How Zabrizon Helped Reduce AWS Costs by 30% for a Fast-Growing SaaS Startup
In today’s cloud-powered world, AWS offers scale and flexibility — but it can also quietly burn through your budget if left unchecked. At Zabrizon, we’ve made it our mission to help companies optimize their cloud infrastructure without sacrificing performance.
Recently, we worked with a Berlin-based SaaS startup to reduce their AWS bill by over 30% in just 60 days. Here's how we did it — and how you can apply similar strategies to your own cloud setup.
🚀 The Challenge
The client, a fast-growing B2B SaaS platform, had scaled quickly but without much cost governance. Their monthly AWS spend had ballooned to over €14,000, and their internal team had no clear visibility into where the costs were coming from.
Key issues included:
Underutilized EC2 instances
Redundant storage across S3 and EBS
Inefficient use of RDS and Lambda
No tagging strategy to track environment-specific costs
No use of Reserved Instances or Savings Plans
🧠 Zabrizon's Approach
We began with a deep audit of their AWS environment using a blend of:
Native AWS tools (Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor, Compute Optimizer)
Our own internal cloud analysis framework
Interviews with their developers and DevOps engineers
From there, we created a custom 4-phase optimization roadmap:
✅ Phase 1: Visibility & Monitoring
Implemented AWS Cost Anomaly Detection
Set up CloudWatch dashboards for real-time cost monitoring
Created a cost allocation tagging system (by service, team, and environment)
Consolidated multiple linked AWS accounts into a single AWS Organization for better management
✅ Phase 2: Compute Optimization
Replaced several on-demand EC2 instances with Reserved Instances (1-year term)
Identified and terminated idle EC2 and ELB resources
Switched some workloads from EC2 to AWS Fargate, reducing manual overhead
Downsized EC2 instance types where performance was over-provisioned
✅ Phase 3: Storage Cleanup
Moved archival data from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier and S3 Intelligent-Tiering
Deleted unused EBS volumes and old snapshots
Activated lifecycle policies to automatically clean up stale resources
✅ Phase 4: Database and Lambda Optimization
Converted RDS instances to Aurora Serverless for dev/test environments
Right-sized production RDS instances based on utilization data
Refactored Lambda functions for better memory allocation and shorter execution times
💡 The Outcome
Within just 60 days, we delivered:
€4,200/month saved – a 30% reduction in monthly AWS spend
Better visibility into resource usage
Lower maintenance and overhead for the internal team
A sustainable cost-monitoring system with clear ownership
The client is now scaling confidently, knowing their cloud costs are under control and predictable.
📈 What You Can Learn from This
If you're running on AWS and wondering why your bill keeps climbing, here are some quick wins:
Tag everything – Without cost tagging, you’re flying blind.
Audit storage – Old snapshots and infrequent-access data cost more than you think.
Right-size your instances – Bigger is not always better.
Use RIs and Savings Plans – Commit smartly and save big.
Clean up regularly – Stale resources = wasted money.
👋 Ready to Optimize Your AWS Spend?
At Zabrizon, we blend deep technical expertise with business logic to help you do more with your cloud — for less.
Want us to take a look at your AWS setup?
👉 Book a free AWS cost audit — no strings attached.
