Best Cloud Cost Management Tools
Cloud cost management tools help companies control their cloud services-related spending by monitoring a company’s resource usage and computing demands. These solutions are typically paired with an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) software offering to minimize the costs of their pay-as-you-go model. Cloud cost management software helps companies reduce waste by alerting users of lowered demand or automatically scaling usage to optimal rates. Companies also use these platforms to increase the efficiency of their cloud service usage; cloud cost management solutions often provide reporting features to outline waste and redundancies. Cloud cost management tools have some overlap with SaaS spend management software, but the latter is used to monitor and manage spending on cloud applications rather than cloud infrastructure.
To qualify for inclusion in the Cloud Cost Management category, a product must:
Featured Cloud Cost Management Tools At A Glance
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Cast AI is an automation platform for operating cloud-native and AI infrastructure at scale. It keeps applications fast and stable by continuously optimizing production systems and eliminating manual
1,803 Twitter followers
CloudKeeper is a comprehensive cloud cost optimization partner that combines the power of group buying & commitments management, expert cloud consulting & support, and an enhanced visibility &
CloudKeeper is a platform that provides cost optimization and visibility for cloud services, with features such as CK Lens for exploring spending patterns and CK Tuner for identifying cost reduction opportunities. Users like the ease of use, the valuable insights into spending patterns, the effective cost reduction, and the responsive and supportive customer service, with specific praise for the CK Lens and CK Tuner features. Reviewers mentioned issues with the platform displaying outdated data, causing confusion and questioning the synchronization with their current cloud environment, and a desire for more up-to-date data visibility.
119 Twitter followers
ScaleOps is a cloud resource management platform designed to automate resource optimization in real-time based on application context-awareness. This innovative solution continuously monitors live app
Amazon CloudWatch is a comprehensive monitoring and observability service designed to provide real-time insights into AWS resources, on-premises servers, hybrid environments, and applications. It enab
2,220,162 Twitter followers
Flexera One is a SaaS-based IT management solution designed with and for organizations like yours with highly complex hybrid environments. With Flexera One, you can visualize your entire estate and ma
Flexera One is a cloud-based IT asset management and software license optimization platform designed to provide deep visibility into hybrid IT environments and integrates with SaaS admin platforms across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 publishers, enabling centralized visibility and inventory management in a single interface. Users frequently mention that Flexera One offers a unified platform for managing IT assets, optimizing software and cloud costs, and ensuring license compliance, providing deep insights into usage, seamless integration with tools like ServiceNow, and supports automated workflows. Users reported that Flexera One can be complex to set up and has a steep learning curve for new users, some find limitations in report customization, occasional integration challenges, performance issues with large datasets, and its cost may be a concern for smaller organizations.
4,728 Twitter followers
Vantage is a cloud cost observability platform designed to assist organizations in managing and optimizing their cloud spending. It provides users with a comprehensive view of their cloud costs throug
1,368 Twitter followers
IBM Cloudability is built to support the organizational adoption of FinOps—the cultural practice and operational process of bringing financial accountability to the scalable, variable, and distributed
IBM Cloudability is a cloud management tool that provides cost transparency and spend management across multiple cloud solutions. Reviewers appreciate IBM Cloudability's ability to efficiently manage cloud usage and spending, provide insightful analytics, and seamlessly connect and ingest data from various cloud providers. Users reported issues with data reliability, lack of customization in the reporting feature, and incomplete cost analysis due to limited rightsizing recommendations and cost options.
9,692 Twitter followers
IBM Turbonomic is a real-time application resource management platform designed to help users optimize and manage resources across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This innovative solution continu
IBM Turbonomic is a tool that automates resource allocation to maintain performance while reducing cloud costs. Users like IBM Turbonomic's ability to automatically optimize resources based on application demand, reducing over-provisioning and cloud costs, especially in Kubernetes and hybrid environments. Reviewers experienced a steep learning curve and initial configuration complexity with IBM Turbonomic, which can delay the time-to-value for clients and make the interface overwhelming for beginners.
708,744 Twitter followers
Cloudshot is a patented, visual cloud management platform that helps enterprises gain complete visibility, governance, and control across their cloud and IT spend. Designed for organizations operating
Cloudshot is a platform that provides cost analytics, budget alerts, cost optimization monitoring, and other features for managing IT costs at an enterprise level. Users like the platform's ability to provide a unified view of spending across cloud, SaaS, and marketplace, its easy-to-use interface, and the support team's readiness to solve issues and build custom integrations. Reviewers experienced some initial overwhelm due to the breadth of functionality, found that security and compliance insights need prioritization, and felt that dashboards could offer additional customization options.
CloudZero is the leader in cloud and AI cost intelligence. We empower the world's engineers to build cost-efficient software without slowing down innovation. CloudZero's platform automates the collect
5,509 Twitter followers
Find performance bottlenecks in production
31,775,247 Twitter followers
DoiT Cloud Intelligence is the only intent-aware FinOps platform that goes beyond cost optimization to drive reliability, performance, and security – turning endless "good ideas" into real, implemente
815 Twitter followers
PointFive is the infrastructure efficiency platform that detects deep waste and remediates autonomously — so your engineers can ship, not optimize. Traditional tools show you what you spend. PointF
PointFive is a platform that delivers cloud agnostic recommendations for resource optimization and provides detailed analytics for cost assessment. Users like the platform's ease of use, quick onboarding process, and its ability to integrate smoothly with various systems, providing detailed information for each recommendation and reducing manual effort. Users reported issues with the user interface being confusing at times, lack of granular limitations on SKU recommendations, and a delay in data population after setting up an integration.
AWS Budgets gives you the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount.
2,220,162 Twitter followers
Datadog is the monitoring, security and analytics platform for developers, IT operations teams, security engineers and business users in the cloud age. The SaaS platform integrates and automates infra
50,886 Twitter followers
Learn More About Cloud Cost Management Tools
What are Cloud Cost Management Tools?
Cloud cost management tools are software platforms a company utilizes to manage all costs related to cloud resources, optimization, and management. The software allows organizations to manage the costs associated with cloud computing. Managing cloud computing costs is done primarily with one focus in mind—to maximize cloud usage and increase operational efficiency.
Cloud computing has been at the forefront due to its subscription or pay-per-use model. However, as companies wish to scale in terms of operations, tracking the cost of cloud services becomes a complex task and is not as transparent as “pay-per-use”. Numerous functions within an organization would have access to their cloud computing platforms, and having this decentralized approach could rack up massive amounts in cloud computing costs. Hence, having a cloud cost management tool ensures that cloud spend is kept in check and that the cloud resources are optimized and worth every penny spent.
Cloud cost management focuses on understanding the different costs associated with cloud computing. Some key costs associated with the cloud include software licenses, web services, compute and storage costs, network costs, virtualized infrastructure/virtual machine instances, and additional costs such as training staff and personnel.
As more companies move to the cloud, either partially or entirely, cloud storage costs do not remain the same. When a company needs to scale, IT staff can easily focus on acquiring more cloud services to ensure and support daily work activities without keeping concern for costs. Engineers or developers need to ensure that their products have a shorter time to market, thereby spinning up more cloud resources. This could have a huge impact on the business since there are no savings, but a huge cloud bill.
Regardless of the cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, among several others, it is certain that money will be spent across resources that may or may not be utilized. When different cloud infrastructure is involved, cloud cost management software can make it much easier for companies to support cost optimization. For example, customers that have opted for multi-cloud environments. Cloud cost optimization needs to be given priority since different cloud service providers are being used. Hence, costs may vary across all providers, making it complex and difficult to track. By understanding the costs, companies can focus on cost optimization and ensure accountability. Cloud cost management is therefore, not just about cost control, it's about resource optimization, forecasting and budgeting, and reducing wastage.
What are the Common Features of Cloud Cost Management Tools?
Cloud cost management software has several features that makes it a strong choice for companies that want to keep track of their spending on cloud. The following are some core features within the software that can help users in several ways:
Automatic scaling: The promise of unlimited scalability is one of the biggest pros of cloud computing technology. Automatic scaling ensures that resources are used and available when needed, and powered down when not in use. Companies do not need to spend large amounts on unutilized cloud resources. The software helps companies automate governance of costs, compliance, security, and cloud operations. Planning for maximum utilization all the time when using only some percentage of it is extremely expensive in the long run.
Instance management: A key cost driver for cloud computing is the number of unused instances that a company opts for. If a firm is not using an instance, the cloud cost optimization software can track and alert the customer if there is no need for the instance and help to save costs. The software can also find discount instances that can be used for non-critical workloads that do not need to run constantly, thereby driving more savings.
Automated alerts and notifications: Cloud spend management platforms allow users to set up automated alerts and budgets. These alerts warn the user when there are authorization failures, sudden cost spikes, untagged infrastructure, and when budget limits are crossed. Having alerts sets is critical to ensure business continuity and keep costs optimized.
Cost allocation: A key feature of cloud cost management tools is that it allows the user to keep track of the team spends on cloud computing resources. This will allow management to set up appropriate budgets and track spends by various company functions.
Chargeback: Chargeback is a feature where the cost of cloud services is applied or “charged-back” to the business unit responsible for the cloud expense. The chargeback feature in different cloud cost savings platforms allows companies to track the departments that are making the most (and least) use of cloud costs—this information is useful while making budgeting decisions.
What are the Benefits of Cloud Cost Management Tools?
Benefits of cloud spend management platforms include:
Reduce cost: This is understandably the most important benefit of cloud cost management software. Companies use cloud cost management software to ensure cloud optimization. Companies can monitor and track their spending, ensure optimal resource allocation, and take advantage of discounts offered by cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP. Companies can even use this software to visualize and understand their cost profile when evaluating cloud migration, deploying new cloud security policies, and maintaining cloud health.
Eliminate waste: By understanding and tracking their cloud usage and cloud bills, companies can reduce waste and ensure that they are making the best of their cloud resources. Techniques that support this include automatic scaling and load balancing.
Improve business performance: A business needs to ensure its cloud strategies align closely with its business goals. Overprovisioning of cloud resources means significant wastage of company profits and underprovisioning could cause workloads and applications to suffer if there is no proper cloud support. In such a situation, planning for the right cloud cost management solution is key to ensuring smooth performance in any environment—whether on a public, private, hybrid, or moving from on-premises to cloud.
Gain visibility into cloud storage costs: Cloud spend management platforms provide visibility into cloud resource costs that are kept idle, unallocated, over-utilized. Some cloud cost management software provide an hourly granularity as well. Having a single pane of glass dashboards ensures a single point for admins to manage, organize and optimize their cloud environment.
Get recommendations to cut costs: One of the key benefits is that the software can provide recommendations to reduce costs. These recommendations are based on analyzing different workloads and their cloud requirements. Costs are analyzed down to the root sources, and recommendations are made to the user.
Improve reporting and analytics: Data-driven decisions will help the user make better decisions regarding their cloud spending. By tracking patterns in cloud spending, cloud cost management tools can provide their users with graphs or tables of data that can be used for data analysis—these analytics can be cross-referenced with business outcomes to ensure the company is on the right track with its cloud strategy. Major cloud providers provide reporting as part of their subscription packages such as AWS Cost and Usage report.
Who Uses Cloud Cost Management Tools?
Cloud architects: Cloud architects manage the technical requirements of cloud architecture and oversee a company’s cloud environment and strategies. A cloud architect is the main persona that uses cloud cost management software. Understanding how to manage cloud spends and optimize cloud resources falls upon the cloud architect. A cloud architect doesn't just work with engineering and development, they also work closely with HR, finance, logistics, and security to ensure that cloud strategies are being optimized.
Cloud cost managers: Cloud cost managers handle various tasks such as forecasting, budgeting, business development practices and processes, identification of trends and opportunities, cloud governance best practices, among many others. Managers can use the analytics dashboard to keep track of cloud strategies and propose changes and suggestions to decision makers based on derived insights.
IT teams and admins: IT admins use cloud cost management tools to optimize cloud infrastructure and ensure all resources are being used judiciously. Cloud admins can use the software to set up real-time monitoring, budget, notifications, and alerts. Administrators gain access and control the cost view over the company cloud through a web-based interface they can access from anywhere.
Cross-functional teams: Cloud computing has become an integral part of enterprises across the globe. Several cross-functional teams such as engineering teams and application development and testing teams within an organization depend on cloud to ensure they create and release products with a much lower time to market. The heads of cross-functional teams within an organization can keep track of how spending on cloud resources to ensure they are well within the budget provided.
Cloud service providers: Cloud service providers offer cloud cost optimization options. Having internal cost management options that are reliable, scalable, consistent, and available as required is a key benefit for several customers. Some of the biggest names in cloud platforms include AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and several others have their specific cloud spend management platforms such as Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Budgets, Azure Cost Management, Cost management by Google Cloud, among several others. Integrated cost management tools along with billing support are offered at no additional costs by these cloud giants.
Software Related to Cloud Cost Management Tools
Cloud management platforms: Cloud cost management forms a key part of cloud management platforms. A cloud management platform is a set of unified software tools which help companies monitor and control cloud computing resources. This software brings the administrative visibility and capability of cloud cost management solutions.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers: Cloud cost management tools are typically paired with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings to minimize the costs of a pay-as-you-go model. Companies also use a combination of these tools to increase the efficiency of their cloud service usage—these solutions often provide reporting features to outline waste and redundancies.
SaaS spend management software: Cloud cost management software has some overlap with SaaS spend management software, but the latter is used to monitor and manage spending on cloud applications rather than cloud infrastructure.
Challenges with Cloud Cost Management Tools
Cloud cost optimization solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Billing challenges: Complexity in billing practices and not understanding what the customer bill contains is a key challenge. Without understanding the bill itself, optimizing costs is a difficult task since the customer cannot identify avenues for cost optimization.
Approach towards policies: Each team would follow their respective budgets allocated and manage their cloud resources and cost. Having a cloud cost management tool could generate some backlash since costs by each team are being monitored, which could be quite tricky to manage.
Budget forecasting: Cloud cost optimization is difficult when there are plans in the pipeline to add new products and services, handle unexpected business demand, or make any changes to software design. Forecasting is complex, and cloud spend management platforms must rapidly adjust to capacity or alerting users of sudden spikes in cost due to such scenarios.
Cloud sprawl: One of the biggest challenges that companies face is that in the excitement of cloud computing technology, they end up moving entire databases and applications without a plan. This leads to cloud sprawl, wherein an organization does not have a complete view of all the cloud infrastructure. Organizations will end up managing several cloud instances, providers, services, and therefore are unable to view or maintain accountability for all cloud components. Even with cloud cost management software, organizations might not be able to understand and deploy the full use of this software due to cloud sprawl.
Lack of skilled resources: Finding the right talent to invest, track, and optimize all cloud resources within an organization is tough. Identifying the type of skills required and finding the right fit is a huge challenge.
How to Buy Cloud Cost Management Tools
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Cloud Cost Management Tools
When researching cloud cost management platforms, the first and foremost step is to ask one question—what issues could potentially be solved using a cloud cost management tool? It is essential to understand cloud spend inefficiencies and identify the ones harming the buyer’s organization. Taking into consideration the reasons for cost inefficiencies is critical. Some of the key reasons that cause companies to rack up huge cloud bills are:
Poor resource management caused by oversizing: Companies usually end up spending a lot on acquiring resources but only utilize half of that at any point in time. A capacity that isn't needed is a part of the wasted cloud costs. Rightsizing ensures that costs are being optimized and the company is not facing copious amounts in bills.
Software inefficiency: Since several different teams would be using the cloud resources within the company, it becomes quite difficult to keep track of the cloud storage costs. Failure to measure software efficiency or not having set targets can lead to an increase in the wastage of cloud computing resources.
Forecast issues: As discussed earlier, scaling is a key feature of cloud computing. However, when companies fail to forecast their needs (which is a difficult task) such as developing new services or changing existing ones, it could rack up unintentional costs since the company would be over or underprepared for the additional needs.
Architectural design: With the hype around moving to cloud, several companies are moving to cloud just to enter the hype; realizing later that it is much more expensive than anticipated. Workloads might not be suitable for some specific cloud environments or not supported, additional licensing might be required, governance issues might crop up, and a host of other problems that would only drive costs further up.
Once a company has identified the issues and cost inefficiencies, it becomes much easier for the customer to filter out and identify what type of cloud cost management they are looking for. If the buyer prefers having a single software solution owner, they could opt for a single cloud provider with inherent cloud cost optimization capabilities. However, if the buyer prefers a separate tool to manage various cloud environments like hybrid and multi-cloud environments, they could opt for another stand-alone solution altogether. Customers can use reviews here at G2.com as a guide to move forward with choosing the software.
Compare Cloud Cost Management Tools Products
Create a long list
This step involves creating a long list of cloud cost management software providers that assist buyers in cost optimization plans. Some key factors to consider include automation, server instances tracking, billing methods, dashboard functionality, cost reduction, security support, data privacy, etc. In this step, it is important to note that many top cloud service providers provide cloud cost optimization as a part of their cloud offerings (on a subscription basis), hence it is important to evaluate whether the added functionality is sufficient or a stand-alone solution is required.
Create a short list
Once the long list of cloud cost management tools has been identified, it is time to remove software that does not meet all the business criteria. For this, it is important to fall back on the assessment made earlier on what is to be done before choosing a cloud spend management solution. Based on the assessment, buyers can further shorten their list and only choose those software vendors that meet all the business requirements.
Conduct demos
Once the list has been reduced to a couple of vendors, buyers may begin to request a demo. The demo will give them an idea of how the software will work once and help them assess all the various features the software has to offer. Having a demo on resources and applications is a good way to ensure the best fit. At this step, the buyer should ask several questions to the vendor about after-service support, staff training, and other additional features that can be provided. Understanding the dashboard and visualization of the cost parameters is essential during demos.
Selection of Cloud Cost Management Tools
Choose a selection team
Choosing the right team to work together on choosing the software is a critical part of the process. This team will be in charge of identifying pain points to finally overseeing the entire implementation of the cloud management software. The team should include a mix of different personas who have the required skills, interest, and time. Some roles include cloud architects and cloud admins, IT admin and staff, department heads, and finance managers (for budget allocations).
Negotiation
When choosing a cloud cost management tool, bringing in negotiation factors is very important especially on pricing. Since a buyer’s requirement for the cloud might change based on the types of workloads being run and applications being developed, buyers should ensure that the software accurately reflects the resources being utilized at that point in time and account for possible changes in the future. This is necessary to ensure that the customer is not being overcharged. Bringing such discussions to the negotiation table is key. In addition, it is important to negotiate possible additional costs that might come in for the remainder of the contract.
Final decision
Once all the steps are complete, the final decision is made weighing all factors and scenarios. Buyers can first try to run cloud cost management software with a smaller number of instances and monitor the cost savings and resources being optimized. Based on this feedback, it can be used for enterprise-wide cloud cost management.
