AWS i.e. Amazon Web Services is one of the popular and widely used cloud services vendors in the market right now. With the financial heft and capacities of Amazon behind it, it is no wonder that AWS has taken the cloud vendor market by storm.
For all the undoubted good qualities that endear it to its customers, there may very well come a time when you as a customer want to get rid of your AWS account. You might want to switch to a rival vendor whose services are cheaper or more customized to your needs. Or you might simply not need cloud services anymore, and thus want to end your relationship with AWS.
Either way, the process of deleting your AWS account is quite straightforward. However, there are still several factors you’ll need to be informed about and take into consideration while going through the process of closing your account. To learn more about how you can delete your AWS account, keep reading!
Process of closing an AWS account:
To shut down your AWS account, follow these steps:
- Go to the billing and cost management console on the following page: AWS Billing.
- In the navigation bar, in the upper right-hand corner, you will see your account name or alias. Click on it, and then click on Account.
- At the end of the page, you’ll find the Close Account section. Carefully read through and ensure that you completely understand the text next to the check box. Once you’re done, select the check box. Once you’ve closed your AWS account, you can no longer use it to access any of the various services offered by AWS.
- If your account has an MFA (Multi-factor authentication) Device linked to it, keep the MFA device until after the end of the 90-day post-closure period. Or, turn it off before closing the account.
- After you have accepted the terms and conditions by selecting the check box, click on Close Account.
- A confirmation box will appear asking you to confirm your decision. Here also, click on Close Account.
Using your AWS account after closure:
Once you have deleted your AWS account, you can no longer use it to avail yourself of the various services offered by AWS. You can, however, still use the account during the post-closure period to access your past billing information, and also contact AWS Support. This post-closure period will last, as mentioned above, for 90 days from the date you delete your account.
You can reopen your account during this post-closure period by getting in touch with AWS Support. If you do end up reopening your account, you can access whatever content you didn’t delete, and services you didn’t terminate, before deleting your account. In such a scenario, you may be charged for the cost of running those prices. To calculate the amount you’ll have to pay, you can use the AWS Pricing Calculator. You can access the said calculator at Price Calculator.
After the post-closure period:
Once the post-closure period of 90 days is done, your AWS account is permanently closed. You cannot reopen it anymore. Any services you didn’t terminate earlier are terminated, and content you didn’t delete is deleted. Please do note that you won’t be able to ever create another AWS account using the same email address, alias, and other credentials as an account which you have deleted.
If the account you’ve deleted is the same one that you were using as AWS Firewall Manager administrator, then your policy data will also be retained for the 90-day post-closure period. Once the 90 days are over, AWS will permanently delete all policy data from your account.
If you wish to retain the findings from the policies for longer than 90 days, you can archive the policies. As long as the policy data is retained by AWS, whenever you reopen the closed account, AWS will reassign it as the service administrator and recover the service policy data for that account.
Things to consider when closing your AWS account:
There are certain facets of your relationship with AWS that you must take into consideration before you go ahead with permanently deleting your account. These facets are as follows:
- Payment Method and Outstanding Fees: AWS will charge you, through your previously designated payment method for any usage fee incurred before the deletion of your account. If you have any active subscription, you might continue to be charged for it even after you’ve deleted your account, until either the subscription in question expires, or is sold according to the terms governing it. In such instances, you will be charged via your designated payment method. This might happen, for example, when you have a Reserved Instance that you pay for each month.
- On-Demand Charges: During the 90-day post-closure period, you won’t be billed by AWS for any on-demand charges. However, any bills that were accrued during the time your account was operational will be collected. These bills will be collected at the beginning of the next month. In addition to this, any subscriptions you have bought with your ongoing payment obligations may continue to be charged.
- Domains registered with Amazon Route 53: Domains that are registered with Amazon Route 53 are not deleted automatically at the time of closure of the account. Rather, you have three options as to how you want to proceed with these domains:
- You can disable automatic renewal. The domains will then be automatically disabled when the registration period ends.
- You can transfer the domains to a different AWS account.
- You can transfer the domains to a new, distinct domain registrar.
Do note that closing your AWS account will not affect your payment methods on Amazon.com or any other Amazon websites or services.
If you have already deleted your account, you can file a case with AWS support either to disable automatic domain renewal or to transfer the domains to a different AWS account or domain registrar. You will not have to pay any charge to file a case regarding domain registration problems.
- Deleting a Member account: If your account is one that was created by AWS Organizations, then it won’t be removed from Organizations until the expiry of the post-closure period. While the post-closure period is ongoing, any closed accounts will still count towards your maximum quota of accounts in the Organization. You can get around this problem by removing the account in question from Organizations, before deleting it.
- Cross-account access to the deleted account: Once you have deleted your AWS account, any requests to access its services from other AWS accounts will be unsuccessful. This will take place even if you previously granted permission for accounts to use this account’s services. Only if you reopen the deleted account, will other AWS accounts be able to access its services, once you have granted the necessary permissions to them.
- Eliminating Amazon VPC Peering Connection: As of now, AWS won’t delete Amazon VPC Peering Connection if and when you delete any of the various accounts participating in the VPC Peering Connection. Any traffic that is destined for the VPC Peering Connection, and is originating from the other participating accounts, will be dropped. This takes place because AWS will terminate all instances and delete all security groups in the closed account. To permanently remove the VPC Peering Connection, you can delete it from your account beforehand by using the Amazon VPC Console, AWS CLI, or Amazon EC2 API.
Common errors faced while deleting an AWS account:
It might be that you receive an error message while closing your AWS account, that prevents you from closing the account. This error might be because of any of the following reasons:
- The account in question is the management account of an organization in AWS Organizations, which has open member accounts.
- There are unpaid invoices on the account.
- You aren’t signed in as the root user on the account.
- You are an active seller on AWS Marketplace.
If you happen to encounter such an error message in the deletion process, do get in touch with your account representative, or contact AWS Support to file a billing or account support case. They will assuredly resolve whatever issues you’re facing!
Conclusion
With a staggering 33% share of the global market, AWS is the largest vendor when it comes to cloud computing services, and with good reason. The diversity and reliability of its services make it the gold standard of the cloud computing industry.
However, there may well come a time when for whatever reason you want to terminate your relationship with AWS. In such a scenario, AWS has made deleting your account a very straightforward procedure. You are even given the grace period of the 90-day post-closure period! If you’re re-thinking your choices, you can easily reopen your old account during this period, and avail of your old data and services.
We hope you found this article on how to delete your AWS account helpful!
