Amazon Makes It Free for Developers to Build and Host Most Alexa Skills Using AWS
16 March 2017 - 12:00AM
Business Wire
New program offers AWS promotional credits for
developers to put toward their Alexa skill
Tens of thousands of developers already
building skills for Alexa
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced a new program that will
make it free for tens of thousands of Alexa developers to build and
host most Alexa skills using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Many Alexa
skill developers currently take advantage of the AWS Free Tier,
which offers one million AWS Lambda requests and up to 750 hours of
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) compute time per month at
no charge. However, if developers exceed the AWS Free Tier limits,
they may incur AWS usage charges each month.
Now, developers with a published Alexa skill can apply to
receive a $100 AWS promotional credit and can also receive an
additional $100 per month in AWS promotional credits if they incur
AWS usage charges for their skill – making it free for developers
to build and host most Alexa skills.
“There is already a large community of incredibly engaged
developers building skills for Alexa,” said Steve Rabuchin, Vice
President, Amazon Alexa. “Today, we’re excited to announce a new
program that will free up developers to create more robust and
unique skills that can take advantage of AWS services. We can’t
wait to see what developers create for Alexa.”
Hurricane Center, an Alexa skill that provides the latest storm
information based on data from governmental agencies, uses AWS
Lambda. “The customer response to Hurricane Center has been
incredibly positive, and Alexa has offered us an entirely new way
to deliver the latest in weather and storm information,” said
Terren Peterson, Hurricane Center’s developer and an experienced
technology executive. “Now, if my skill sees extensive use during
hurricane season, I can be assured that those scalable costs will
be covered with this new program. It puts my mind at ease and
allows me to help more individuals be prepared for storms.”
Ryan Kroonenburg is a UK-based Solutions Architect and the
founder of A Cloud Guru, a training community on AWS, which just
introduced courses on creating Alexa skills. “Developers already
know that building for Alexa is free using AWS Free Tier with AWS
Lambda, but what they can’t plan for is how successful their skill
will be,” said Ryan Kroonenburg. “This program not only allows
developers to create robust skills that use AWS services like
Amazon DynamoDB without worrying about costs, but also ensures that
popular skills that hit more than 1 million calls per month are
cost effective to maintain. It’s a big benefit for the Alexa skill
developer community.”
Darian Johnson, a technology consultant and Alexa skill
developer, uses AWS Lambda and Amazon DynamoDB for his Alexa skill,
Virtual Librarian, which provides reading recommendations based on
bestseller lists, award nominations, and user reviews. The skill
won Most Useful API Mashup in a recent Hackster.io contest. “AWS
services, like Amazon DynamoDB, have allowed me to create more
robust skill experiences,” said Darian Johnson. “Now that I’m able
to freely create and scale skills, and have the peace of mind that
I’m covered if my skill takes off, I’m motivated to see what next
big skill I can create.”
Developers can visit developer.amazon.com/alexa to
apply for this program and learn more about building and hosting
skills using the Alexa Skills Kit and AWS.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablet
devices, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the
products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information,
visit www.amazon.com/about.
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