Reading and Sign Up time: 10 minutes
Cost: Costs May occur if you start using the services outside of the free tier and I’m not responsible for those charges! If you just create the account there shouldn’t be any charges besides the account verification.
Note: This is part of the multi-account design. Read the architecture design first.
Whether you’re creating your personal free tier account or your enterprise account, it’s all pretty much the same at certain extent. Read to find out more.
Create the account
Link: https://aws.amazon.com/free/
Personal account: Create an email address that will be used only for your master account.
Enterprise account: Create a distribution email group with the “master” label. i.e. project-name-aws-master@company.com. Never use individual company email address because if that employee leaves then you’ll have to contact AWS support. Also it’s best if more than one person is managing the accounts for obvious reasons.
Personal account: Selecting this option it will ask for credit card information.
Enterprise account: This “professional” account type is for enterprise accounts that will pay most likely through invoices. You do have to get an AWS representative to help out with this.
Finding this article helpful or want to learn about a particular topic? Just subscribe!
AWS Support plans
Regardless of personal or enterprise account type select the free plan. Why? Besides the free reason; all the other plans are NOT FIXED prices. Notice the “From” keyword. It can hurt you more than help you at the start.
Support plans payment formula
| Developer | Example |
| 3% of your bill or $29.00 whichever is greater | Total monthly bill: 538.11 3% of bill: 16.1433 Developer plan cost for the month: $29.00 |
| Business | Example |
| 10% of monthly AWS usage for the first $0-$10K 7% of monthly AWS usage from $10K-$80K 5% of monthly AWS usage from $80K-$250K 3% of monthly AWS usage over $250K or $100 whichever is greater | Total monthly bill: $44,380.22 10% of $10K = $1,000 7% of $34,380.22 = $2406.62 Business plan cost for the month: $1,000 + $2,406.62 = $3,406.62 |
| Enterprise | Example |
| 10% of monthly AWS usage for the first $0–$150K 7% of monthly AWS usage from $150K–$500K 5% of monthly AWS usage from $500K–$1M 3% monthly AWS usage over $1M or $15,000 whichever is greater | Total monthly bill: $31,000,000 10% of $150K = $15,000 7% of $500K = $35,000 5% of $1M = $50,000 3% of $29,350,000 = $880,500 Enterprise plan cost for the month: $980,500 |
Note: The monthly total bill is only for the AWS usages and not the AWS marketplace usages!
You CANNOT sign in as an IAM user for your first login. You must login with root credentials (email address and password). I’ll write up IAM accounts later.
Side Note: Hey AWS redirect to root login on sign up completion!
AWS Sign In URL: https://aws.amazon.com/console/
At this point you should have received a welcome email and possibly a small charge ($1.00) on your credit card.
AWS Management Console
A successful account login will redirect to the AWS Management Console.
This console designed has went through several iteration of improvements to help you find all the AWS services. You can click on “All Services” to view all the services categorized. You may use the search by to do a “like” query search type.
AWS Console Shortcut bar
My favorite way to navigate around is using this shortcut bar.
Click on the Pin
Drag and drop your most used services on the bar
Click on the Pin to save. Heads up: This is only cached on your browser. If you sign on an another browser you’ll have to redo these favorites.
Almost ready to use!
Navigate to EC2 service, you may get a message that your account needs confirmation. Go through those instructions.
I recommend not using any of the services just yet. We have to do a lot of security management, general configuration and billing setup on the account to make sure it’s safe to use and “control” the budget. Here’s that post!
As mentioned in a previous post, do some homework for AWS governance before using these services! And do get some training done otherwise you can get lost with hundreds of services and features!
As always if you see any errors, mistakes, have suggestions or questions please comment below. Don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe for more!
