Best Cloud Cost Management Tools

How Many Cloud Cost Management Tools Products Does G2 Track?

Total Products under this Category: 247

Category Stats (Sep 2026)

  • Average Rating: 4.6/5 (↑0.01 vs Aug 2026) The average rating of products in this category, based on all submitted ratings
  • Top Trending Product: OneLens (+1.83%) - Among all products in this category, OneLens recorded the largest rating increase compared to last month

Last updated: September 15, 2026

How Does G2 Rank Cloud Cost Management Tools Products?

Why You Can Trust G2's Software Rankings:

  • 30 Analysts and Data Experts
  • 6,400+ Authentic Reviews
  • 247+ Products
  • Unbiased Rankings

G2's software rankings are built on verified user reviews, rigorous moderation, and a consistent research methodology maintained by a team of analysts and data experts. Each product is measured using the same transparent criteria, with no paid placement or vendor influence. While reviews reflect real user experiences, which can be subjective, they offer valuable insight into how software performs in the hands of professionals. Together, these inputs power the G2 Score, a standardized way to compare tools within every category.

G2 Grid® for Cloud Cost Management Tools

G2 Grid® for Cloud Cost Management Tools plotting products by satisfaction and market presence

Highlighted products: Cast AI, CloudKeeper, Flexera One, Amazon CloudWatch, ScaleOps, AWS Budgets, Vantage, and Datadog.

Underlying data: [Grid® JSON](https://www.g2.com/categories/cloud-cost-management/grids.json?focus%5B%5D=cast-ai&focus%5B%5D=cloudkeeper&focus%5B%5D=flexera-one&focus%5B%5D=amazon-cloudwatch&focus%5B%5D=scaleops-cloud-native-optimization-scaleops&focus%5B%5D=aws-budgets&focus%5B%5D=vntg-inc-vantage&focus%5B%5D=datadog)

Cast AI

Cast AI is an automation platform for Kubernetes and GPU infrastructure. It scales, rightsizes, and migrates workloads automatically, and sources GPU capacity across clouds and regions through OMNI. Every optimization is verified: lower costs, stronger performance and reliability, and less manual toil. Cast AI reached unicorn status in January 2026 and is trusted by BMW, Cisco, FICO, HuggingFace, and Swisscom.

Average Rating: 4.5/5.0

Total Reviews: 225

How Do G2 Users Rate Cast AI?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 9.5/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 9.4/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Cast AI?

  • Seller: Cast AI
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2019
  • HQ Location: Miami, FL
  • Twitter: @cast_ai
    1,826 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    352 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: DevOps Engineer, Senior DevOps Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 43% Medium, 21% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Cast AI?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users benefit from cost management features in CAST AI, achieving significant savings and improved cluster management.
  • Users value the cost-saving benefits of CAST AI, significantly reducing cloud expenses through efficient resource management.
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of Cast AI, highlighting its straightforward setup and intuitive features.
  • Users appreciate the massive cost savings offered by CAST AI through intelligent optimization and efficient resource management.
  • Users find CAST AI's pricing advantages compelling, appreciating cost savings and easy management for optimal efficiency.
Cons
  • Users experience scaling issues with CAST AI, particularly during traffic spikes, causing disruptions and inefficiency.
  • Users find the pricing high for small clusters, making Cast AI seem expensive despite its benefits.
  • Users note a significant learning difficulty with advanced features, requiring time to fully understand the platform.
  • Users face poor documentation leading to confusion and misunderstanding, impacting their overall experience with Cast AI.
  • Users express concerns about pricing issues, noting complexities in cost understanding and the need for better transparency.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Cast AI?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Cast AI?

CloudKeeper

CloudKeeper is the only outcome-driven AI & Cloud Cost Optimization partner built for fast-scaling cloud organizations. We deliver guaranteed, continuous cost savings across your cloud and AI estate - combining proven FinOps expertise, proprietary optimization platforms, and hands-on execution to drive measurable financial outcomes at scale. With over 15 years of cloud cost optimization experience, CloudKeeper has helped 400+ global companies reduce cloud and AI spend by an average of 20% across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Unlike traditional engagement models, we deliver ongoing savings through an outcome-based model - with no upfront costs and no long-term commitments.

Average Rating: 4.7/5.0

Total Reviews: 320

How Do G2 Users Rate CloudKeeper?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.5/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.5/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind CloudKeeper?

  • Seller: CloudKeeper
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2019
  • HQ Location: Singapore, Singapore
  • Twitter: @cloud_keeper
    125 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    422 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: DevOps Engineer, CTO
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 65% Medium, 25% Small

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About CloudKeeper?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users commend the responsive customer support of CloudKeeper, highlighting timely assistance during critical situations.
  • Users value the responsive support from CloudKeeper, enhancing security and providing effective cost management for AWS services.
  • Users value the easy collaboration and insightful recommendations from CloudKeeper, enhancing cloud cost optimization and visibility.
  • Users highlight the cost-saving benefits of CloudKeeper, achieving significant reductions in cloud expenses while optimizing budgets.
  • Users value the detailed insights on cloud costs provided by CloudKeeper, enabling effective spending optimization and management.
Cons
  • Users find missing features such as tagging resource IDs and APIs hinder customization and cost identification.
  • Users find the complexity in implementation of CloudKeeper challenging, affecting integration with existing systems and data availability.
  • Users express concerns over AWS limitations, feeling restricted by CloudKeeper's control over Service Control Policies and credentials access.
  • Users face issues with cost management delays, impacting their ability to track expenses effectively in CloudKeeper.
  • Users find the difficult setup of CloudKeeper challenging, especially for custom features and integrations with existing systems.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of CloudKeeper?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About CloudKeeper?

Flexera One

Flexera One is a SaaS-based IT management solution designed with and for organizations like yours with highly complex hybrid environments. With Flexera One, you can visualize your entire estate and make data-driven decisions from on-premise to SaaS to the cloud. IT Visibility Flexera One’s IT Visibility solution delivers the most comprehensive and clear view of your IT estate. Discovery and normalization—gain consistent, reliable data and take control of assets to draw valuable insights across software, hardware, SaaS and cloud. Data enrichment—enhance your IT inventory data with market intelligence that improves your decision-making abilities, via Technopedia—the largest and most trusted IT asset information source in the world. Unified data visualization—simplify the view of your environment with clear understanding and analytic that provide context for business initiatives spanning your entire IT estate. IT Asset Management Flexera One’s IT asset management (ITAM) starts with knowing what you have in your IT ecosystem—across hardware, software, SaaS, cloud, containers, clusters and virtual technologies. Optimized for today’s digital business, find the evidence required to determine license consumption, such as IBM sub-capacity requirements. Software asset management— Flexera One is the only SAM solution to solve the exponentiality of licensing with depth, breadth, algorithms and automation required to truly create a trusted and accurate license position. Hardware asset management— manage the hardware you own or lease, no matter where it is. Make critical hardware lifecycle decisions to support user productivity, business continuity and make the most of your hardware investments. SaaS management— get a current and complete picture of SaaS usage to support your business stakeholders while optimizing SaaS spend with all your vendors. Take action by discovering shadow SaaS, removing redundant applications and optimizing subscriptions based on actual usage automatically. Software request and reharvest— proactively reduce the sprawl and provide end users with a catalog of approved software, SaaS and cloud instances–helping you get them within guard rails while enabling the business to be agile and innovative. Reclaim unused technology to avoid future costs. Integrate with ITSM providers so you can meet users where they are and provide a seamless end-user experience. Cloud Cost Optimization Flexera One offers a unique approach to cloud cost optimization that enables cloud governance teams to work collaboratively with business units and cloud resource owners to optimize spend. With Flexera One, you get a comprehensive set of cloud cost optimization capabilities designed to easily reduce costs across your entire cloud environment. Cloud Cost Management— Get visibility into cloud usage and costs for all your cloud accounts. You can evaluate and report on your most cost-effective regions and instance sizes, and dive deep into public and private cloud costs by application, category, business unit, cost center, department or team. You also can allocate costs for chargeback and showback with complete backup and justification. Cloud Governance— Flexera One offers a powerful policies engine that enables your cloud governance teams to manage and control hybrid cloud use with out-of-the-box and custom policies to automate governance of costs, operations, security and compliance. Cloud Migration and Modernization Successful IT modernization requires proper analysis, prioritization and planning. Flexera One’s Cloud Migration and Modernization provides the actionable intelligence you need to optimize your cloud modernization and migration—no matter where you are on your cloud journey. Cloud Migration Planning— Flexera one gives you the actionable intelligence needed to optimize your on-premises to cloud migration journey from start to finish with full context visibility into business services. Cloud Cost Assessment — Flexera One provides comprehensive workload assessments to show you which cloud type, provider, custom instance choice, buying type and resource provisioning are best for your workload, budget and performance requirements—all to optimize your cloud cost savings. Workload Placement — Cloud migration and modernization provides comprehensive workload assessments for full visibility into your current workloads, so you can prioritize and identify which providers are best for your performance requirements to ensure successful migration of workloads to the cloud.

Average Rating: 4.4/5.0

Total Reviews: 175

How Do G2 Users Rate Flexera One?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.4/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 7.9/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.2/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Flexera One?

  • Seller: Flexera
  • Year Founded: 2008
  • HQ Location: Itasca, IL
  • Twitter: @flexera
    4,737 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    2,099 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Analyst, Graduate Engineer Trainee
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 69% Large, 23% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Flexera One?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users find the clean and intuitive interface of Flexera One enhances efficiency, making software management effortless.
  • Users appreciate the high flexibility of Flexera One, enabling tailored policies and seamless integration for advanced insights.
  • Users value the seamless integration capabilities of Flexera One, enhancing IT asset management and streamlining workflows.
  • Users commend the high quality of Flexera One, noting its flexibility, comprehensive features, and exceptional support.
  • Users value the unified visibility Flexera One offers, simplifying IT asset management across diverse environments.
Cons
  • Users find that the complexity of Flexera One hampers ease of implementation and requires extensive learning.
  • Users find the difficult learning curve challenging, particularly due to the overwhelming interface and complex features.
  • Users find the learning curve long, suggesting onboarding improvements for a smoother user experience.
  • Users face a complex setup process that can be resource-intensive and requires technical expertise for integration.
  • Users find the difficult setup of Flexera One challenging, impacting maintenance, administration, and overall adoption.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Flexera One?

Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is a comprehensive monitoring and observability service designed to provide real-time insights into AWS resources, on-premises servers, hybrid environments, and applications. It enables users to collect and track metrics, monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in their AWS resources. By offering a unified view of operational health, CloudWatch helps organizations optimize application performance, manage resource utilization, and maintain system reliability. Key Features and Functionality: - Metrics Collection and Monitoring: Automatically collects and tracks metrics from over 70 AWS services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and AWS Lambda, providing up-to-the-minute data on resource performance. - Log Management: Aggregates and stores logs from various sources, such as AWS services and on-premises servers, facilitating real-time monitoring and analysis. - Alarms and Automated Actions: Allows users to set alarms based on predefined thresholds, triggering automated actions like scaling resources or sending notifications when specific conditions are met. - Dashboards and Visualization: Offers customizable dashboards that display metrics and logs, enabling users to visualize data and gain insights into system performance. - Application Performance Monitoring (APM): Provides tools like Application Signals and CloudWatch Synthetics to monitor application health, detect anomalies, and simulate user interactions for proactive issue detection. - Container and Serverless Monitoring: Includes features like Container Insights and Lambda Insights to monitor containerized applications and serverless functions, offering detailed performance metrics and diagnostics. Primary Value and Problem Solving: Amazon CloudWatch addresses the critical need for comprehensive monitoring and observability in modern IT environments. By consolidating metrics, logs, and events into a single platform, it eliminates the complexity of managing multiple monitoring tools. This integration enables faster detection and resolution of operational issues, reducing downtime and improving system reliability. CloudWatch's automated actions and alarms allow for proactive management of resources, ensuring optimal performance and cost efficiency. Additionally, its support for various environments, including on-premises and hybrid setups, makes it a versatile solution for diverse infrastructure monitoring needs.

Average Rating: 4.3/5.0

Total Reviews: 364

How Do G2 Users Rate Amazon CloudWatch?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.5/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Amazon CloudWatch?

  • Seller: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Year Founded: 2006
  • HQ Location: Seattle, WA
  • Twitter: @awscloud
    2,232,483 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    147,094 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: NASDAQ: AMZN

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 42% Large, 30% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Amazon CloudWatch?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the excellent log management capabilities of Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring various AWS services efficiently.
  • Users value the seamless integration of Amazon CloudWatch with AWS products, enhancing monitoring across various services effortlessly.
  • Users value the real-time monitoring and alerting features of CloudWatch, enhancing system performance and stability effectively.
  • Users value the sophisticated alerting mechanisms of CloudWatch, facilitating proactive issue resolution and enhanced system stability.
  • Users value the centralized monitoring of CloudWatch, unifying logs and metrics for efficient management and insights.
Cons
  • Users find the pricing structure confusing, especially with high log volume leading to unexpected costs and management challenges.
  • Users find cost management challenging due to complex pricing structures and rising expenses as usage scales.
  • Users find AWS CloudWatch expensive compared to alternatives, especially with costs rising for high log volume and metrics.
  • Users find the complexity of configuration and pricing in Amazon CloudWatch challenging, especially for newcomers.
  • Users find the configuration difficulty of Amazon CloudWatch challenging, particularly with custom metrics, alarms, and cost management.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Amazon CloudWatch?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Amazon CloudWatch?

ScaleOps

ScaleOps is a cloud resource management platform designed to automate resource optimization in real-time based on application context-awareness. This innovative solution continuously monitors live application behavior and dynamically adjusts Kubernetes workload resources according to actual usage and contextual demands. By leveraging ScaleOps, organizations can achieve significant cost reductions, of up to 80%, while ensuring that availability, performance, and compliance with production constraints are maintained. The primary target audience for ScaleOps includes DevOps teams, cloud architects, and IT administrators who manage Kubernetes environments. These professionals often face challenges related to resource allocation, cost management, and application performance. ScaleOps addresses these issues by providing a solution that operates autonomously, eliminating the need for manual intervention or code modifications. This allows teams to focus on higher-level strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae of resource management. Key features of ScaleOps include automated pod-level resource management, which encompasses CPU, memory, replicas, and scheduling. This capability allows the platform to adapt in real-time to the changing behavior of workloads, ensuring optimal resource utilization. Additionally, ScaleOps employs application context-aware optimization, taking into account factors such as burstiness, Pod Disruption Budgets (PDBs), statefulness, and the presence of noisy neighbors. This level of sophistication enables organizations to maintain performance and availability even in complex environments. ScaleOps also offers flexible deployment options, making it suitable for various infrastructures, including air-gapped, on-premises, hybrid, and cloud-native environments. Its compatibility with existing Kubernetes scaling tools, such as Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), KEDA, and Karpenter, allows for a gradual rollout without disrupting current systems. Furthermore, the platform provides granular policy control, enabling teams to define performance, cost, or availability priorities at the namespace, workload, or environment level. This feature empowers organizations to tailor their resource management strategies to meet specific operational goals and constraints. By integrating seamlessly into existing workflows and providing continuous, context-aware resource optimization, ScaleOps stands out as a comprehensive solution for organizations looking to enhance their Kubernetes resource management. Its unique approach not only drives cost efficiency but also ensures that applications run smoothly and reliably, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

Average Rating: 4.6/5.0

Total Reviews: 96

How Do G2 Users Rate ScaleOps?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 9.3/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.2/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind ScaleOps?

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: DevOps Engineer
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Financial Services
  • Company Size: 53% Medium, 36% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About ScaleOps?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users commend ScaleOps for its responsive customer support, providing timely assistance and enhancing the overall experience.
  • Users find ScaleOps to have an incredibly easy-to-use interface, simplifying cloud resource management effortlessly.
  • Users appreciate the significant cost savings with ScaleOps, achieving up to 50% reduction in expenses.
  • Users emphasize the significant cost savings achieved with ScaleOps through intelligent automation and efficient resource management.
  • Users find the easy setup of ScaleOps impressive, enabling efficient management and significant time savings.
Cons
  • Users note scaling issues with ScaleOps, particularly on small nodes and during version upgrades, which complicates performance.
  • Users experience slow performance with ScaleOps, leading to trust issues and partial disablement of the product.
  • Users experience difficulty in usage during setup and onboarding, affecting the overall effectiveness of ScaleOps.
  • Users find the missing features in ScaleOps, particularly regarding observability and data export options, frustrating.
  • Users feel the poor documentation hinders their understanding and makes using ScaleOps challenging and inefficient.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of ScaleOps?

AWS Budgets

AWS Budgets gives you the ability to set custom budgets that alert you when your costs or usage exceed (or are forecasted to exceed) your budgeted amount.

Average Rating: 4.1/5.0

Total Reviews: 40

How Do G2 Users Rate AWS Budgets?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.3/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind AWS Budgets?

  • Seller: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • Year Founded: 2006
  • HQ Location: Seattle, WA
  • Twitter: @awscloud
    2,232,483 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    147,094 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: NASDAQ: AMZN

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 53% Small, 24% Medium

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of AWS Budgets?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About AWS Budgets?

Vantage

Vantage is a cloud cost management platform designed to help organizations understand, allocate, and optimize their cloud, SaaS, and AI spend. It provides a comprehensive view of costs through a broad set of native billing integrations, including major providers such as Amazon Web Services, OpenAI, Datadog, and Kubernetes environments. This solution is particularly valuable for businesses that operate at scale and require accurate, unified visibility across multiple cost sources. Tailored to FinOps, engineering, and finance teams, Vantage serves a diverse audience across industries. Organizations such as Block, Inc., PBS, and Rippling use Vantage to manage and optimize large-scale infrastructure spend. The platform is built for teams that need to move beyond high-level reporting and instead require actionable, granular insights into cost drivers and ownership. A core strength of Vantage is its ability to unify and normalize cost data across cloud, SaaS, and AI providers, enabling consistent allocation and reporting. Teams can break down shared costs using tags, metadata, and custom allocation rules, ensuring accurate attribution across services, teams, and environments. This allows organizations to understand true unit economics and identify inefficiencies that would otherwise be difficult to detect across fragmented billing systems. In addition to visibility, Vantage emphasizes automation and actionability. The platform includes AI-driven capabilities such as automated agents and MCP-based integrations, along with programmatic access via APIs and a Terraform provider. These features enable teams to operationalize FinOps workflows, automating cost analysis, enforcing allocation standards, and integrating cost controls directly into engineering and financial systems. Vantage differentiates itself by combining broad native integrations with deep allocation capabilities and built-in automation. Rather than relying on reactive reporting, organizations can continuously monitor, analyze, and act on cost data in near real time. This approach helps teams improve accountability, optimize resource usage, and make faster, data-driven decisions about their cloud, SaaS, and AI investments.

Average Rating: 4.7/5.0

Total Reviews: 71

How Do G2 Users Rate Vantage?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.2/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Vantage?

  • Seller: VNTG, Inc.
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2020
  • HQ Location: New York City, US
  • Twitter: @joinvantage
    1,370 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    116 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 41% Small, 30% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Vantage?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the ease of use of Vantage, noting its quick setup and intuitive interface for cost management.
  • Users value the powerful cost management features of Vantage, enhancing visibility and optimizing spending across cloud resources.
  • Users commend Vantage for its effective cost reduction, providing clear insights that optimize cloud spending and budgets.
  • Users love the easy setup of Vantage, allowing quick access to essential insights without hassle.
  • Users value the data centralization of Vantage, which simplifies cloud cost management across multiple providers.
Cons
  • Users find the limited customization options for dashboards a drawback, wishing for more advanced reporting capabilities.
  • Users criticize Vantage for missing features, such as limited charting tools and inadequate predictive analytics capabilities.
  • Users find the inadequate reporting features somewhat cumbersome and prefer simplified monthly insights over weekly updates.
  • Users find Vantage has a steep learning curve, making initial setup and navigation somewhat overwhelming and time-consuming.
  • Users face integration issues with Vantage, as some third-party tools aren't seamless and require manual workarounds.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Vantage?

Datadog

Datadog is the monitoring, security and analytics platform for developers, IT operations teams, security engineers and business users in the cloud age. The SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring and log management to provide unified, real-time observability of our customers' entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations, security and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, secure applications and infrastructure, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.

Average Rating: 4.4/5.0

Total Reviews: 715

How Do G2 Users Rate Datadog?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.5/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.0/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Datadog?

  • Seller: Datadog
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2010
  • HQ Location: New York
  • Twitter: @datadoghq
    51,207 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    10,780 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer, DevOps Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 47% Medium, 34% Large

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Datadog?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of Datadog, enjoying intuitive dashboard creation and straightforward implementation.
  • Users appreciate the intuitive monitoring features of Datadog, enabling easy integration and insightful data analysis.
  • Users value the real-time monitoring capabilities of Datadog, enhancing oversight across various applications and infrastructures.
  • Users appreciate the user-friendly interface and robust integration capabilities of Datadog for effective monitoring.
  • Users value the intuitive dashboard creation in Datadog, which enhances monitoring and analysis efficiency.
Cons
  • Users find Datadog's pricing to be expensive, suggesting it should be more affordable given its features.
  • Users find pricing issues with Datadog, citing rapidly escalating costs and high subscription fees as concerns.
  • Users find the steep learning curve challenging, especially with rapidly evolving features and required knowledge.
  • Users find the costs to be unpredictable and excessively high, especially with data storage and additional features.
  • Users find learning difficulty in Datadog, noting that new users may require training to understand its complexities.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Datadog?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Datadog?

IBM Cloudability

IBM Cloudability is built to support the organizational adoption of FinOps—the cultural practice and operational process of bringing financial accountability to the scalable, variable, and distributed nature of cloud and related costs. Its enterprise-grade FinOps features enable IT, finance, and business teams to optimize cloud, AI and Kubernetes costs and communicate the business value of these investments. Cloudability normalizes and structures billing and usage data from across public cloud ecosystems. Its robust set of capabilities enable teams to: • Fully allocate cloud spend, including containers and AI related costs, and support charges—enabling chargeback across the business and continuous improvements to cloud unit economics • Estimate workload costs, build budgets and create driver-based forecasts that surface variance details while tracking spend to plan • Automatically optimize cloud costs via industry-leading rightsizing and commitment recommendations, allowing you to reduce operating expenses and fund future innovation investments • Make decisions with speed and confidence, powered by team ownership of cloud spend • Allocate shared costs, like specialized technology, labor and vendors, to extend FinOps and accountability to the total cost of running cloud • Support FinOps organizations in Federal agencies via FedRAMP authorized IBM Cloudability for US Federal • Enable Managed Services Providers to ingest, structure, and customize billing data via IBM Cloudability MSP Cloudability enables practitioners with the capabilities they need to drive FinOps forward— with financial accountability, optimized cloud spend and a roadmap for FinOps maturity. With over 10 years of accumulated expertise and innovation, Cloudability is the category pioneer and market leader dedicated to helping you excel at FinOps.

Average Rating: 4.2/5.0

Total Reviews: 211

How Do G2 Users Rate IBM Cloudability?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 7.8/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 7.2/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.5/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.2/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind IBM Cloudability?

  • Seller: Apptio, an IBM Company
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 1996
  • HQ Location: Bellevue, WA
  • Twitter: @Apptio
    9,662 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    1,315 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Financial Services
  • Company Size: 63% Large, 19% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About IBM Cloudability?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users love the ease of use of IBM Cloudability, facilitating quick dashboards and efficient FinOps management.
  • Users value the cost visibility provided by IBM Cloudability for effective multi-cloud financial management.
  • Users value the strong chargeback/showback capabilities of IBM Cloudability, enhancing accountability and driving cost discussions effectively.
  • Users value the efficient reporting feature of IBM Cloudability, enhancing decision-making and cloud spend management.
  • Users value the cost visibility provided by IBM Cloudability, enhancing their FinOps journey and accountability in spending.
Cons
  • Users find the rightsizing recommendations lacking, as they fail to include essential memory data and offer limited options.
  • Users feel the cost management features of IBM Cloudability are limited and lack critical data for effective analysis.
  • Users find the complexity a challenge in IBM Cloudability, with some aspects being slow and initially confusing.
  • Users struggle with inadequate reporting, finding it difficult to access and present data effectively in IBM Cloudability.
  • Users face integration issues due to heavy AWS focus, limiting effectiveness for other cloud service providers like Azure.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of IBM Cloudability?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About IBM Cloudability?

PointFive

PointFive Redefines AI and Cloud Efficiency with an OS That Spans Cloud and Coding Agents.

Average Rating: 4.9/5.0

Total Reviews: 32

How Do G2 Users Rate PointFive?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.8/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 6.4/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind PointFive?

  • Seller: PointFive
  • Year Founded: 2023
  • HQ Location: New York City, US
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    138 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Financial Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 53% Large, 38% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About PointFive?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users find that PointFive provides actionable insights that significantly reduce time spent on investigating savings opportunities.
  • Users value the time-saving benefits of PointFive, praising its detailed analysis and efficient recommendations for savings.
  • Users enjoy the intuitive interface of PointFive, making it straightforward to manage savings and insights effortlessly.
  • Users praise PointFive for its effective cost reduction, simplifying savings investigations and streamlining the entire process.
  • Users value PointFive for its time-saving features, simplifying cloud cost management and enhancing overall efficiency.
Cons
  • Users feel the user interface could be improved, leading to confusion and difficulties in filtering and reporting.
  • Users find the user interface confusing, particularly with the poweruser query language being tricky to navigate.
  • Users find the interface and report building difficult, affecting their overall experience with PointFive.
  • Users note inadequate reporting capabilities on PointFive, as crucial datasets for managing FinOps are lacking.
  • Users note the insufficient documentation for advanced features, which hinders adoption and management of FinOps effectively.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of PointFive?

IBM Turbonomic

IBM Turbonomic, now part of the Concert platform, is a real-time application resource management platform designed to help users optimize and manage resources across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This innovative solution continuously analyzes application performance and resource utilization, automating critical resourcing decisions to ensure optimal application performance while minimizing costs associated with cloud and infrastructure resources. IBM Turbonomic addresses the challenges of managing complex, dynamic environments. As organizations increasingly adopt hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, the need for effective resource management becomes paramount. Turbonomic provides a comprehensive approach to performance management by analyzing the entire technology stack, identifying inefficiencies, and uncovering dependencies that can impact application performance. This proactive management capability allows organizations to maintain high service levels while controlling costs. One of the key features of IBM Turbonomic is its ability to continuously adjust application resources in real time. By monitoring resource utilization and application performance, Turbonomic prevents performance degradation and overprovisioning. This dynamic adjustment ensures that applications receive the necessary resources when needed, which is crucial for maintaining optimal performance levels. Additionally, the platform automates resource decisions such as scaling and placement, allowing organizations to focus on strategic initiatives rather than manual resource management tasks. Turbonomic customers report an average 33% reduction in cloud and infrastructure waste without impacting application performance, and return-on-investment of 471% over three years. IBM Turbonomic is also available on AWS Marketplace. By leveraging Turbonomic, businesses can ensure that their applications run smoothly, resources are utilized effectively, and costs are kept in check, all while maintaining a focus on innovation and growth. For further information, please visit www.ibm.com/products/turbonomic

Average Rating: 4.4/5.0

Total Reviews: 287

How Do G2 Users Rate IBM Turbonomic?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 8.7/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind IBM Turbonomic?

  • Seller: IBM
  • Year Founded: 1911
  • HQ Location: Armonk, New York, United States
  • Twitter: @IBMSecurity
    74,660 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    344,328 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Ownership: SWX:IBM

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer, System Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 42% Large, 32% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About IBM Turbonomic?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the intelligent cost optimization of IBM Turbonomic, effectively reducing cloud expenses while maintaining performance.
  • Users appreciate the intelligent automation of IBM Turbonomic, optimizing resources and reducing costs efficiently.
  • Users value the ease of use of IBM Turbonomic, which streamlines resource management and enhances efficiency.
  • Users appreciate the intelligent automation of IBM Turbonomic, ensuring optimal performance while reducing cloud costs and over-provisioning.
  • Users value the real-time monitoring of IBM Turbonomic, which optimizes resources effectively, enhancing performance and reducing costs.
Cons
  • Users find the complexity of setup and reporting in IBM Turbonomic challenging, impacting efficient utilization and time-to-value.
  • Users find the learning curve challenging, requiring time and better documentation for effective onboarding and setup.
  • Users face complex configuration challenges with IBM Turbonomic, leading to longer setup times and delayed value realization.
  • Users face a difficult learning curve with IBM Turbonomic, requiring time and effort to become comfortable with the tool.
  • Users find the difficult setup of IBM Turbonomic challenging, requiring significant time and effort to get accustomed.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of IBM Turbonomic?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About IBM Turbonomic?

nOps

With nOps, ensure every dollar you spend on AI and cloud delivers maximum value. nOps provides automated cost visibility and optimization that delivers industry-leading cloud savings without operational overhead or long-term commitment risk. The nOps platform includes: Commitment Management: autonomous rate optimization for AWS, Azure, GCP to maximize savings and flexibility Cost Visibility & Allocation: Understand which teams, products and features are driving spend for Multicloud, AI, Kubernetes, and SaaS — with anomaly detection, budgeting, forecasting and reporting AI Insights: analytics and optimization recommendations for token usage, model substitution, cache optimization, provisioned throughput and batch processing The time to value is 30 minutes to get started and receive a free Savings Analysis.

Average Rating: 4.8/5.0

Total Reviews: 137

How Do G2 Users Rate nOps?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.4/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind nOps?

  • Seller: nOps
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2017
  • HQ Location: San Francisco, California
  • Twitter: @nopsio
    1,528 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    186 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: CTO
  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 51% Small, 42% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About nOps?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users commend nOps for its significant savings, leading to thousands of dollars saved monthly while optimizing AWS costs.
  • Users celebrate the cost-saving capabilities of nOps, providing immediate savings and excellent financial visibility across AWS.
  • Users value the cost-saving capabilities of nOps, achieving significant savings and improved AWS cost visibility effortlessly.
  • Users find nOps to be easy to integrate, streamlining cost-saving processes and enhancing visibility in AWS environments.
  • Users value the time-saving benefits of nOps, allowing focus on strategic cost-saving initiatives while optimizing AWS expenses.
Cons
  • Users find the complexity of earlier versions of nOps' dashboard challenging, though updates have improved navigation.
  • Users find the dashboard navigation challenging despite improvements in recent updates, impacting overall usability.
  • Users find the difficult navigation of earlier dashboard versions frustrating, though updates have improved usability.
  • Users find the inadequate reporting without additional services limits their insights and experience with nOps.
  • Users find the insufficient documentation somewhat unclear, yet it remains within typical industry standards.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of nOps?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About nOps?

ServiceNow IT Asset Management

Visibility into all your IT assets should not be as difficult as most find it to be. Spreadsheets and standalone tools are no match for the complexity of today’s IT asset landscape spanning software, hardware, cloud and AI services. ServiceNow ITAM is your solution for the complete asset lifecycle for all IT assets. Asset Managers can be overwhelmed with requests and monotonous activities. Automate tasks from procurement to end-of-life actions with help from ServiceNow AI Agents. Build reliable asset data, like contracts, costs and compliance while using the power of the CMDB. ServiceNow ITAM provides workspaces tailored for asset managers. Gain visibility and control to respond to business questions and for seamless collaboration across functions.

Average Rating: 4.3/5.0

Total Reviews: 517

How Do G2 Users Rate ServiceNow IT Asset Management?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 9.0/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 9.5/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.8/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind ServiceNow IT Asset Management?

  • Seller: ServiceNow
  • Company Website:
  • Year Founded: 2004
  • HQ Location: Santa Clara, CA
  • Twitter: @servicenow
    55,548 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    35,078 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: Software Engineer
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Financial Services
  • Company Size: 52% Large, 20% Medium

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About ServiceNow IT Asset Management?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users value the cost-saving features of ServiceNow IT Asset Management, enhancing budget accuracy and asset visibility.
  • Users value the ease of use of ServiceNow IT Asset Management, simplifying asset management and improving productivity.
  • Users value the seamless integrations of ServiceNow IT Asset Management, facilitating efficient software asset management.
  • Users value the effective tracking of IT assets in ServiceNow IT Asset Management, enhancing overall management efficiency.
  • Users value ServiceNow IT Asset Management for its powerful features that streamline asset management and reduce costs effectively.
Cons
  • Users note a significant learning curve and complexity in setup for effective use of ServiceNow IT Asset Management.
  • Users find the cost prohibitive for small businesses, making IT Asset Management inaccessible for many potential customers.
  • Users struggle with the complexity of setup and integrations, finding it time-consuming and challenging without expert assistance.
  • Users find the difficult setup of ServiceNow IT Asset Management to be complex and time-consuming, requiring significant learning.
  • Users find the insufficient information on setups and inferences complicates their experience with ServiceNow IT Asset Management.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of ServiceNow IT Asset Management?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About ServiceNow IT Asset Management?

DoiT Cloud Intelligence

DoiT Cloud Intelligence is the only intent-aware FinOps platform that goes beyond cost optimization to drive reliability, performance, and security – turning endless "good ideas" into real, implemented solutions at scale – ensuring teams are 10X more likely to achieve business outcomes than with any other solution.

Average Rating: 4.4/5.0

Total Reviews: 78

How Do G2 Users Rate DoiT Cloud Intelligence?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.6/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 6.4/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 8.1/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 8.3/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind DoiT Cloud Intelligence?

  • Seller: DoiT
  • Year Founded: 2011
  • HQ Location: Santa Clara, US
  • Twitter: @doitint
    810 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    770 employees on LinkedIn®

Who Uses This Product?

  • Top Industries: Computer Software, Information Technology and Services
  • Company Size: 57% Medium, 41% Small

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About DoiT Cloud Intelligence?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users commend DoiT Cloud Intelligence for their responsive customer support, enhancing the overall cloud management experience.
  • Users value the transparent and efficient cloud management provided by DoiT Cloud Intelligence, enhancing visibility and control.
  • Users greatly appreciate the expertise and proactive support from the DoiT Cloud Intelligence team for optimal performance.
  • Users appreciate the cost anomaly alerts and insights feature of DoiT Cloud Intelligence for optimizing cloud expenses effectively.
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of DoiT Cloud Intelligence, finding navigation and integrations straightforward and simple.
Cons
  • Users express concern over cost management issues, particularly regarding ticket escalation fees and delays in cost anomaly detection.
  • Users express frustration over the expensive ticket escalation costs that hinder timely support access and resolution.
  • Users find the billing a bit complicated, which can detract from the overall experience with DoiT Cloud Intelligence.
  • Users find the system's complexity challenging, requiring significant time to grasp basic functionalities.
  • Users find the difficult learning curve of DoiT Cloud Intelligence challenging, requiring significant time to grasp basic functions.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of DoiT Cloud Intelligence?

Site24x7

ManageEngine Site24x7 offers unified cloud monitoring for DevOps and IT operations within small to large organizations. The solution monitors the experience of real users accessing websites and applications from desktop and mobile devices. In-depth monitoring capabilities enable DevOps teams to monitor and troubleshoot applications, servers and network infrastructure, including private and public clouds. End-user experience monitoring is done from more than 100 locations across the world and various wireless carriers.

Average Rating: 4.6/5.0

Total Reviews: 463

How Do G2 Users Rate Site24x7?

  • Has the product been a good partner in doing business?: 8.9/10 (Category avg: 9.3/10)
  • Automation: 9.1/10 (Category avg: 8.6/10)
  • Reporting: 9.3/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)
  • Usage Monitoring: 9.3/10 (Category avg: 8.9/10)

Who Is the Company Behind Site24x7?

  • Seller: Zoho
  • Year Founded: 1996
  • HQ Location: Austin, TX
  • Twitter: @Zoho
    137,880 Twitter followers
  • LinkedIn® Page: www.linkedin.com
    30,913 employees on LinkedIn®
  • Phone: +1 (888) 900-9646

Who Uses This Product?

  • Who Uses This: CEO, IT Manager
  • Top Industries: Information Technology and Services, Computer Software
  • Company Size: 46% Medium, 41% Small

What Do G2 Reviewers Say About Site24x7?

AI-generated summary from verified user reviews

Pros
  • Users appreciate the ease of use of Site24x7, making implementation and daily operations smooth and efficient.
  • Users appreciate the single pane of glass visibility in Site24x7, enhancing efficiency and monitoring flexibility.
  • Users appreciate the real-time monitoring capabilities of Site24x7, providing comprehensive oversight for networks and infrastructure.
  • Users value the extensive monitoring features of Site24x7, enabling efficient oversight of multiple resources from one interface.
  • Users enjoy the extensive visibility of Site24x7, appreciating its ease of setup and efficient monitoring capabilities.
Cons
  • Users face missing alerts and limited interface visibility, hindering their ability to monitor system efficiency effectively.
  • Users find the complexity of tool integration and plan options overwhelming, preferring a simplified default view.
  • Users find the pricing overwhelming and feel it could be more flexible for smaller businesses or startups.
  • Users find the learning curve for advanced features of Site24x7 challenging, impacting effective usage of the platform.
  • Users find the UI lacking modernity, making it difficult to adopt and navigate smoothly.

What Are Recent G2 Reviews of Site24x7?

What Are G2 Users Discussing About Site24x7?

Rachana Hasyagar
RH
Researched and written by Rachana Hasyagar
Updated April 9, 2026

Cloud Cost Management Topics

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Learn More About Cloud Cost Management Tools

What are Cloud Cost Management Tools?

Cloud cost management tools are software platforms a company utilizes to manage all costs related to cloud resources, optimization, and management. The software allows organizations to manage the costs associated with cloud computing. Managing cloud computing costs is done primarily with one focus in mind—to maximize cloud usage and increase operational efficiency.

Cloud computing has been at the forefront due to its subscription or pay-per-use model. However, as companies wish to scale in terms of operations, tracking the cost of cloud services becomes a complex task and is not as transparent as “pay-per-use”. Numerous functions within an organization would have access to their cloud computing platforms, and having this decentralized approach could rack up massive amounts in cloud computing costs. Hence, having a cloud cost management tool ensures that cloud spend is kept in check and that the cloud resources are optimized and worth every penny spent.

Cloud cost management focuses on understanding the different costs associated with cloud computing. Some key costs associated with the cloud include software licenses, web services, compute and storage costs, network costs, virtualized infrastructure/virtual machine instances, and additional costs such as training staff and personnel.

As more companies move to the cloud, either partially or entirely, cloud storage costs do not remain the same. When a company needs to scale, IT staff can easily focus on acquiring more cloud services to ensure and support daily work activities without keeping concern for costs. Engineers or developers need to ensure that their products have a shorter time to market, thereby spinning up more cloud resources. This could have a huge impact on the business since there are no savings, but a huge cloud bill.

Regardless of the cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, among several others, it is certain that money will be spent across resources that may or may not be utilized. When different cloud infrastructure is involved, cloud cost management software can make it much easier for companies to support cost optimization. For example, customers that have opted for multi-cloud environments. Cloud cost optimization needs to be given priority since different cloud service providers are being used. Hence, costs may vary across all providers, making it complex and difficult to track. By understanding the costs, companies can focus on cost optimization and ensure accountability. Cloud cost management is therefore, not just about cost control, it's about resource optimization, forecasting and budgeting, and reducing wastage.

What are the Common Features of Cloud Cost Management Tools?

Cloud cost management software has several features that makes it a strong choice for companies that want to keep track of their spending on cloud. The following are some core features within the software that can help users in several ways:

Automatic scaling: The promise of unlimited scalability is one of the biggest pros of cloud computing technology. Automatic scaling ensures that resources are used and available when needed, and powered down when not in use. Companies do not need to spend large amounts on unutilized cloud resources. The software helps companies automate governance of costs, compliance, security, and cloud operations. Planning for maximum utilization all the time when using only some percentage of it is extremely expensive in the long run.

Instance management: A key cost driver for cloud computing is the number of unused instances that a company opts for. If a firm is not using an instance, the cloud cost optimization software can track and alert the customer if there is no need for the instance and help to save costs. The software can also find discount instances that can be used for non-critical workloads that do not need to run constantly, thereby driving more savings.

Automated alerts and notifications: Cloud spend management platforms allow users to set up automated alerts and budgets. These alerts warn the user when there are authorization failures, sudden cost spikes, untagged infrastructure, and when budget limits are crossed. Having alerts sets is critical to ensure business continuity and keep costs optimized.

Cost allocation: A key feature of cloud cost management tools is that it allows the user to keep track of the team spends on cloud computing resources. This will allow management to set up appropriate budgets and track spends by various company functions. 

Chargeback: Chargeback is a feature where the cost of cloud services is applied or “charged-back” to the business unit responsible for the cloud expense. The chargeback feature in different cloud cost savings platforms allows companies to track the departments that are making the most (and least) use of cloud costs—this information is useful while making budgeting decisions.

What are the Benefits of Cloud Cost Management Tools?

Benefits of cloud spend management platforms include:

Reduce cost: This is understandably the most important benefit of cloud cost management software. Companies use cloud cost management software to ensure cloud optimization. Companies can monitor and track their spending, ensure optimal resource allocation, and take advantage of discounts offered by cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, GCP. Companies can even use this software to visualize and understand their cost profile when evaluating cloud migration, deploying new cloud security policies, and maintaining cloud health.

Eliminate waste: By understanding and tracking their cloud usage and cloud bills, companies can reduce waste and ensure that they are making the best of their cloud resources. Techniques that support this include automatic scaling and load balancing.

Improve business performance: A business needs to ensure its cloud strategies align closely with its business goals. Overprovisioning of cloud resources means significant wastage of company profits and underprovisioning could cause workloads and applications to suffer if there is no proper cloud support. In such a situation, planning for the right cloud cost management solution is key to ensuring smooth performance in any environment—whether on a public, private, hybrid, or moving from on-premises to cloud.

Gain visibility into cloud storage costs: Cloud spend management platforms provide visibility into cloud resource costs that are kept idle, unallocated, over-utilized. Some cloud cost management software provide an hourly granularity as well. Having a single pane of glass dashboards ensures a single point for admins to manage, organize and optimize their cloud environment.

Get recommendations to cut costs: One of the key benefits is that the software can provide recommendations to reduce costs. These recommendations are based on analyzing different workloads and their cloud requirements. Costs are analyzed down to the root sources, and recommendations are made to the user.

Improve reporting and analytics: Data-driven decisions will help the user make better decisions regarding their cloud spending. By tracking patterns in cloud spending, cloud cost management tools can provide their users with graphs or tables of data that can be used for data analysis—these analytics can be cross-referenced with business outcomes to ensure the company is on the right track with its cloud strategy. Major cloud providers provide reporting as part of their subscription packages such as AWS Cost and Usage report. 

Who Uses Cloud Cost Management Tools?

Cloud architects: Cloud architects manage the technical requirements of cloud architecture and oversee a company’s cloud environment and strategies. A cloud architect is the main persona that uses cloud cost management software. Understanding how to manage cloud spends and optimize cloud resources falls upon the cloud architect. A cloud architect doesn't just work with engineering and development, they also work closely with HR, finance, logistics, and security to ensure that cloud strategies are being optimized.

Cloud cost managers: Cloud cost managers handle various tasks such as forecasting, budgeting, business development practices and processes, identification of trends and opportunities, cloud governance best practices, among many others. Managers can use the analytics dashboard to keep track of cloud strategies and propose changes and suggestions to decision makers based on derived insights.

IT teams and admins: IT admins use cloud cost management tools to optimize cloud infrastructure and ensure all resources are being used judiciously. Cloud admins can use the software to set up real-time monitoring, budget, notifications, and alerts. Administrators gain access and control the cost view over the company cloud through a web-based interface they can access from anywhere.

Cross-functional teams: Cloud computing has become an integral part of enterprises across the globe. Several cross-functional teams such as engineering teams and application development and testing teams within an organization depend on cloud to ensure they create and release products with a much lower time to market. The heads of cross-functional teams within an organization can keep track of how spending on cloud resources to ensure they are well within the budget provided.

Cloud service providers: Cloud service providers offer cloud cost optimization options. Having internal cost management options that are reliable, scalable, consistent, and available as required is a key benefit for several customers. Some of the biggest names in cloud platforms include AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and several others have their specific cloud spend management platforms such as Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Budgets, Azure Cost Management, Cost management by Google Cloud, among several others. Integrated cost management tools along with billing support are offered at no additional costs by these cloud giants.

Software Related to Cloud Cost Management Tools

Cloud management platforms: Cloud cost management forms a key part of cloud management platforms. A cloud management platform is a set of unified software tools which help companies monitor and control cloud computing resources. This software brings the administrative visibility and capability of cloud cost management solutions.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers: Cloud cost management tools are typically paired with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings to minimize the costs of a pay-as-you-go model. Companies also use a combination of these tools to increase the efficiency of their cloud service usage—these solutions often provide reporting features to outline waste and redundancies. 

SaaS spend management software: Cloud cost management software has some overlap with SaaS spend management software, but the latter is used to monitor and manage spending on cloud applications rather than cloud infrastructure.

Challenges with Cloud Cost Management Tools

Cloud cost optimization solutions can come with their own set of challenges. 

Billing challenges: Complexity in billing practices and not understanding what the customer bill contains is a key challenge. Without understanding the bill itself, optimizing costs is a difficult task since the customer cannot identify avenues for cost optimization.

Approach towards policies: Each team would follow their respective budgets allocated and manage their cloud resources and cost. Having a cloud cost management tool could generate some backlash since costs by each team are being monitored, which could be quite tricky to manage.

Budget forecasting: Cloud cost optimization is difficult when there are plans in the pipeline to add new products and services, handle unexpected business demand, or make any changes to software design. Forecasting is complex, and cloud spend management platforms must rapidly adjust to capacity or alerting users of sudden spikes in cost due to such scenarios.

Cloud sprawl: One of the biggest challenges that companies face is that in the excitement of cloud computing technology, they end up moving entire databases and applications without a plan. This leads to cloud sprawl, wherein an organization does not have a complete view of all the cloud infrastructure. Organizations will end up managing several cloud instances, providers, services, and therefore are unable to view or maintain accountability for all cloud components. Even with cloud cost management software, organizations might not be able to understand and deploy the full use of this software due to cloud sprawl.

Lack of skilled resources: Finding the right talent to invest, track, and optimize all cloud resources within an organization is tough. Identifying the type of skills required and finding the right fit is a huge challenge.

How to Buy Cloud Cost Management Tools

Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Cloud Cost Management Tools

When researching cloud cost management platforms, the first and foremost step is to ask one question—what issues could potentially be solved using a cloud cost management tool? It is essential to understand cloud spend inefficiencies and identify the ones harming the buyer’s organization. Taking into consideration the reasons for cost inefficiencies is critical. Some of the key reasons that cause companies to rack up huge cloud bills are: 

Poor resource management caused by oversizing: Companies usually end up spending a lot on acquiring resources but only utilize half of that at any point in time. A capacity that isn't needed is a part of the wasted cloud costs. Rightsizing ensures that costs are being optimized and the company is not facing copious amounts in bills.

Software inefficiency: Since several different teams would be using the cloud resources within the company, it becomes quite difficult to keep track of the cloud storage costs. Failure to measure software efficiency or not having set targets can lead to an increase in the wastage of cloud computing resources.

Forecast issues: As discussed earlier, scaling is a key feature of cloud computing. However, when companies fail to forecast their needs (which is a difficult task) such as developing new services or changing existing ones, it could rack up unintentional costs since the company would be over or underprepared for the additional needs.

Architectural design: With the hype around moving to cloud, several companies are moving to cloud just to enter the hype; realizing later that it is much more expensive than anticipated. Workloads might not be suitable for some specific cloud environments or not supported, additional licensing might be required, governance issues might crop up, and a host of other problems that would only drive costs further up.

Once a company has identified the issues and cost inefficiencies, it becomes much easier for the customer to filter out and identify what type of cloud cost management they are looking for. If the buyer prefers having a single software solution owner, they could opt for a single cloud provider with inherent cloud cost optimization capabilities. However, if the buyer prefers a separate tool to manage various cloud environments like hybrid and multi-cloud environments, they could opt for another stand-alone solution altogether. Customers can use reviews here at G2.com as a guide to move forward with choosing the software.

Compare Cloud Cost Management Tools Products

Create a long list

This step involves creating a long list of cloud cost management software providers that assist buyers in cost optimization plans. Some key factors to consider include automation, server instances tracking, billing methods, dashboard functionality, cost reduction, security support, data privacy, etc. In this step, it is important to note that many top cloud service providers provide cloud cost optimization as a part of their cloud offerings (on a subscription basis), hence it is important to evaluate whether the added functionality is sufficient or a stand-alone solution is required.

Create a short list

Once the long list of cloud cost management tools has been identified, it is time to remove software that does not meet all the business criteria. For this, it is important to fall back on the assessment made earlier on what is to be done before choosing a cloud spend management solution. Based on the assessment, buyers can further shorten their list and only choose those software vendors that meet all the business requirements.

Conduct demos

Once the list has been reduced to a couple of vendors, buyers may begin to request a demo. The demo will give them an idea of how the software will work once and help them assess all the various features the software has to offer. Having a demo on resources and applications is a good way to ensure the best fit. At this step, the buyer should ask several questions to the vendor about after-service support, staff training, and other additional features that can be provided. Understanding the dashboard and visualization of the cost parameters is essential during demos.

Selection of Cloud Cost Management Tools

Choose a selection team

Choosing the right team to work together on choosing the software is a critical part of the process. This team will be in charge of identifying pain points to finally overseeing the entire implementation of the cloud management software. The team should include a mix of different personas who have the required skills, interest, and time. Some roles include cloud architects and cloud admins, IT admin and staff, department heads, and finance managers (for budget allocations). 

Negotiation

When choosing a cloud cost management tool, bringing in negotiation factors is very important especially on pricing. Since a buyer’s requirement for the cloud might change based on the types of workloads being run and applications being developed, buyers should ensure that the software accurately reflects the resources being utilized at that point in time and account for possible changes in the future. This is necessary to ensure that the customer is not being overcharged. Bringing such discussions to the negotiation table is key. In addition, it is important to negotiate possible additional costs that might come in for the remainder of the contract.

Final decision

Once all the steps are complete, the final decision is made weighing all factors and scenarios. Buyers can first try to run cloud cost management software with a smaller number of instances and monitor the cost savings and resources being optimized. Based on this feedback, it can be used for enterprise-wide cloud cost management.