title: AWS SNS push notifications way overpriced?
body: <p>I feel like I am missing something. I am evaluating what the costs would be for push notifications for a large social app like Instagram.<br><br> Let's say we have 150,000,000 users (large, I know, but this is an example situation). Let's also say that each user receives 200 push notifications per month. <br><br>With the <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/sns/pricing/" rel="nofollow">AWS SNS pricing</a>, this usage would cost $30,000 per month! (150,000,000*200)/1,000,000 (AWS charges per million requests - 50c per publish and 50c per delivery)  = $30,000. There may even be data transfer charges that I'm not factoring in.  <br><br> If I were to use a service like <a href="https://www.parse.com/plans" rel="nofollow">Parse Push</a>, who charges unique recipients per month, the savings would be massive. It would cost $7,450 to serve <strong><em>unlimited</em></strong> notifications to 150,000,000 unique users per month. ($0.05 per 1000 users over 1mil per month) That's almost a quarter the price of AWS for unlimitedly more notifications. <br><br> How do these services even compete at this price difference?</p>