AWS Marketplace Private Offer Expirations and Auto-Renewal Behaviors

Background

The Misconception: Customers often assume that when an AWS Marketplace Private Offer (PO) expires, the subscription will automatically "roll over" or transition to a standard monthly contract at the public list price.

Important: This assumption is incorrect. Unlike standard monthly public subscriptions, Private Offers do not auto-renew by default, nor do they automatically convert to public MSRP pricing upon expiration.

Resolution & Explanation

1. How Private Offers Behave at Expiration

When a Private Offer contract term ends, the following sequence occurs immediately:
* AWS rejects further remittance/billing for that subscription ID.
* The subscription status moves to an "Unsubscribed" state.
* The environment is flagged to be decommissioned as it is no longer subscribed to.

2. Impact on Service Availability

Because the subscription is unsubscribed upon expiration, the vendor (e.g., Red Hat) receives a notification from AWS indicating the service has been cancelled.

• Immediate Action: The vendor receives an "Unsubscribe" notice.
• Grace Period: To prevent accidental data loss, the environment is retained for a short grace period (30 days) to verify if the unsubscription was intentional.
• Service Interruption: If a new Private Offer or Public Subscription is not activated within this window, the environment will be spun down and service usage will stop.
• Restoration: To restore service, the customer must manually subscribe to a new offer. This is not a seamless process and requires administrative intervention to reconnect the environment to the new subscription.

3. Managing Auto-Renewal

There is a distinct difference in default behaviors between offer types:

How to view renewal settings and manage subscriptions:
1. Log into the AWS Management Console.
2. Search for and navigate to the AWS Marketplace service.
3. In the left-hand navigation pane, select Manage subscriptions.

Note: If a Private Offer is set to expire, a new Private Offer must be negotiated and accepted, or the customer must manually subscribe to the Public Offer to maintain continuity.

Root Cause

AWS Marketplace mechanisms treat Private Offers as fixed-term contracts.

Once the term concludes, the billing authorization token associated with that specific offer becomes invalid. Without a new active offer (Private or Public), there is no valid mechanism to bill the customer, automatically triggering the unsubscription workflow.