Effective Tips To Reduce Cloud Costs for Your SaaS App
in 2024 & Beyond
November 16, 2023
Many business startups waste half of their budget to test Amazon Web Services (AWS) features, and this single mistake could even lead to bankruptcy. This happens as cloud costs are unpredictable and difficult to understand. Engineers of big brands like Adobe have once burned thousands of dollars in just a single day while using Microsoft Azure.
There are many such cases where many SaaS companies are wasting a third of their cloud spending, which is why some effective tactics to help reduce cloud costs are important. In this block, we will learn how effective Cloud Based Management Software can help reduce cloud costs for your SaaS-based app and amazing cloud cost optimisation tips shared by the expert DevOps team.
Ways to Reduce Cloud Costs in 2024 & Beyond
Though there are many benefits of using cloud services over traditional methods, you can truly unlock its benefits only when the cloud is implemented correctly. Let’s check out some of the main steps to consider while building Custom Cloud Software Solutions that can reduce cloud costs for your business.
Cloud Infrastructure Audit
The first thing that you can do is to run an infrastructure audit where cloud engineers will help analyse your infrastructure, the team’s workflow, how it works with the project, the releases that the team makes & analyse certain project parts. This audit will help to understand the causes of high cloud costs & make decisions on what to optimize.
Enhance the Project’s Architecture
Keeping your entire app on a single service for a long can make the whole system suffer, which is why you need microservices that help to separate a large monolithic app into smaller modules that work independently. These microservices like on separate virtual machines like Docker containers, Kubernetes clusters, etc. This is best as the rest of the app won’t suffer when one service goes down or takes up too many resources.
Also Read: Which One to Choose – Buy or Build a Software Solution for Business?
Go for Infrastructure as Code
IaC helps to create a code of all resources you need in a special configuration language. This will help to store everything in one file and you can set up a policy where the team must add all new cloud resources through IaC. Proper versioning will help to create the resource giving you updates on which resource is created, how they are altered, how they are interacted etc. As you can duplicate the infrastructure in a single click, it saves time and money not just on cloud resources but also on operational costs.
Consider Autoscaling
As the name says, autoscaling helps in dynamically creating the exact amount of resources you need. This will help in automatically adding new resources whenever there are traffic spikes or there is more memory consumption.
When the load goes down, it will automatically remove unnecessary resources. This will help you to avoid situations where you are building features for the whole year without much use and cloud bills going out of control.
Save More with Spot Instances
As AWS offer huge options for buying cloud compute such as on-demand, scheduled, reserved instances, spot instances and more, you can choose to save little by purchasing the provider’s services for a single year or more. Amazon EC2 Spot Instances helps you to use spare EC2 instances at discounts saving cloud costs.
The spot instances will give you instance types upon request using an API but your instance can be used by another client anytime and it may shut down which will be notified prior. In return, AWS will give a similar instance of a different type. Ensure that your product is built to tolerate such instance rotation.
Choose the Right Storage Type
Make sure that you are very careful while picking up the cloud storage type available in the market. Amazon S3 is one of the most popular ones as it is easy to use, works best with the Amazon ecosystem and shares lots of data.
However, you must consider using different storage tiers if going for S3 service as some S3 buckets may be over or underused. You can go for S3 intelligent tiering as it will help to pick a desired storage tier based on your usage patterns.
Avoid Unnecessary EBS Snapshots
As we know AWS supports both automatic and manual EBD snapshots which are copies of data at the point in time, you can store them in S3 buckets for disaster recovery or migrating data to other regions. However, you may accumulate many unused snapshots, which is why removing them is essential to control cloud costs.
Discard Idle Elastic IP Addresses
AWS helps you to have only 5 elastic IP addresses per region, which make your app stay available during a failure by remapping its IPs to other instances without relying on human. However, AWS still adds up your bill even when your app is not actively using elastic IP addresses. So, ensure that you keep on reviewing for any unused IP addresses to save your cloud costs.
Spread Cost Awareness
The last thing you can do is raise awareness on how you can save cloud costs because a lack of awareness from the development team can lead to higher bills, which eventually may lead to bankruptcy in extreme cases. Ensure that your DevOps team is well aware of how the daily decisions of developers and stakeholders can impact the company’s cloud billing.
Closing Statement
After going through the blog, we know that cloud optimization is becoming a necessity for any SaaS project. Ensure that you go through the cloud cost optimization solutions to help in better understanding your cloud spending. The first step to reduce cloud costs on the project is to figure out the biggest money wasters on the company’s bill.
The next step is to implement infrastructure as code, using Spot Instances or rework the architecture of your SaaS app. Whether your business needs to reduce costs or find ways to implement cloud-native development services, Clavax has got you covered. Connect with our experts today to help review your infrastructure, build a tailored cost optimization plan and come up with the most effective cloud solution.