How Much Does Cloud Computing Cost?

You would be shocked to know how many computers, digital, and technological worlds have taken over the individuals’ working and learning styles as well as companies in this pandemic. Where COVID-19 has affected the businesses, it has benefited several brands through easy and quick dealing. But, how? Keeping the social distance, how brands have been successful to maintain the deal effortlessly? The answer is “cloud computing”. And that is made possible due to cloud computing cost-effectiveness.

By the end of 2021, it is estimated that the internet workload of approx. 94% will be transferred to the cloud. Yes, you can take a moment to realize the importance of the cloud in our daily lives. World-famous companies prefer choosing a hybrid strategy to work and deal within communities.

The primary cause behind encountering such a massive drift is the cost-saving feature of clouds. Migrating to the cloud is absolutely a budget-friendly choice as it brings multiple financial advantages. A few of the most noticeable benefits include:

• No need for significant upfront capital investment
• Decreased costs for software also giving the features to upgrade
• No more stress of spending a tonne of money on hardware and IT maintenance
• Tax Benefits

How much does cloud computing cost?

The most important question that comes to our mind while buying any cloud services is “How much is the cloud?”. Well, it depends on the company and its needs.

You are welcomed to select any cloud service provider depending on what level of efficient procedures you want. Always remember one thing: The most expensive service is definitely not going to be the finest.

First, you must strategize, so you don’t regret it later. Some of the main factors are:

• What “cloud” type you need to buy (public, private, or hybrid)
• The amount of data you will be saving, for instance, will it be just personal data or entire IT infrastructure
• The reason for shifting to the cloud service (disaster recovery or short on office space)

Let’s get into details…

Want to keep your data backup in the cloud? You will be spending somewhere between $0.15 per GB to a few thousand dollars every month. No matter what cloud storage solution you are picking for use, the budget will lie from $5 to $25 per user every month. The usual flat rate range is $2 to $50 per month. So, now you have an idea about cloud computing costs.

Basically, the price varies on significant demands and high-grade specs. Buying a cloud service for a business will definitely require more money than a cloud service bought for personal usage.

Using the Calculators

How can you calculate the cloud cost effortlessly? Well, there are many options such as spreadsheets and by using book-keeping tools. BUT, the most durable, efficient, and safety guaranteed pick is the “calculators” designed by the “cloud service providers”.

Several famous companies have made their calculators that will guide you to count your total cost of ownership. This is the easiest way of getting an idea about the cost of cloud computing services. Here are the most popular and ideally rated options:

• AWS (Amazon Web Services) Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator
• Google Cloud Platform Pricing Calculator
• Microsoft Azure: Microsoft Azure Pricing Calculator
• IBM Bluemix: IBM Cloud Pricing Sheet
• Interoute: Interoute Pricing
• Rackspace: Rackspace Cloud Calculator
• Red Hat: Red Hat Infrastructure ROI TCO Calculator
• CenturyLink Cloud: CenturyLink Cloud Price Estimator
• VMware vCloud: VMware vCloud Air Pricing Calculator
• Profit Bricks: ProfitBricks Virtual Data Center Calculator

Main costs for an IaaS subscription

We all know how people are inclined towards using IaaS, and for those who don’t know or are currently using, their cost of subscription relies solely on two specs: compute (about 60%) and bandwidth (max. 20%).

Google GCP Cloud Pricing & Cost

Well, it can be the best option in terms of cloud computing cost as it has a very sensible costing strategy. Based on a pay-as-you-go, you are not obliged to pay any activation or termination fee. The key appeal is its “per second billing” feature letting you pay for the specs you are using. Besides, you can save up to 75-80% by making the features stop in the background when not needed.

Oh, yes! You will also be getting discounts on sustained and long-term use. Having extensive use of the cloud makes you eligible to enjoy up to 30% over the on-demand price range. Need more discounts? Get ready to enjoy a committed-use discount of up to 57% without any lock-in.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Pricing & Cost

The three categories for AWS cloud pricing are:

• Pay as you Go – In this service, you will be paying for the features that you are currently using
• Reserved Capacity – The most typical type of cloud service chosen by business people. As the name reflects, it helps you reserve the storage or compute ahead of time so you can use them whenever needed in the future by slashing the cost. The reason for recommending this option is its ability to save almost 75% on the demanding cost.
• Volume-based Discounts – Totally dependent on the number of sales and quantity of use. The higher the use, the lesser you pay for every GB per month. For using a maximum of 50TB, all you will be paying is 0.023 GB per month. And if you get the chance to use more than 500TB, the cost will be reduced to 0.021 GB per month.

Number of costs unrelated to the actual price of using the service

1. Starting the virtual machines or background apps and then forgetting to shut the ongoing processes down when not needed
2. Exit fees
3. Over-provisioning or under-provisioning
4. Non-cloud services
5. Support costs to track down issues
6. Get too much or too little or use the wrong kind of storage