How you get 1000 $ AWS credits with AWS Activate for your SaaS product
Tags: aws, serverless, saas, tutorial
Published: 2021-06-22 06:18:50

When we started to build [deposur](https://www.deposur.de) it was really important for us to keep our costs down from the beginning on. For that you have basically two approaches:
1. Keep your cost down (wow!)
2. You don’t have to pay for the costs (aha…)

Since our app is completely serverless (except fulltext search) the costs are already pretty low. But some still come up. For example our elastic search and some larger data ingestions. Since AWS bills are not completely straightforward it is also a good feeling to know that you have a small money cushion in case you accidently trigger some script which will cost a lot (happened almost once).

In this post I’ll quickly show you how we got 1000 $ AWS credits with the AWS Activate founders program which is exactly for bootstrappers.

# What is AWS Activate?
AWS Activate is AWS’s program for Startups and Founders to get started quickly in the cloud. There are two different programs you can apply for. One is for VC backed startups and one is for the typical bootstrapped SaaS founder. I am talking about the second one, for bootstrapped startups.

The prerequisites are really low:
- Your startup has to be less then 10 years old
- You need a landing page
- You need to have an AWS account
- You need LinkedIn account(s)

I think landing page is even optional but I would highly recommend it to show what you are planning to do.

# How to apply?

1.Sign in to your AWS account and go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/activate/home/#/apply

2.Click on your desired package → Founders package → Get started

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dmpd9gaqo4p9vedpm22o.png)

3.Check “Apply my credits to this account” and check if you are in the right account 😉

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/084to1c12tdd6wiuh5i0.png)

4.Now you will see a form where you have to enter some basic information about your company like 
 
- Company name
- Company description
- Website
- Industries (up to 10!)
- And some information in which services or areas you are interested in

5.The last step is to complete your team profile. Here, just enter your basic information and I recommend to add the LinkedIn profiles of all founders and team members.

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/rrgxz8laxjqbb6b00is2.png)
 
That’s it. Click on submit application and wait for a couple of days and get your 1000 $. For deposur it took about 3 days and everything was set. You will see your credits then either in the Activate menu in your AWS account or in your billing account when you click on credits.

![image](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8hhd9xazdjn3pu3sxjbm.png)

# Benefits

## Credits

I think the first one is easy. You get money for free. 1000 $ in credits for almost all AWS services. The most important exception is that buying domains is not included. 

## Support Credits

You get 350 $ in AWS developer support as well. I already had contact with some of them and they are super competent with discussing your architecture, ideas and troubleshoot your problems.

## Activate Console

The last part and maybe not the most interesting is that you have access to the AWS activate console with additional information, workshops and tutorials. You also get **exclusive offers** by certain partners like AirTable, ZenDesk or Jira. TBH I did not use them so far but I am sure they have some great offers as well. 😉

That’s it. Have fun building your project for free!

If you want to know about my journey of building serverless SaaS products on AWS, consider following my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sandro_vol) 🙂