Everything on Standard
Objects nobody has read in two years sitting on the most expensive storage class available.
[ AWS & Cloud / AWS S3 Optimization ]
Storage costs that grow quietly, and never shrink.
S3 is cheap until it isn't. Old objects on the wrong storage class, no lifecycle rules, and every byte served at full egress rate. I fix all three without deleting anything you need.
Read-only analysis · Nothing deleted without your sign-off
40-70%typical storage saving
0objects lost, ever
Reversibleevery change
Reportbefore any action
[ What goes wrong ]
Why the storage line keeps climbing.
Buckets accumulate. Nobody is ever assigned to clean them, so nobody does.
No lifecycle rules
Nothing ever transitions, nothing ever expires, and old versions pile up invisibly underneath.
Versioning without expiry
Versioning enabled for safety, noncurrent versions never expired, so you store every edit forever.
Failed multipart uploads
Incomplete uploads that never finished, invisible in the console, billing every month since.
No CDN in front
Serving assets straight from the bucket means paying full egress on every single request.
No idea what is in there
Dozens of buckets, no tags, no owner, and nobody willing to be the one who deletes something.
[ How it works ]
Measure, then act carefully.
01 — Week 1
Analyze
Storage class distribution, object age, size profile and access patterns per bucket — plus what is costing you in requests and egress rather than storage.
02 — Week 2
Policy
Lifecycle rules, tiering decisions and cleanup targets, written up and sent for your approval. Nothing is deleted until you sign off in writing.
03 — Week 3
Apply & verify
Rules applied, CDN put in front where it pays, and the next month's bill checked against the projection.
[ What actually changes ]
What gets changed.
Storage optimization is mostly policy work. The risk comes from acting without measuring first, which is why measurement is a whole phase.
Storage
- Storage class analysis — access patterns per prefix, so tiering is evidence-based.
- Intelligent-Tiering — applied where object size makes the monitoring fee worth paying.
- Lifecycle transitions — to infrequent access, archive and deep archive on your schedule.
- Noncurrent version expiry — keep versioning's safety without paying for every historical edit.
- Incomplete multipart cleanup — the rule almost nobody has enabled.
Delivery & control
- CDN in front of the bucket — cheaper delivery, faster loads, and origin fetches at no transfer cost.
- Request cost reduction — batching and caching for workloads making millions of small requests.
- Compression and format — correct content encoding so you ship fewer bytes to begin with.
- Bucket inventory and tagging — every bucket gets an owner and a purpose.
- Storage budget alerts — so the next silent climb is caught in week one.
[ Example engagement ]
Media library, majority of storage tiered down.
Years of user uploads sitting on Standard with versioning and no expiry rules. Analysis showed most objects had not been read in over a year.
Illustrative example of a typical engagement. Figures vary with the state of your systems and are not a guarantee of a specific outcome.
68%storage cost cut
0objects deleted
2 wksto full rollout
Ongoingrules keep it there
[ Free · read-only ]
See what's in your buckets first.
A written analysis of storage classes, object age and access patterns, with the projected saving for each change. No deletions, no obligation.
[ Pricing ]
Pricing that fits your budget.
Tell me the number you have to work with. I'll tell you honestly what's achievable within it — and if it isn't enough, I'll say so before we start rather than halfway through.
Fixed project price
Scope agreed in writing, price agreed in writing, before any work starts. No hourly creep and no invoice you haven't already approved.
Monthly retainer
For ongoing work — maintenance, monitoring, updates and small changes. Month to month, cancel whenever, no minimum term.
Hourly for small jobs
For a single bug or a short task where writing a full scope would cost more than simply doing the work.
Budget too tight for the whole thing? I'll often suggest doing the highest-value part first and the rest later, rather than doing all of it badly.
[ Questions ]
Common questions.
Will you delete my data?
Nothing is deleted without written approval from you, item by item. Most of the saving comes from moving objects to cheaper storage classes and expiring old versions, not from deletion.
What if we need an archived object back?
Archived objects are still yours — retrieval takes minutes to hours depending on the tier and carries a small fee. I only recommend deep archive tiers for data where that trade-off genuinely fits.
Does Intelligent-Tiering always make sense?
No. It carries a small monitoring charge per object, which can exceed the saving if you store millions of very small files. I check your object-size distribution before recommending it.
Can you reduce our data transfer costs too?
Yes, and that is often the bigger win. Putting a CDN in front of the bucket typically pays for itself immediately, because origin fetches from AWS are not charged at standard egress rates.
How long until we see the saving?
Lifecycle transitions apply on the next evaluation cycle, so most of the change shows on the following month's invoice.
[ Related services ]
Related AWS work.
AWS Cost OptimizationCut your monthly bill 30-60% without re-architecting.AWS EC2 ManagementProvisioning, scaling, patching and rightsizing for EC2 fleets.WordPress Speed OptimizationFix Core Web Vitals and slow load times at the cause.AWS Server SetupProduction-ready VPC, compute, database and CI/CD from scratch.DevOps ConsultingDeployment, reliability and process for teams without a DevOps hire.Migration to AWSMove from shared hosting, a VPS or another cloud without downtime.
[ Let's talk ]
Tell me what's broken.
Describe the problem in a few lines and you'll get a real reply from the person who'd do the work — same working day, no discovery call required.