I am a regular and frequent user of Amazon Chime, as are most of my colleagues. In addition to dozens of ongoing point-to-point sessions with individual colleagues, I participate in one chat room for the AWS Blog team and another for the AWS Evangelists. I attend several meetings per day, and use Amazon Chime’s conferencing feature to set up my own meetings once or twice a month. While I don’t actually see the monthly bill, I am on Amazon Chime’s Pro plan, at a per-user rate of $15 per month. This is, based on feedback from our customers, a good value for users who regularly host meetings, but a bit too high for those who use the other features and/or spend more time attending meetings than hosting them.

Usage-Based Pricing

To meet the needs of these users and to make Amazon Chime even more economical we are introducing a new, usage-based pricing model that goes in to effect on April 1, 2018.

During the initial, 30-day free trial, users have access to all Amazon Chime features at no charge. After the trial period ends, the users can chat with each other and attend meetings, both at no charge. On days that they host meetings, a $3 per day charge will be made, up to a maximum of $15 per month. Based on historical usage patterns, this will result in an overall price reduction for virtually all Amazon Chime customers.

In order to use the scheduling and hosting features after the end of the trial period, users must be connected to an AWS account and the administrator must enable the Amazon Pro Features features for the account. Thanks to the usage-based model, administrators will no longer have to purchase licenses for individual users in their organization. Instead, they can use Active Directory settings and policy management within the Amazon Chime Console to set permissions as desired.

As part of this change we are also eliminating the Plus plan and adding the screen sharing and corporate directory features to the Basic plan.

This change goes in to effect on April 1, 2018! To learn more, take a look at the Amazon Chime Pricing page.

— Jeff;