[HN Gopher] AWS paywalling select knowledge base articles, requi...
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AWS paywalling select knowledge base articles, requiring Premium
Support plan
Author : gpi
Score : 160 points
Date : 2025-02-18 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (repost.aws)
(TXT) w3m dump (repost.aws)
| belter wrote:
| The next Oracle...
| timewizard wrote:
| Well that's a great way to just move all your traffic to an open
| support forum. Why do companies think their garbage can of
| support, the "knowledge base," is worth _anything_?
| belter wrote:
| Download these while you can...The MBA's are in charge:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhr1KZpdzukfdjsOHZ-Ba...
| chedabob wrote:
| I'm impressed they've somehow managed to make their documentation
| worse.
| encoderer wrote:
| What makes this even more insulting is that their "premium
| support" is trash.
|
| You pay a percentage of your gross AWS bill and the support is
| useless in my experience.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We've had excellent experiences with AWS enterprise support
| over several instances. It's not cheap (nor is AWS overall),
| but my experience is that the support is quite good rather than
| useless.
|
| I have no doubt that others have had bad experiences, but
| that's not been ours.
|
| (I have no connection to Amazon, other than as a user of AWS
| and retail and holder of broad-based funds some of which hold
| Amazon.)
| bolognafairy wrote:
| I haven't used it in a few years but I've had wholly good
| experiences.
|
| Example: I had to parachute into an abandoned project running
| an ancient version of RDS Postgres. I was having a hard time
| working out the many steps required to actually get it to a
| modern version.
|
| The agent went as far as to run through the process on their
| end, showing the version jumps they needed to do, config
| options they needed to change at each step, etc.
|
| That was easily worth the money.
| arjunaaqa wrote:
| Curious if AI models have already ingested this data.
|
| Or this is just to avoid them scraping and being up to date.
|
| Then only AWS AI can be monetized to help with their super
| complex platform.
|
| What a genius idea !
|
| - make platform super complex -> write disastrous documentation
| -> put it behind paywall
|
| They don't care if their customers keep getting hacked due to
| this complexity and unclear documentation.
| lysace wrote:
| This is just... bad.
|
| Smallish company here - we have a premium support plan that over
| the years has cost us like 6k per support issue, all three times
| because of bugs on their end.
|
| Edit: We feel that we need it in case anything really gets messed
| up - like some complex account hijack or similar. Does this make
| sense? Are we overpaying for no reason?
| nicce wrote:
| They charge on ticket-basis even if it is their fault?
| lysace wrote:
| They charge a percentage of your spend for access to this
| support, starting at 10%. Yes, that is both smart and gross.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The cause doesn't really matter, you pay for priorized access
| to them (otherwise you can send your complaints to the
| customer service like a message in a bottle)
|
| It works the same for most companies where their product is a
| foundation of your business.
|
| Think Apple store for instance: you'll pay for premium
| support tickets to have expedited reviews of your apps, even
| if it's to work around a bug they just pushed in their new OS
| update.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| No. It's usually a small percentage of spend, but there are
| "tiers" mostly related to how much (if any) of their Pro-
| Services you're already contracting.
|
| One "hack" I've recommended for larger enterprises is to
| budget a minuscule amount for their pro-services, but only to
| rely upon AWS "Principal or Product" engineers. I've been
| involved in far too many "Pro Services Remediation"
| engagements.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Yeah we only have support to deal with bugs within AWS's
| platform itself, and 99% of the time we need to escalate it
| with our rep anyways.
| lysace wrote:
| Oh, the 'rep' - whose primary interest is shilling consulting
| services for a cut.
| written-beyond wrote:
| This attitude of theirs is why I'm never going to recommend or
| use AWS. When we first decided to evaluate if AWS would be a
| better fit for us over GCP, they never let our company get past
| their account verification.
|
| We're a small US based company, just a few people. They
| required verification documents, business registration all a
| real headache. After all of that we couldn't use a single thing
| to run, not even cloud shell. It's as if the account was
| disabled in some very obscure way. We spent 2 weeks arguing
| with support to please reinstate access to our account, and
| after 4 false "it should work now" responses they told us to
| start paying for premium support.
|
| PAY PREMIUM TECHNICAL SUPPORT FOR A SERVICE THAT WE NEVER GOT
| ACCESS TO OR USE.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Thats weird, you can open an account with just a credit card
| and update tax id / business details later.
|
| Was it because you were doing "AWS activate" or something? If
| that experience is _much worse_ than their regular signup
| process that 's both funny and sad :/
|
| With AWS support what I do is enable "developer support"
| (~$30/month) when I need to ask them a bunch of stuff, then I
| cancel it for the other 11 months of the year when I don't
| need their help. It's a bit cheap and I'm sure my account rep
| would have words if I was a "real business" but in practice
| it works for me.
| jjmarr wrote:
| They've removed the paywall, here's an archive of what it looked
| like:
|
| https://archive.is/1if4M
| megadata wrote:
| Did they remove it just on this article or did they stop this
| treacherous act altogether?
| elchananHaas wrote:
| Can you please point to where on the article documentation is
| being paywalled? I'm not seeing it. If Amazon removed it can you
| point to an archive link?
| notwhereyouare wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43095029
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I see the Oraclifaction of Amazon has began
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| The amount of pain that my management is willing to tolerate
| from Amazon is truly staggering. If it's not in AWS, it doesn't
| exist. If it's broken or decrepit in AWS, they just keep
| trying. If it's overpriced they pay and if an Amazon bug or
| broken promise costs loads of money they still pay (or maybe
| feebly ask for a partial refund).
|
| The profits from squeezing them will be monumental. Bullish
| AMZN.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Aren't ex-Oracle sales & execs accumulating pockets of power at
| AWS for a good while now? To win enterprise deals, there's no
| way around hiring folks with long-term, robust, deep business
| networks (ex: folks at Microsoft & Oracle).
|
| See also: CEO at GCP ;) It is Oracle's world, enterprises
| merely live in it.
| re wrote:
| An employee commented on this on Reddit:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/1isd0wi/aws_blocking_t...
|
| E1337Recon 257 points 7 hours ago (Tue Feb 18 14:00:30 2025 UTC)
|
| > Hey I'm gonna raise this internally as this is not a good
| change in my opinion. (Strictly my own opinion and not that of
| AWS)
|
| > Edit: The change is being rolled back
| victor9000 wrote:
| From my view, the specific article is not the issue
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _as this is not a good change in my opinion (Strictly my own
| opinion and not that of AWS)_
|
| Hope that's the opinion of Matt Garman, too. Such changes reek
| of _Day 2_ mentality.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Amazon is at Day 100 already
| worble wrote:
| It's good this was rolled back, but the fact this got to
| production in the first place is worrying; it's baffling that
| anyone at any stage thought this was even remotely acceptable.
|
| I always defaulted to AWS but this has me reconsidering other
| options for the future.
| karmasimida wrote:
| True. Doesn't sound like customer obsession to me
| victor9000 wrote:
| It's been a while since I used AWS, is premium documentation a
| thing now? Monetizing documentation just seens so sleazy.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah if they were at least offering some added benefit, like
| guarantees of correctness, more detailed explanations, etc.,
| then I could see it.
|
| But otherwise it seems more like an insult.
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| > like guarantees of correctness,
|
| Yeah, no. I have to strongly disagree with this.
|
| AWS's documentation about operating AWSs products and
| services I assume are correct and accurate.
|
| If I follow their guides and end up breaking something
| because it turns out they forgot to tell me about something
| important, I would consider that a breach of warranty.
|
| The only reason I can think of where documentation should be
| behind a pay/auth-wall is if it was generated specifically
| for your circumstances as part of some kind of solutions
| architecture or technical support process.
| placardloop wrote:
| > The only reason I can think of where documentation should
| be behind a pay/auth-wall is if it was generated
| specifically for your circumstances as part of some kind of
| solutions architecture or technical support process.
|
| That's exactly what this is, actually. These aren't the AWS
| docs. The linked site is the AWS support forums in which
| AWS employees, AWS support and/or other known contributors
| from the AWS community will give you personalized responses
| to questions you have.
|
| Some of these questions are more generic, and so aren't
| personalized, but they're still the result of a question-
| and-answer on the forum.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Haven't really seen this anywhere tbh - most devs would
| rightfully not even start evaluating such a product.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Workday is an example.
|
| And I don't believe you can download the Z-Wave specification
| without paying a membership.
| ale42 wrote:
| This is common in specifications and standards, ISO
| standards are expensive to get, and good luck if you try to
| get the HDMI 2.1 specification. Usually, people need that
| type of documentation if they are developing products they
| will later sell (although there are other uses, like hobby
| and research...). Not saying that I second putting such
| documentation behind paywalls, but it is at least in part
| understandable. On the other hand, paywalling documentation
| about a product I have anyway to pay for if I want to use
| it feels very greedy.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Workday is an example.
|
| I'll also name and shame iCIMS. Some API docs are non-
| public with no real pattern and for no good reason.
| Spivak wrote:
| RedHat does this with their kb which famously have really
| high-quality answers.
| op00to wrote:
| Red Hat paywalled their knowledge base years ago. It was
| unpopular inside the company, but seen as required to respond
| to Oracle's wholesale ripping off of the content.
| bikson wrote:
| IBM* Not Oracle.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| I can only applause this change. Next time somebody blindly
| suggests AWS I can counter-argue by saying even their
| documentation costs money.
|
| But I don't think sleazy is the right term for hitting yourself
| in confusion.
|
| Maybe moronic fits better?
| bolognafairy wrote:
| How do you differentiate "blindly" suggesting AWS from
| someone non-blindly suggesting it?
|
| Or is everyone that disagrees with you simply not seeing the
| Objective Truth of which you are aware and they are not?
|
| Sheesh.
| Retric wrote:
| In tech, blind support of anything is simply based on
| superficial aspects like popularity or marketing without
| any specific supporting arguments around price,
| performance, etc.
|
| Thus it's easy to distinguish the two by asking in-depth
| questions. IE it's fast! How fast?
| MadVikingGod wrote:
| It usually starts with blindly suggesting we should get on
| cloud. Usually with no other reason than "Everyone else is
| doing it". That usually ends with a large pile of cash
| burnt and maybe a thought piece or two about how cloud is
| bad and we should just go back to banging rocks.
|
| The non-blind suggestion usually has reasons on why you
| want cloud services, why AWS is the right choice over many
| other suppliers of cloud, and some cost analysis of what it
| would cost vs doing nothing or why you can't do nothing.
| devmor wrote:
| Are you really saying you've never heard anyone recommend
| something based on anything other than objective fact?
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| All I've said is I ask for something more than nothing, and
| your first response is to accuse me of demanding
| everything.
|
| Not going to spell out a design meeting if your first
| instinct is an ad hominem.
|
| Sheesh
| placardloop wrote:
| This isn't really the official AWS "documentation". AWS docs
| are located at a completely different website and are free to
| access.
|
| The linked article is from "AWS re:Post" which is the
| equivalent of a "support forum" where you can ask questions and
| get crowdsourced answers from either other AWS users, or from
| AWS employees/AWS support themselves. Some of these questions
| are so popular that they show up in search results and so might
| be treated as documentation.
|
| It's dumb, but not uncommon in my experience for such "support
| forums" to be behind a paywall.
| datadeft wrote:
| Aren't these already in *GPT?
| bilekas wrote:
| I hope this was an accident though ? Seems counter intuitive to
| payway documentation, for me at least that's one of the selling
| points before buying a service - How well documented is it ?
|
| I can't resist the urge to complain about the quality of AWS
| documentation though. It might have been a good thing for peoples
| mental health to paywall it.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I know they've fixed it but I really hope whoever made the change
| internally is chastised and not told "Just wait a few months and
| we will try again". Paywalling help/documentation is just evil.
| Period.
|
| I despise using tools/sass/software/etc that login/pay-wall their
| docs. The only thing worse is getting a PDF of the docs.
| mattigames wrote:
| Games taught companies that they can get away with a lot, loot
| boxes and battle passes and DLCs but for documentation are
| coming, I hope that my company finally buys the JavaScript code
| samples DLC
| kvirani wrote:
| Aren't AAA game companies hurting at least partly because of
| the blowback from those models?
| tacticus wrote:
| yeah but it takes years for that to happen so all the stock
| bonuses vest fine.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting. The only mainstream provider who does this that I
| know of is Red Hat[0]. It's amusing because it's a validation of
| the belief that companies will try to maximize customer spend on
| their highest margin SKUs.
|
| 0: Example https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1220203
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Huh? Don't all of the network gesr manufacturers do this?
| tryauuum wrote:
| don't you unlock it with a free account?
| megadata wrote:
| I remember back in the day that some software sold the manual
| separately. Even the digital copies.
|
| I think that's one of the most incredibly short sighted moves you
| can make. Effectively paywalling the people that want to use your
| software.
|
| I have to say that I'm not really flabbergasted that AWS did it,
| although it's definitely a new low. Stark warning to newcomers.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| AWS blocked Tor some time ago.
| StratusBen wrote:
| Absolutely wild.
|
| Just as a community-supported plug here on the billing
| documentation front, we just launched https://cur.vantage.sh/
| which we will never paywall. It's meant to be a free resource for
| looking up AWS billing codes with descriptions in layman's
| terms...specifically because AWS' documentation is so
| sparse/rough here.
|
| We also maintain https://ec2instances.info/ which we'll try to
| add more documentation to (we recently added helpful docs and
| articles on each instance type page) to try and help the broader
| community.
| Terr_ wrote:
| At work, I do a lot of integrations with other third-party APIs,
| and I've seen some put crucial portions of their documentation
| behind "you need to be a customer first."
|
| This is _always_ a major adverse-inference to me.
|
| The company will either be a bad partner, or they have a bad
| product, or both.
| placardloop wrote:
| For what it's worth, the linked article is not the official AWS
| documentation, and the official AWS documentation has never been
| paywalled as far as I know.
|
| The linked article is from "AWS re:Post" which is the equivalent
| of a support forum where you can ask questions and get
| crowdsourced answers from AWS employees, support, or other AWS
| users. IME it's not uncommon for such support forums for
| enterprise software to be behind some sort of paywall (or at
| least login-wall).
|
| The real problem IMO is that some of these support forum answers
| have become so popular and important that they really should be
| part of the official documentation rather than existing solely on
| the crowdsourced platform.
| the_arun wrote:
| It has a bigger side effect. If they paywall, how LLMs/Search
| Engines are going to train themselves on AWS?
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