Cloud Cost Savers

The Top 5 Causes of Unexpected Cloud Expenses-and How to Avoid Them

For many small companies, cloud expenses can feel difficult to pin down.

The costs slowly accumulate away until-bam!-you're hit with an unexpected bill. But don't worry, you're not alone. These surprise charges often stem from common, preventable issues.

Let's unpack the top five culprits and what you can do to keep your cloud budget in check.

Idle Resources Lurking in the Shadows

You spin up an EC2 instance for testing, a temporary RDS database for a proof of concept, or extra storage to hold backup data "just for a little while." Fast forward a few weeks, and those resources are still running-or storing-and silently accumulating costs.

Data Transfer Fees: The Silent Budget Killer

AWS charges for data transfer between regions, Availability Zones (AZs), and even services within the same account. These costs can escalate quickly if you're moving large datasets for analytics, backups, or cross-region disaster recovery.

Over-Provisioned Resources

Overestimating your compute or database requirements is easy to do, but running resources larger than necessary inflates costs needlessly. For example, do you really need that m5.4xlarge EC2 instance running a low-traffic website?

Serverless Overhead: Misjudging Lambda or Event-Driven Costs

Serverless services like AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, or Step Functions are cost-efficient at scale, but they come with their own pitfalls. The pay-per-use pricing model means that poorly optimized workloads or unexpected spikes in activity can lead to runaway costs.

Unmonitored Reserved Instances or Savings Plans

Buying Reserved Instances (RIs) or committing to Savings Plans can save you up to 72%, but only if you're using them effectively. Misaligned purchases-like committing to an m5.large when you migrate workloads to an m6i.large-can leave savings on the table while still costing you for unused capacity.

Pro Tip: Proactively Manage Cloud Costs

Preventing unexpected charges requires a mix of automation, oversight, and cloud-savvy practices. Start by integrating cost management into your workflows-whether it's tagging policies, routine audits, or team training on cost awareness. Remember, the sooner you spot an issue, the easier it is to fix.

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