[boyband6666]

Free tiers are an essential; when settling on a service I will try many, in parallel with our current system. If I'm happy it is better I will switch,. when either immediately, or after a short period results in us being paid at a mid tier. If I have to pay to try, and find out if it is any good and works for our specific cases, I'll try it after competitors - so probably won't get round to it - as something else probably meets our needs first.

[madaxe_again]

Free trials are an essential for the reasons you describe - but it doesn’t mean it has to be free forever - just for long enough to make an honest evaluation. 30 days is the norm, and that seems fair to me.

[Jenk]

AWS (and generally all *aaS providers) free tier(s) are enough to experiment with, and get a feel for, but are limited enough that using them in any meaningful way is very difficult without incurring cost.

Surely you can appreciate that "time" is not the only commodity that can be meaningfully (and reasonably) limited?

[tedmiston]

That said, much (but not all) of the AWS "Free Tier" is really just a 12-month free trial. Only a small percentage of the offerings are truly longterm freemium.

https://aws.amazon.com/free/

[ptman]

https://paul.totterman.name/posts/free-clouds/ - you can do quite a bit with some free tiers, and some don't have a time limit

[thfuran]

Are you under the impression that their contention is that avoiding free tiers is essential?