I've been running a startup in development mode on AWS for over year now (I know, it's taking a very long time!). Server costs are only going on the up. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get credits or help from AWS in terms of cost?
All the courses and such I've found so far have expired and the AWS Activate Program only appears to be for startups in an incubator program (due to the way the project is, an incubator isn't right for the moment).
Costs aren't huge (they're about US$150/month+), but because development is taking so long it is starting to take a toll. Also it's probably going to at least need 2-3x the AWS resources once it goes into production.
Have you spoken to someone from AWS? Often if you speak to them, let them know what you're doing and let them know that if you can get your hands on $X worth of credit you'll be able to complete your development and roll out your service (which will result in ongoing income from them) they'll come to the party.
If they don't want to budge you can also mention that you spoke to someone at Microsoft Azure and they were going to give you $X worth of credit (MS regularly hand out US$500 Azure vouchers basically if you just ask nicely) and see whether that prompts them to offer you something to stick with AWS.
If you're still in development have you looked at strategies to minimise your costs (scheduled jobs to switch everything off or pull back capacities out of hours, moving some development locally and having a few days per week as "test days" where cloud infrastructure is switched on)?