Microsoft has slashed the price of its standard Azure support plan to just $100 a month, from its previous price point of $300 a month, alongside a new vow to halve its response time if something goes wrong from two hours to just an hour for critical cases.
The discounts aren't just for standard business customers though, as Microsoft's Government Azure customers will also see the price of their plans drop from $375 per month to $125 per month. The new rates apply for all regions, except for customers in Germany.
"Azure is continuously improving and expanding the range of options to help you accelerate your cloud journey," the company said in the price reduction announcement. "From the built-in Azure Advisor service that provides free, proactive, and personalized best practice recommendations, to direct connection with Azure engineers through multiple levels of Azure support."
The company added that these changes mean Azure now offers the most cost-effective and predictable support offering amongst major cloud providers.
AWS's support packages are included for free in its basic service, although there's a charge of 3% of the monthly AWS usage (or $29, whichever is greater) for developers, and a tiered service for business accounts, starting at $100 or $15,000 for enterprise customers. However, its response times are already an hour for the business and enterprise plans.
Google's premium support services start at $150 a month for its bronze package, $400 a month for gold (plus % costs for usage) and tailored pricing starting at $15,000 for its platinum service. The bronze option only offers a response time of four hours, although its platinum service provides a response within 15-minutes.
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