Looking for feedback from people who manage AWS bills every month
What would you pay for an AWS cost optimization platform?
Hey everyone,
I wanted to get some honest opinions from people who actually manage AWS every day.
I spent a few years in AWS ProServe, and one thing that came up with almost every customer was cost. It didn't seem to matter whether they were a startup or a large enterprise or a federal client. Everyone felt like they were constantly chasing their AWS bill instead of staying ahead of it.
I'm at a small MSP now, and over the last year or so I built an internal tool for our team. It started because I got tired of jumping between Cost Explorer, CUR reports, Trusted Advisor, spreadsheets, and a handful of scripts just to answer simple questions and the existing tools fell short.
Over time it evolved into something we now use across all of our customer accounts. Besides cost optimization, it surfaces cost events, provides much more granular visibility into spend, and includes recommendations.
The funny part is I originally planned to release it as open source. That was always the goal.
Then one of our customers saw it, asked if they could buy it, and convinced my boss we should consider turning it into a SaaS instead.
So now we're at a crossroads, and I'd love some honest feedback from this community.
What would you pay?
For a platform with:
- Unlimited AWS accounts
- Multi-account support
- Granular cost breakdowns
- Cost events and anomaly tracking
- Well-Architected recommendations
- No account or resource limits
If this genuinely helped you reduce AWS spend and saved you hours each month, what would you realistically pay?
We're currently thinking somewhere in the $19.99 to $199.99/month range, but I'm intentionally not narrowing it further because I'd rather hear what you think it's actually worth.
Would you pay a monthly subscription? A one-time license? Or would you expect something like this to be open source?
I'm genuinely not trying to sell anything here. We're still deciding whether this should become a product at all, and I'd rather hear from people who manage AWS every day than make assumptions.
Appreciate any feedback, even if your answer is, "nothing."