Why is my AWS bill so high?
The usual reasons small businesses pay too much for AWS, how to spot each one, and what to do about it. Plain English, with real prices.
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Hosting cost review
Find out where your hosting money goes and what you can stop paying for.
The problem
Cloud bills creep. A test server nobody switched off. Storage that grows forever. A machine sized for traffic that never arrived. Backups of backups.
Each one is small. Together they can add up to a large share of the bill, and the bill rarely tells you which is which.
What's included
- A line-by-line look at your last three months of bills.
- Checking what each server, database and storage area is for, and whether anything still uses it.
- Right-sizing: matching each server to what it actually does.
- Storage and backups: what is kept, for how long, and what it costs.
- Data transfer charges, which are easy to miss and hard to read.
- Discounts for committing to a year, explained plainly, so you can decide whether they are worth it.
- Where it makes sense, simpler and cheaper hosting, such as a UK VPS (a virtual private server, a share of a physical machine with its own guaranteed resources).
What you get at the end
A plain-English report listing each saving, roughly how much it is worth over a year, how much work it takes and any risk involved. The quick, safe wins come first.
We go through it together on a call. You can make the changes yourself, ask your developer, or have me do them as a fix-up project.
How it's priced
A fixed fee, agreed before I start. And if the savings I find add up to less than that fee over a year, you don't pay it.
Who it's for
- Businesses on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or similar whose bill has crept up.
- Agencies paying hosting for several clients and wanting it under control.
- Founders whose app moved from a free tier to a bill that surprised them.
Questions
What access do you need to our account?
A read-only login for billing and resources. I walk you through setting it up. It can't change anything, and you delete it when we are done.
How does the guarantee work?
I add up the yearly savings from everything I recommend. If the total is less than my fee, I don't send an invoice. Whether you go on to make the changes is up to you.
When do I pay?
I invoice when I deliver the report, with 14 days to pay, unless the guarantee applies.
Will making the changes cause downtime?
Most savings, such as removing unused resources, need none. Where a change does need a short outage, the report says so, and it can be planned for a quiet time.
We are not on AWS. Can you still help?
Yes. The same approach works for Azure, Google Cloud and most hosting companies.
Anything else I should know about prices?
- Retainer clients get 10% off project work and the breach rate.
- Out-of-hours emergency work is by arrangement, not a 24/7 promise.
- I'm not VAT registered, so there is no VAT to add.
Related guides
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Get your hosting bill reviewed
Tell me who you host with and roughly what you pay each month. I will tell you whether a review is likely to be worth it before you commit.