Why is the AWS pricing calculator so horrible?
<rant> It is embarrassingly bad. It looks like it was released in 1997 and hasn't been updated since. It is missing calculators for several AWS services. The UX is painful. I mean even the list of services in the left navigation panel is in some indiscernible order. You have to either manually look through it or Ctrl+F to find what you're looking for.
This is the thing that customers use BEFORE deciding to invest in your platform. Why not invest 1-2 development weeks and clean it up?
It's mind-boggling to me. I've heard some speculate that it's because AWS wants to obscure the true cost, but I lean towards Hanlon's razor.
By contrast, Azure's calculator is fucking amazing. Or at least it looks like it was designed this decade, functions for all of Azure's service offerings, and provides a way to find the service you're interested in quickly. What an engineering marvel.
I honestly can't believe Microsoft isn't using this directly when selling to businesses deciding between the platforms. Any reasonable layperson who knows nothing of either platform would look at these two tools and think that AWS's tooling is shit (they wouldn't be TOTALLY wrong, but still).
You have teams upon teams building the coolest shit on the planet across so many AWS products. That this piece of garbage is the first thing many potential customers see is a travesty. Get your shit together, AWS. </rant>