One of the first questions we get asked is “how much will it cost to move to the cloud?” The honest answer is: it depends. But that’s not very helpful, so here’s a more practical breakdown.
The three types of cost
Cloud migration costs fall into three buckets:
1. The migration itself - the work to plan, build, and move your workloads. This includes architecture design, landing zone setup, application assessment, and the actual migration execution. For most organisations, this is the biggest upfront cost.
2. Running costs - your monthly AWS or Azure bill once you’re in the cloud. This replaces whatever you’re currently spending on data centres, hardware, licensing, and the people who maintain them.
3. Optimisation costs - the ongoing work to right-size resources, implement reserved capacity, and tune your environment. This is where the real savings come from, but it’s often overlooked.
What most people get wrong
The biggest mistake we see is comparing your current on-premises costs directly to a cloud bill. That comparison is misleading because:
- On-premises costs are often hidden (power, cooling, floor space, hardware refresh cycles, staff time)
- Cloud pricing is transparent but looks expensive when you’re not used to seeing every line item
- Most organisations over-provision in the cloud because they’re used to buying hardware for peak capacity
The result: people move to the cloud, see a bigger bill than expected, and panic. The problem isn’t the cloud - it’s the migration approach.
How to get it right
Start with a proper assessment. Before you move anything, understand what you have, what it costs today (including the hidden costs), and what it’ll cost in the cloud. This is exactly what the Assess phase of the AWS Migration Acceleration Programme (MAP) is designed for.
Right-size from day one. Don’t lift-and-shift a 64GB server into a 64GB EC2 instance just because that’s what you had before. Look at actual utilisation. Most servers run at 10-20% capacity. You’re paying for 100%.
Use reserved capacity. Once you know your baseline, commit to 1 or 3 year reserved instances or savings plans. The discounts are significant - typically 30-60% off on-demand pricing.
Automate everything. Manual processes cost time, and time costs money. Infrastructure as Code, automated deployments, and self-service environments reduce the ongoing operational burden.
Plan for optimisation. Migration isn’t a one-time event. Build cost reviews into your regular operations. Set up tagging, dashboards, and alerts so you can see where money is going and act on it.
A real example
Our own website runs on AWS S3 and CloudFront. The total monthly cost is about a pound. That includes global CDN distribution, HTTPS, security headers, threat detection, and full API audit logging.
Obviously a consultancy website is simpler than an enterprise application, but the principle is the same: use only what you need, automate the management, and review regularly.
What about MAP funding?
The AWS Migration Acceleration Programme can offset a significant portion of your migration costs through credits and funding. We’re not an AWS Partner ourselves, but we help organisations navigate the MAP programme and work with their AWS Partner to unlock that funding.
The Assess phase alone can be partially funded through MAP, and it gives you the business case and cost projections you need to make an informed decision.
The bottom line
Cloud migration doesn’t have to be expensive. It has to be planned. The organisations that overspend are the ones that skip the assessment, over-provision resources, and don’t optimise after migration.
The ones that save money are the ones that take the time to understand their workloads, right-size from the start, and build automation into everything.
If you’re thinking about a migration and want to understand the real costs, get in touch. We’ll give you an honest assessment - not a sales pitch.