Spending and cost
This topic explains how to monitor the amount of money that you spend when you send MMS messages through AWS End User Messaging, and how to read the usage types on your bill. If you only want to view your monthly charges, including the amount of money you've spent, use the AWS Billing and Cost Management console, which provides an estimate of your bill for the current month and your final charges for previous months.
Monitor your spending with CloudWatch
To quickly determine how much money you've spent sending messages during the current month, use the Metrics section of the CloudWatch console. CloudWatch retains metric data for 15 months, so you can view real-time data and analyze historical trends.
Important
You must create a service-linked role for CloudWatch metrics to be collected.
To view MMS spending metrics in CloudWatch
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Open the CloudWatch console.
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In the navigation pane, choose Metrics.
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On the All metrics tab, choose SMSVoice, and then choose Account Metrics.
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Select MediaMessageMonthlySpend. The graph updates to display the amount of money spent on MMS during the current month.
Note
This metric doesn't appear until you send at least one MMS message using AWS End User Messaging.
You can also create a CloudWatch billing alarm that notifies you through an Amazon SNS topic when your monthly MMS spending exceeds a certain amount. Before you create a billing alarm, set your AWS Region to US East (N. Virginia) Region, because billing metric data is stored there and represents worldwide charges. For more information, see Using Amazon CloudWatch alarms in the Amazon CloudWatch User Guide.
Understand MMS billing and usage reports
Unlike SMS, which is billed per message part, MMS is billed per message. A single MMS message
is delivered as one message part and is not broken into multiple parts, so each MMS message that
AWS End User Messaging accepts generates a single billable send regardless of the size of the media or the
length of the text body. For more information about pricing, see AWS End User Messaging Pricing
The MMS channel generates a usage type on your bill for each combination of destination country and origination identity. The usage type follows the same field format as the SMS usage type, with the message type reading OutboundMMS rather than OutboundSMS.
Note
The exact MMS usage type string format, the set of usage types generated per send (message count, message fees, and any carrier fees), and whether MMS incurs carrier fees in the United States and Canada [needs SME confirmation]. Confirm the MMS usage type details against the AWS Billing and Cost Management usage report before publishing specific examples.
You can use tags for organizing your bill to reflect your own cost structure. For example, you can tag several resources with a specific campaign name, and then organize your billing information to see the total cost of that campaign across several services. For more information, see Cost allocation and tagging in the AWS Billing User Guide.
