Comparison between cloud computing and on premise infrastructure can be tricky because there are many different things to consider. It is very important to think about all the costs involved with each option before making a decision. Here is a summary of all the cost factors you should consider when deciding between cloud vs on premise cost comparison:
- Initial setup costs: Managing on premise infrastructure costs can be quite high, as there’s a necessary of hardware and software that must be purchased and installed. Will be a significant initial investment, especially if you need a large amount of resources.
With cloud, on the other hand, you won’t have to make any initial purchases, as the provider takes care of all the hardware and software for you. - Ongoing maintenance costs: On premise infrastructure requires to handle all maintenance and updates yourself, which can be both time-consuming and costly. You will have to hire IT staff or a third party to perform the necessary maintenance.
With cloud computing, however, the provider takes care of all maintenance and updates for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. - Resource costs: Cloud providers allows you to pay only for the resources you actually use, which can be a good option for companies with variable resource needs or those looking to reduce upfront costs.
On the other hand, with on premise infrastructure you may end up paying for more resources than you actually need with local systems, as you have to ensure that you have sufficient capacity to meet your peak demand. - Scalability costs: Easily scale your resource up or down as per your needs.
With on premise, it can be more difficult and costly to scale up or down. - Disaster recovery costs: Cloud providers usually handles disaster recovery, so you don’t have to worry. Don’t invest for resources or expertise to handle disaster recovery on your own.
With on premise infrastructure, you have to handle disaster recovery yourself, which can be time-consuming and costly.
Here is a cloud vs on premise cost comparison chart summarizing cost factors:
| Cost Factor | Cloud | On Premise |
|---|---|---|
| Initial setup costs | Low | High |
| Ongoing maintenance costs | Low | High |
| Resource costs | Pay-per-use | Upfront |
| Scalability costs | Low | High |
| Disaster recovery costs | Low | High |
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Cloud vs on premise comparison chart
Here is a comparison chart between cost comparison cloud vs on premise :
| Pricing Model | Cloud | On Premise |
|---|---|---|
| Pay-per-use | Yes | No |
| Subscription-based | Yes | No |
| Free tiers | Yes | No |
| Upfront payment | No | Yes |
| Ongoing maintenance | No | Yes |
- Pay-per-use: With this pricing model, you only pay for the resources you actually use.
- Subscription-based: With this pricing model, a fixed fee is paid periodically (e.g. monthly or annually) for access to a set of resources.
- Free tiers: Some cloud providers offer free tiers of service, which allow you to use a limited amount of resources for free.
- Upfront payment: With on premise infrastructure , you often have to make an initial payment to acquire the necessary hardware and software.
- Ongoing maintenance: With on premise infrastructure, you are responsible for maintaining and upgrading the hardware and software yourself. In cloud computing you won’t have pay for it, as is managed by cloud provider to take care of it, and in on premise you will need third party or extra resource to do it.
Paas pricing comparison
| Factor | Heroku | AWS Elastic Beanstalk | Google App Engine | Azure App Service |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $7/month for hobby plan $25/month for standard-1x plan | Varies based on usage Starting at $0.03/hour for t2.micro instance | $0.0116/hour for standard environment instance | $0.013/hour for shared instance |
| Operating systems supported | Linux | Linux, Windows | Linux, Windows | Linux, Windows |
| Programming languages supported | Ruby, Java, Node.js, Python, PHP, Go, Scala, Clojure | Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby | C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python | .NET, .NET Core, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby |
| Databases supported | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis | RDS, Amazon DynamoDB | Cloud Datastore, Cloud SQL | Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, MySQL, PostgreSQL |
| Auto-scaling | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom domains | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free tier available | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Integrated development environment (IDE) | Yes | No | No | Yes (Visual Studio) |
| Serverless computing support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Container support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Load balancing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
We have added more detailed information with tips and steps to follow if you want to further optimize your cloud costs How to optimize the cost of your cloud infrastructure
Flexibility with cloud. Easily scale your resources up or down as your business needs change, without having to make costly investments in new hardware.
Save costs and increase efficiency by paying only for the resources you actually use. Plus, thanks to automatic scaling features, you can seamlessly manage any unexpected spikes in traffic or usage.
One thing we like is that maintenance, or patching, are done by the cloud provider.
Conclusion:
In our opinion, it can be difficult to compare the cost of a cloud-based infrastructure to an on-premise one due to the many factors that can affect the cost.
However, from our experience, we believe that cloud based infrastructure is generally more cost effective in several areas when compared to on premise, and it is likely to be less expensive overall.