Amazon Connect Pricing in 2019: A Closer Look at Features, Costs, and More

It’s no secret that Amazon is secretly heading towards world domination, right?

After developing numerous successful platforms within AWS, Amazon also took a step forward in the call center software space, publishing its own cloud-based contact web center — Amazon Connect. Amazon struggled to find the right match for their own needs, so they decided to build a whole contact center platform from scratch, and now they’re offering it to the public as well.

This is no surprise when it comes to Amazon since they’re already well-known as a company that dominates the consumer industries. After venturing into the complex world of online commerce, AI, and cloud computing, Amazon is now also working on consumer contact center as an extension to their enormous AWS platform.

The solution is known as Amazon Connect.  We have taken a deep dive into the pricing structure and features of a number of popular products recently, including looking into Dialpad pricing and UberConference pricing.  In this article, we’re going to take a comprehensive look at what exactly Amazon has in store for us, and how Amazon Connect is priced.

Amazon Connect Overview

As mentioned, Amazon Connect is essentially an extension of AWS cloud services.

If your business is already utilizing AWS, this might be a great opportunity to take it a step further and let Amazon take care of another piece of your business operations. Nonetheless, it’s still a decent option on its own, outside of the AWS solutions.

Amazon also claimed that the solution is built on the exact same technology that they themselves use to power millions of customers conversations.

The great thing is that Amazon Connect users will also be able to integrate other solutions offered by Amazon, such as powerful AI technology (Amazon Lex), cloud-based services, and analytics. It’s also built with simplicity in mind — it requires no additional software as it runs on the browser, and it’s easy to integrate with other systems such as AWS or CRM systems.

The Amazon Connect pricing is on-demand based, which removes the ugly risk of being stuck in a yearly contract in case things don’t work out. Anyway, that’s the short version of it, and now we’re about to explore Amazon Connect features and pricing methods, in-depth.

Features & Benefits

Amazon Connect is built with simplicity in mind, but nonetheless, it’s still packed with features.

In short, the features can be summed down to the following:

• Dynamic and personal contact flows
• Skill-based routing
• Real-time and historic metrics
• Natural language chatbots using Amazon Lex
• AI-powered speech analytics
• Outbound calling
• High-quality audio
• Integrations

High-quality audio, outbound calling, smart routing along with other features allow businesses to set up a modern contact center with all the basic needs covered. On top of that, businesses get a little taste of Amazon’s technology such as Amazon Lex and other powerful AI systems.

Of course, it’s always worth noting that Amazon is one of the leading companies in such technologies, so there’s the long-term safety factor as well.

We can already see that Amazon Connects follows the industry standard with things such as app integrations and analytics. With Amazon Connect, your team can certainly enjoy some of these key features that are necessary for modern contact centers. What really piques our interests are non-basic, special features, that are exclusive to Amazon Connect, and these are the ones based on their previous technologies.

Exclusive Benefits

Amazon Connect provides all the basic call center features, combined with some of their own technology.

First and foremost, the whole platform is browser-based, so there’s no need to install any kind of additional software. This simplifies things a lot, especially for teams that are already used to operating on the AWS platforms. The ability to set everything up within a few clicks is certainly handy, especially for teams that have no additional time to spare on training and setup.

Next up, all Amazon Connect users can get access to other Amazon technologies, such as Amazon Lex and Amazon S3. These technologies will be a must-have as the whole industry slowly moves towards automation. The ability to create powerful response bots, transcribe voice text and extract sentiment from conversations is what sets traditional connect centers apart from the modern ones.

All of these technologies together lead to a much better and more fulfilling customer experience, which is what every business wants to accomplish with customer support programs.

We can safely say that Amazon does not fall behind in regards to the whole trend of AI technology for call centers, and it’s also safe to assume that they will keep up the good work in the years to come.

A Different Kind of Pricing

Finally, it’s worth talking about the specific pricing plans of Amazon Connect, as it does things a little different than others. Most connect center companies offer yearly plans based on the number of users, consumption, maintenance and so on. Although this seems like a good deal, things can get pretty messed up if a business runs into problems and decides to downsize, or even terminate the contract, and there are no easy ways out in such situations.

On the other hand…

Amazon Connect only offers “Pay As You Go” services, with no long-term commitments or minimum monthly fees. Your team is charged by the number of minutes you use Amazon Connect to engage with customers, with specific per-minute rates. These rates vary based on your country, the type of call, and so on. There are also rumors that Amazon is considering to employ “per second” charge rates.

Charging by the minute is usually considered as a more expensive option, but it has its own advantages for teams who aren’t looking to commit long-term.

Let’s take a deeper look at per-minute rates for Amazon Connect, and you decide how to proceed from there.

Amazon Connect Pricing

As mentioned, Amazon Connect is a pay-as-you-go service, which means there are no defined pricing plans. You pay by the minute for using the services, plus the additional telephony services. Amazon Connects offers DID and toll-free numbers for telephony — they are charged on a per-day basis, and there is a per-minute charge for inbound and outbound calls.

These rates differ based on the country and the type of service that you’re using.

Amazon Connect service usage fee is fixed at $0.018 per minute for all users.

Direct Inward Dialing and toll-free numbers are available to the US and more than 20 countries worldwide, with specific rates, taxes, and fees for each country. These pricing tables are based by the specific AWS region (US East, US West, Asia Pacific Syndey / Tokyo, and EU Frankfurt).

Amazon Connect Pricing for US East

Telephony pricing for US East region:

Rates for Outbound Calls to every country can be found here. As an example, an outbound call to someone in the US costs $0.0065 per minute.

There are three charges that apply here. As an example, we’re going to take a customer calling a toll-free number in US East that lasts 5 minutes:

1. Service usage charge at $0.018 * 5 minutes = $0.090
2. Day charge for the toll-free number at $0.06 per day = $0.06
3. Inbound call per minute charge, in this case $0.012 * 5 min = $0.060

The total cost for this call would be $0.21 plus taxes and fees.

International calls cost more, but if your company is operating overseas, you can always work with telephony pricing in that region, such as Europe or Asia.

Amazon Connect Pricing for US West

Telephony pricing for US West region:

Rates for Outbound Calls to every country can be found here.

The rates are pretty much the same as US East.

Amazon Connect Pricing for Asia Pacific (Sydney)

Telephony pricing for the Sydney region:

Rates for Outbound Calls to every country can be found here.

Amazon Connect Pricing for Asia Pacific (Tokyo)

Telephony pricing for Tokyo region:

Rates for Outbound Calls to every country can be found here.

Amazon Connect Pricing for EU (Frankfurt)

Telephony pricing for Europe:

Rates for Outbound Calls to every country can be found here.

As we can see, the option to have cheaper rates for international teams is great.

AWS Free Usage Tier

It’s worth mentioning that AWS Free Tier also offers Amazon Connect for 12 months. You can get up to 90 minutes of service usage, a free DID number, 30 minutes/month of inbound DID calls, and 30 minutes of outbound calls for the same country in which the AWS region is located. Clients from the US region also get a toll-free number plus 30 minutes of usage per month.

As an example, businesses that use AWS in the EU region can get free DID numbers for European countries, as well as free minutes for calls in that region.

As we mentioned earlier, this is a great opportunity for businesses that are looking to use both AWS and Amazon Connect at the same time.

The Bottom Line

All things considered, Amazon Connect certainly brings some interesting features to the play, and you may want to consider giving your team a shot with this service. The pricing model of “pay as you go” sounds interesting, and the rates are fairly decent as well.

In the end, we can conclude that Amazon Connect is great for 2 types of businesses:

• Businesses that are already using AWS
• Businesses that are looking for short-term, contract-less solutions

If your team fits this description, you should definitely give Amazon Connect a serious thought. What you get here is a bunch of great features, relatively cheap per-minute rates, and an option to quit using the service whenever you want.

Amazon Connect — you only pay what you use, and it’s up to you to decide.