I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up.

When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee.

We went the AWS route because we are fully cloud-based anyway. It was something that people who came before me were already familiar with, so it was a lot easier for me to get buy-in.

The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult.

All you can do is communicate with them what's happening and get something that you're both comfortable with. However, if you're doing that, then what's the point of having the per-node model in the first place? It would be better to move to a fixed-pricing model.

Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.

We are still in the process of evaluating Chef Compute. Currently, we use Chef and Puppet. Soon, we will probably be purchasing it from AWS Marketplace.

Pricing for Chef can be relatively high for some customers but, if we consider the benefits it provides, we can say that it is a reasonable price. . Customers need to pay for the license of the tool on a yearly basis.

Purchasing the solution from AWS Marketplace was a good experience. AWS's pricing is pretty in line with the product's regular pricing. Though instance-wise, AWS is not the cheapest in the market.

The AWS platform is solid. With the technologies that they offer, it makes it easy to integrate. When you are building environments and your able to integrate everything together, this is good thing.

Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a good place to go to purchase this product because you receive a sense of authenticity with the products. Since AWS has its own checks on AWS Marketplace products, there is sense of relief that the product will not be problematic.

There are some flexible pricing models which you get from multiple partners, and then we bundle our solution. From that perspective, it is okay so far. But maybe when we go to the enterprise level, there will be components we have to pay for, when it comes to DevOps with customers who already have an existing license. Those things are always complicated. But otherwise, for regular commercial licensing, it can be flexible.

The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it. 

We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time.