How to check an AWS partner: tiers, badges and proof

Almost every cloud consultancy in Australia calls itself an AWS partner. Some have a team of certified engineers and years of AWS projects behind them. Some have filled in a form. From a website, the two can look the same. This piece explains what the AWS partner tiers actually require, how to check a partner yourself in a few minutes, and what to ask before you sign.

What does “AWS partner” actually mean?

Any company can join the AWS Partner Network, so “AWS partner” on its own tells you very little. Joining means registering in AWS Partner Central and paying an annual fee. It does not require certified staff or any delivered AWS work.

What AWS does check is the tier. Consulting and services firms sit on the services path, which has three tiers: Select, Advanced and Premier. Each is earned against published criteria, and AWS shows the tier on the partner’s public listing.

What the AWS partner tiers require

The tiers measure how many trained and certified people a partner has and how many customer projects AWS has recorded as launched. These are AWS’s published criteria for each tier:

• Select. Four people with AWS accreditations, two with a foundational AWS certification and two with a technical one, plus three launched customer projects on AWS.

• Advanced. Eight accredited people, six technical certifications (at least three at Professional or Specialty level), 20 launched customer projects and a business plan agreed with AWS.

• Premier. Twenty accredited people, 25 technical certifications (at least ten at Professional or Specialty level), 50 launched customer projects, an executive business review, and at least three validated practices such as an AWS Competency or the Managed Service Provider programme, held for more than six months.

Read those as a measure of scale and AWS track record. A Select partner has real certified engineers and has shipped AWS work. A Premier partner runs a large AWS practice. Neither tier tells you whether the people on your project are the certified ones, or whether the partner has built anything like what you need.

How to check a partner on AWS Partner Finder

The only partner status that counts is the one AWS publishes on AWS Partner Solutions Finder. Tier badges are image files. Anyone can put one on a website, and badges stay up long after a tier lapses.

To check a partner:

• Search for the company by name on Partner Solutions Finder, or ask the partner to send you their listing link.

• Confirm the tier on the listing matches the tier on their website and in their proposal.

• Look for any AWS Specializations listed (see below), and whether they relate to your project.

• Check the locations. If you need people in Melbourne or Sydney, or work done under Australian law, make sure there is an Australian entity, not just an Australian sales office.

• Make sure the company on the listing is the company on your contract. Resellers and subcontractors sometimes borrow a partner’s status.

If a firm says it is an AWS partner but you can’t find its listing, ask why before you go any further. There can be an innocent answer, such as a recent name change, but you should hear it.

What AWS Specializations add

An AWS Specialization is the closest thing to an independent check of one specific practice. AWS says partners must pass a technical assessment that includes reviewing several customer examples before it awards one, and specialised partners get priority placement in Partner Solutions Finder.

There are 43 AWS Competencies across industries, use cases and workloads, such as migration, data and analytics, and generative AI. The Managed Service Provider programme covers partners that run AWS environments for customers. The older Service Delivery specialisations are closed to new applications and AWS plans to retire them on 1 June 2027, so don’t mark a partner down for not having one.

Specializations matter most for infrastructure-heavy work, such as a large migration or 24/7 managed operations. For a product build, the partner’s design and delivery record matters just as much: ask to see the product, not only the architecture.

Check the people, not only the company

AWS certifications belong to individuals, not companies, so ask which named people on your project hold them. A partner can meet its tier with a handful of certified engineers who never work on your project.

AWS runs a public credential verification page. Ask for the validation number or digital badge link for each certification held by your lead architect and engineers, and check them. Then put those names in the contract or statement of work, with an agreed process if anyone has to be replaced.

Questions to ask before you sign

• What is your tier, and can you send the Partner Finder link? A partner that is proud of its status will send it straight away.

• Who on our project is certified, and at what level? Names, not headcounts.

• Show us work like ours. The same AWS services, a similar compliance load, ideally a client reference we can call.

• Where will our data live? If it needs to stay in Australia, the partner should name the Sydney (ap-southeast-2) or Melbourne (ap-southeast-4) region and know which services can’t be kept onshore.

• Has AWS reviewed any of your delivered work? For example, a review against the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

• Who runs it after launch? Know whether the partner, AWS, another provider or your own team is on call when something breaks.

Where Honest Fox sits

Honest Fox is an AWS Partner at the Select Tier on the services path, and we’d rather you knew exactly what that means. AWS has certified our engineers and recorded our launched AWS work. We are not a Premier partner and we don’t run a 24/7 managed infrastructure service. If that is what you need, a large managed service provider is the better fit.

What we do is design and build digital products on AWS: product strategy, research and design alongside the engineering, from a team in Melbourne. You can check our Partner Finder listing and read more about how we work on AWS. If you are moving an existing platform, start with what an AWS migration assessment covers.