
How to never be surprised by your AWS bill again - aray07
https://blog.zenmetrics.io/never-worry-aws-cost
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fphhotchips
This is an ad for ZenMetrics, which isn't available yet, so I'll throw my
company's hat in the ring as well. Amongst other things, Cloudability [1] does
cost monitoring and reporting, proactive budget alerting, advanced rightsizing
and reserved instance recommendation, and anomaly detection and alerting. It
works across AWS, Azure and GCP, and it's available right now from the AWS
marketplace.

There are also other tools that do this sort of thing. Stax.io has their
Spotlight tool, Cloud Conformity does some as well, and Microsoft still
maintains Cloudyn as Azure Cost Management.

[1] [https://www.cloudability.com](https://www.cloudability.com)

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kanwisher
I wouldn't use your startup or any others in the space. I have a problem with
AWS spend, but there is no transparent pricing on your website. Also I have to
speak to a sales person, these two things are an instant no for any sass
product

~~~
fphhotchips
Cloudability's pricing is publicly available on the AWS Marketplace [1]. In
general, we encourage people to work with our sales teams so we can work to
fit our commercials to your requirements, but if you're happy to go with the
standard terms and pricing, we're happy to supply product without talking you
through it. [2]

Often though, teams will want help evaluating us against our competition, or
will want us to help them convince their management that our tool is needed.
Most frequently, your lawyer is going to want to work with our lawyer, and the
sales team has to make that happen. The _last_ thing we want to happen is for
you to not buy our product because someone on the business side said no, or
for a reason that could have been negotiated. That's not good for anyone.

[1]
[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B075PYPH14](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B075PYPH14)

[2] Disclaimer: I'm on the sales team. I _love_ when this happens.

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zxcvbn4038
Try “cost explorer”. This is AWS’s official interface/api for navigating your
spend. It lets you view the amortized cost of reserved instances over their
term. The best part is that the numbers always add up. We used to use a third
party service to analyze our AWS usage but we could never match up their
numbers to anything - completely finger in the wind. Cost Explorer also gives
recommendations for instance usage but we mostly ignore it because the stuff
it suggests, while completely accurate, doesn’t match business need to be able
to absorb spikes in usage.

~~~
oceanplexian
I’ve used coat explorer but the fundamental problem here is they it’s a
conflict of interest. Who in their right mind would trust Amazon to tell you
how to save money on your AWS bill?

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dvfjsdhgfv
Just choose a provider with hard capping capability (if you really have to use
variable billing as it's the case with many - but not all - "cloud"
providers).

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noobiemcfoob
I once made a shim that would revoke a core permission of our system and halt
some 80% of AWS usage if the spend went above a threshold.

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icelion
Simple : leave AWS

