![\"Backblaze](\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/bb-bh-FreeCloudStorage-v2.jpg\" "\\"Free")
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Major cloud storage providers including Amazon and Google offer free tiers of storage or promotional credits to incentivize developers and startups to begin storing data on their clouds. While this may seem attractive to early-stage businesses looking for an affordable jumpstart, it’s important to consider the long-term realities of scaling your business once you\u2019re beyond the threshold of these freebie offers.<\/p>\n
As your business evolves, so does how you utilize, store, and manage your data. Aiden Korotkin, the founder of AK Productions<\/a>\u2014a full-service video production company based in Washington, D.C.\u2014learned this the hard way<\/a>. He was quick to choose Google Cloud Storage when he was getting started, only to realize it wasn’t the right fit as his business grew.<\/p>\n At the time, Google offered a promotional credit. \u201cThat lasted about a year,\u201d Korotkin said, and when the credit expired, it forced him to take a closer look at the cost efficiency and security of the Google Cloud Platform. \u201cI realized that it\u2019s super confusing,\u201d he explained, \u201cyou have a lot of options, but it seems like chaos unless you know exactly what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n The overhead of managing your cloud platform is only one of the factors to consider when planning your cloud infrastructure rollout. Complexity, predictability, and retrieval are all things you should keep in mind when picking the right solution for your business case. Evaluating all of these factors helps you understand the true cost of ownership and the value of the platform over time.<\/p>\n We hope this guide to three key factors for cloud storage selection will help you decide the right, next best step for you and your growing business.<\/p>\n The promotional offers that many cloud storage providers boast are fairly straightforward and clear: Google Cloud Free Tier offers a three month free trial with a $300 credit to use with any Google Cloud services. AWS Free Tier offers various free services including 5GB of S3 Storage for 12 months. Both providers also have incentive funds for startups which can be unlocked through incubators or VCs which grant additional credits of up to tens of thousands of dollars. For next to nothing your data is on its way and you can move on.<\/p>\n But while it may be tempting to jump on one of these offers, it’s worth spending some time learning the breakdown of data storage and utilization costs for each platform, as well as understanding any longer-term or service-related fees you may be on the hook for. Decoding your monthly bill or dealing with surprising service charges when you’re managing a few gigabytes or terabytes is doable, but as you grow, navigating the tiered pricing structures that many of the legacy cloud providers operate under becomes quite complicated<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a bit of an understatement. The reality of the situation is that a whole industry of consultants and businesses has sprung up around this issue. These third-party vendors specialize in helping businesses understand and optimize their cloud invoices from Amazon AWS and Google Cloud Storage. When you need to hire another business just to understand what you\u2019re paying for, it\u2019s time to ask some questions about whether they\u2019re right for you.<\/p>\n Tiered pricing may make sense for businesses who are capable of optimizing their infrastructure to a T. But how many startups does that describe? Most early-stage entrepreneurs do not have the resources to undertake this feat of planning and engineering and find themselves struggling to keep their cloud costs down when they graduate from free plans.<\/p>\n As if the complexity of pricing tables wasn’t bad enough, understanding what you can do<\/em> with your data once it is stored can be highly confusing, too. Consider egress fees: These are the fees you\u2019ll pay to download your data from the cloud. Most major cloud providers including Amazon and Google charge high egress fees<\/a> ranging anywhere from $90 to $120+ per terabyte. Attempting to gauge just how expensive egress will be for you can feel impossible. As a result, businesses often begin storing data on these cloud platforms with ease, but as their data sets grow, they find themselves unable to leave due to the high egress costs.<\/p>\n With Amazon AWS, many businesses find that the complexity transcends pricing and stretches into the functionalities provided by the platform. Without the right tools and resources, you may spend hours or days configuring your environment. Tristan Pelligrino, co-founder of Motion<\/a>, a B2B content marketing agency, spent significant amounts of time simply setting up and onboarding new users. \u201cThe interface is very complex. It felt like I was recreating the wheel every time I set up a new user experience,\u201d Pelligrino said. \u201cIt was frustrating, but someone had to do it.\u201d The problem being, every moment he spent on AWS was time he wasn\u2019t investing in his creative work.<\/p>\n Not having a 360 degree awareness of your platform’s functionality and how to properly configure it may seem like a minor issue, but sometimes the complexity can obscure vital information. Like when you discover that your backup solution isn\u2019t actually backing up your data. The team at Crisp Video Group, a creative agency serving law firms, scrambled to recover what they could when they realized that their Amazon S3 configuration had failed to back up 109 days worth of data<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, understanding, and oftentimes, avoiding complexity is key in the cloud storage selection process. If it\u2019s not crystal clear what you need and what you\u2019re going to be paying, you may want to consider how much an initial dose of \u201cfree\u201d will cost you in the long run. Which leads to factor two.<\/p>\n As an early-stage startup, it\u2019s hard to predict how quickly you\u2019re going to grow, which makes it even harder to predict your cloud costs on a monthly or annual basis. Most cloud providers will make it extremely easy to spin up new servers and store data, but as you scale, it’s important to have a clear idea of the costs involved so that you can attain predictable growth. Without this control, cloud storage costs could spiral, significantly hurting your OpEx margins<\/a> and potentially making useful data inaccessible or unusable in make or break situations.<\/p>\n Predicting your cloud storage costs should be simple, in theory. You have three main dimensions: storage (how much data you store), download (the fee to get your data out of the cloud), and transactions (“stuff” you might do to your data inside the cloud). Yet most vendors continue to make it extremely difficult to understand your monthly bill which adds unnecessary strain when budgeting and forecasting your cloud spend. According to ZDNet, “37% of IT executives found their cloud storage costs to be unpredictable.”<\/p>\n This was the case for Gavin Wade, the founder & CEO of the SaaS photography platform CloudSpot, who realized that his business\u2019s 700TB+ of data stored on Amazon S3 was eating into their OpEx margins<\/a>. Even more discouraging was the realization that it would be an even bigger financial undertaking to move the data to another service.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a few internal conversations where we concluded that we were stuck with Amazon. That\u2019s never a good feeling in business,” Wade mentioned, as his team looked for other places to affect changes and cut costs.<\/p>\n Being able to accurately project your cash flow is essential to being able to take advantage of other opportunities as they arise. If you make the choice early on to lock into a provider that doesn’t offer predictability on a budget line, you won’t have the clarity you need when it’s most important.<\/p>\n Along with tiered pricing, most cloud providers offer several storage classes meant for different use cases. Again, this may be useful if you have optimized accordingly, but more often than not, these storage classes add unnecessary complexity. This is especially true when it comes to the timing and expense of getting your data back, or, retrieval.<\/p>\n Amazon S3 offers the following storage classes:<\/p>\n\nMaking the Cloud Storage Decision: How Much Will \u201cFree\u201d Cost You?<\/h2>\n
Factor 1: Complexity<\/h3>\n
![\"Crisp](\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/bb-bh-Motion-case-study-image1-1024x583.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFactor 2: Predictability<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nFactor 3: Retrieval<\/h3>\n
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\n\t S3 Standard:<\/strong><\/td> Active data that needs to be accessed frequently and quickly.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t S3 Intelligent-Tiering:<\/strong><\/td> Moves data automatically across tiers depending on usage.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t S3 Standard-Infrequent Access:<\/strong><\/td> Data that is accessed less frequently but requires rapid access when needed.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t S3 Glacier:<\/strong><\/td> Long-term archive with longer retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n\t S3 Deep Glacier:<\/strong><\/td> Long-term archive comparable to magnetic tape libraries with the slowest retrieval times.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n