at least $10.00. |
| No sandbox for testing |
DevPay does not have a sandbox for testing. All testing you perform involves movement of real money. |
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