Do you know where your cloud spend is going? If the answer is yes, you’re doing cloud cost management right – and that’s important.
Effective cloud cost management is vital for keeping track of your cloud resources, predicting future costs and perfecting your budget forecasting. Unfortunately, cloud cost information is often buried in rows and columns of text on cloud providers’ bills, making it tricky to keep up with. Luckily, cloud cost management software is here to take care of that problem.
In this article, we’ll cover what cloud cost management is. We’ll also present 5 of the best cloud cost management tools on the market in 2024.
What is cloud cost management?
Cloud cost management – also known as cloud spend management and cloud cost optimisation – is the practice of monitoring, optimising and controlling costs associated with cloud services.
The goal of cloud cost management is to find ways to get the most out of your cloud investment. It offers visibility into how your resources are being used – and that makes it easier to spot and get rid of redundant or over-provisioned services. It’s also a great tool for predicting future cloud costs and perfecting your budget forecasting.
A crucial player in making all of this happen is cloud cost management software. It’s a software that tracks and categorises all your cloud-related expenses and attributes them to the teams responsible for them.
In other words, cloud cost management software creates transparency. It holds the right people accountable for their expenses, encourages them to use their resources with care and discourages wasteful spending – what’s not to like?
The benefits: Why cloud cost management is so important
Based on the above, you can probably guess that cloud cost management comes with a variety of benefits that can impact your company’s financial health and operational efficiency for the better.
Here are some key benefits you stand to gain from effective cloud cost management:
- Cost savings: Cloud cost management helps you select the most cost-effective pricing models. It also helps you single out and eliminate resources you’re no longer using – and it won’t be long before your wallet feels the difference.
- Better budgeting and forecasting: With cloud cost management, you get detailed insights into your spending patterns. This lets you better forecast your future spending and set and monitor budgets. You’ll be all set to handle future expenses.
- Enhanced visibility: Keep track of your spending in real time. With cloud cost management, your stakeholders can clearly see where money is being spent and why.
- Resource efficiency: Effective cloud cost management encourages everyone to think about how they’re using their cloud resources and how to get the most value out of their investments.
- Better decision making: With access to detailed cost data, it’s much easier to make informed decisions about your cloud architecture and services – and that helps ensure that your investments support your strategic goals.
Top 5 cloud cost management tools in 2024
Now that we’ve covered what cloud cost management is and the benefits it can bring to your company, let’s take a look at five of the best cloud cost management tools in 2024.
1. Pleo
With more than 1,480 five star reviews, Pleo is Europe’s most loved and trusted spend management platform.
Pleo collects all your recurring software costs in one place. You can pay, track and manage spending for things like cloud services, SaaS subscriptions and hardware. Among its features, Pleo offers vendor cards, spend controls, budgeting tools, analytics tools and so much more.
The platform keeps your spending secure and helps you spot opportunities to save money, giving you full control and transparency of how much is being spent, who’s spending and when they’re spending. In short, Pleo is your one single solution for managing your cloud costs.
2. nOps
nOps is an AI-powered cloud cost management platform that focuses on cost optimisation, compliance and operational efficiency for Amazon Web Services (AWS).
With nOps, every aspect of cost optimisation is automated, saving your team valuable time that can instead be put towards more strategic initiatives.
From your largest resources all the way down to container costs, nOps offers visibility into all your AWS costs – all from a single, integrated platform. All in all, nOps is a great cloud cost management tool for organisations using AWS.
3. Flexera Cloud Cost Management
Flexera’s Cloud Cost Management platform focuses on improving the visibility of your cloud spend, offering comprehensive insights with customisable dashboards.
The tool includes all the features you’d expect from a cloud cost management solution, including cost analysis, reporting and forecasting.
Flexera’s platform also offers visibility into both public and private cloud costs, as well as cost anomaly alerts to help you identify the culprits behind spikes in cloud spend – all great functions for keeping on top of your spend.
4. CloudZero
CloudZero is a cloud cost intelligence platform that focuses on providing detailed insights and analytics to help you manage and optimise your cloud spend.
The tool breaks down your costs to show you where, when and how your money is spent. It enables you to better connect cloud costs with product and engineering decisions – essentially, it aligns engineering with finance.
CloudZero puts cloud costs in the context of your specific company, offering a unique approach to cost management that connects spending to your business outcomes. What’s not to like?
5. Azure Cost Management
Azure Cost Management is a cloud cost management tool native to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Service.
The tool comes with all the must-haves for managing costs and optimising your cloud investments, such as monitoring Azure cloud costs, cost analysis, budgeting, cost optimisation recommendations and much more.
Azure Cost Management is all about reducing your costs and optimising the efficiency of your cloud investments – in short, it’s all about doing more with less.
What to look for in a cloud cost management solution
Now that you’re familiar with some of the best options on the market, let’s go through what you should be looking for when selecting a cloud cost management tool. After all, you want a solution that offers the right features and capabilities for your company’s specific needs.
Here are some important factors to consider:
- Visibility and transparency: You want to know exactly where your money is going. Look for a tool that gives you crystal clear visibility and insights into your cloud spend across services and departments.
- Cost optimisation: Knowing is one thing – optimising is another. Look for features that help you spot saving opportunities and offer insights to reduce costs.
- Budgeting and forecasting: Your chosen tool should help you set and monitor budgets like a pro. Look for great budgeting capabilities, and make sure it comes with strong forecasting abilities to help you plan ahead.
- Cost allocation and accountability: Look for a tool that lets you tag and group resources and track costs by team or project. This way, everyone knows who’s accountable for what – and you’re all more likely to spend responsibly.
- Integration and compatibility: If your company uses multiple cloud providers – e.g. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud – make sure the solution supports cost management across them all and integrates with your other tools and workflows.
- Compliance and security: This one’s a given. Look for features that help ensure your cloud environment complies with security and regulatory standards.
- Ease of use: You’ll be spending a lot of time with your chosen tool – so make sure it’s a good time. Look for a tool that’s intuitive and easy to use.
- Price: Last, but not least, consider the pricing structure. Make sure it aligns with your budget and that the tool’s features give you the value for money you’re looking for.
Wrapping up
Cloud cost management – and the software solutions that facilitate it – helps you get the most out of your cloud investment. It holds the right people accountable for their expenses, encourages them to use their resources with care and discourages wasteful spending.
When looking for a cloud cost management tool, make sure you choose the solution that gives you complete visibility into your cloud spend – and one that gives you full control and transparency of how much is being spent, who’s spending and when they’re spending.
