Renting remote-controlled Android devices for $250 a month, is this even remotely worth it? There aren't many devices that wouldn't pay for themselves by the end of the 2nd month...
I don't understand the value proposition here at all. If you're subscribing for unlimited use then more likely than not you're all-in and are going to be testing for more than 2 or 3 months - probably continuously for years in fact.
At that scale doesn't the up-front cost and commitment of buying/managing the device make much more sense? What have I missed?
> Pricing is based on device minutes, which are determined by the number of devices you use and the duration of your tests. AWS Device Farm comes with a free tier of 250 device minutes. After that you are charged $0.17 per device minute. As your testing needs grow, you can opt for our unmetered testing plan, which allows unlimited testing for a flat monthly fee of $250 per device.
17c/minute/device is fine after that since you'll only likely need 20 minutes to test your average app against each device (and they only seem to support a handful). So $10~ to test your apps against a bunch of Amazon devices (ignoring the free 250 minutes), is fine by me.
The only reason I might look elsewhere is that other services offer a more broad range of Android devices, not just Amazon Fire stuff. So you can spin up a Galaxy S6, Nexus, Fire Tablet, etc all under one roof.
Also calling a $800 package with 25 hours and 5x accounts the "starter" level seems a little odd. It is your lowest paid tier, but there's nothing starter-y about it. It is your normal tier. The free tier is the starter tier.
I have no idea what a "project" is. Seems like an arbitrary limitation. What do you care what code I am running with my hours? It is none of your business. Seems like you created the concept just so you could "sell us more of it" with the pro tier.
Also pro coming with only 5 users is odd. If I am paying for 100 hours/month of usage, that just seems like an annoyance. You'll force businesses into only giving out access to a handful of people rather than every single developer (and if so few people use it, the company might decide the pro tier doesn't make sense and downgrade to "starter").
Why is it so hard to find a list of devices you currently support? I actually googled it and still cannot figure out what devices your service offers. That seems like absolutely vital information for anyone even considering you.
Overall I like the service, but I like Amazon's model more. Just give me a cost/minute and get out of my way.
PS - You absolutely CAN justify charging more than Amazon. iOS support alone is a massive value add. I just like their pricing model, I am not proposing you charge 17c/minute/device.
I believe Xamarin Test Cloud includes iOS, although I'm not certain if it integrates outside of the Xamarin framework. http://xamarin.com/test-cloud
Seems like a gap they should all be trying to fill.
http://keynote.com/solutions/testing/mobile-testing
http://mobileportland.com/device-lab
etc.
Anyway, awesome to see AWS doing it in practice. As usual, it will be more interesting to see what happens when competition turns up. Cloud space has more innovation and cut-throat competition than many IT sectors. Can't wait to see what the competition costs. ;)
