Microsoft Azure Standard customers received some cost-savings news last week when Microsoft announced two major changes to its cloud support plan. The changes, based on customer feedback, include a significant price cut in monthly support costs, lowering them from $300 per month to $100 per month and offering a faster initial response time for critical cases (1 hour vs. 2 hours), except for Azure Germany, who is already receiving additional benefits.

‘Azure is continuously improving and expanding the range of options to help you accelerate your cloud journey,’ Microsoft said on its Azure support page. ‘With these changes, Azure now offers the most cost effective and predictable support offering amongst major cloud providers.’

What is a bit confusing is that Microsoft will continue to bill Azure Standard customers $300 per month, but it will then issue a $200 per month credit for the duration of their contract. When the customer’s contract renews, the monthly charge will be adjusted to $100 per month, according to Microsoft Azure’s FAQs.

Customers with different types of Azure plans may not be eligible for the same deal. For example, Azure Government customers pay $375 per month. They will get a $250 credit per month, making their final price $125 per month.

Microsoft Azure offers other support plans as well, priced as follows:

This is comparable to the support plan pricing for AWS Business, which starts at $100. AWS also offers 24/7 technical support and one-hour response time for systems that are down. However, the support plan for AWS Business can be costlier than $100 per month, based on monthly usage. The $100 monthly fee is the minimum.  AWS Business also has a developer category. It charges the greater of $29 per month or 3 percent of monthly AWS usage. For example, if a developer used $2,000 of AWS in a month, the monthly fee would be $2,000 x 3% or $60 for that month.

According to WebProNews, Google’s basic support plan is $150 per month and response time is four hours.

Insider Take:

Of these three providers, Microsoft Azure now has the best price, but the best price doesn’t necessarily mean the best price for a business. That’s why Microsoft has created an Azure vs. AWS page on its website to compare the two products. One characteristic to note: Microsoft said Azure was the first major cloud provider to commit to being compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation which will go into effect later this spring.

Price may not mean everything, but having the lowest price may get more companies to explore Azure than would have otherwise. That said, Google and Amazon are extremely competitive. We anticipate they may try to match or beat Microsoft in the cloud market.