According to an online survey conducted by Vanson Bourne of 1200 decision-makers involved with their organizations’ cloud storage purchasing, 51% of cloud spend on object storage by Media and Entertainment companies is wasted on fees.

The media and entertainment industry's digital storage capacity, particularly for non-archival applications, is expected to increase significantly from 24.3 exabytes in 2019 to 122.4 exabytes by 2025. This growth reflects the massive amount of video content being produced and stored. For high-end digital movie production, several petabytes of storage can be required for a single project at 4K resolution, with the industry moving towards even higher resolutions like 8K. By the next decade, the total video captured for such productions could approach 1 exabyte, showcasing the enormous scale of video content creation within the industry​​.1 

As media companies generate more and more content, they’re increasingly adopting cloud storage as it is quickly becoming the only way to scale without breaking the bank. Cloud storage offers many benefits over traditional on premises storage, the biggest of which is that you only ever pay for what you use.  

But many organizations are experiencing bill shock as the fees that come along with cloud storage are almost impossible to forecast.  

Let's break down some of the things you might not know you’re getting charged for when using object storage in the cloud from the big hyperscalers.  

Here's a breakdown of these fee types, their descriptions, and example prices based on AWS's S3 pricing: 

Request and data retrieval fees 

• These are charges for the number of requests made, such as PUT, GET, or DELETE operations. 

• Example: S3 charges $0.005 per 1,000 PUT requests. 

Data transfer (egress) fees 

• This refers to charges incurred when data is transferred out of the cloud storage to the Internet or to another AWS region. 

• Example: AWS charges $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB of data transferred out to the internet. 

Data transfer (ingress) fees 

• While often free, some services may charge for data uploaded into their storage. 

• Example: AWS does not generally charge for data transferred into S3, but charges may apply for data transferred to S3 via AWS Direct Connect. 

Early delete fees 

• For services offering infrequent access or archive storage options, deleting data before a minimum retention period may incur fees. 

• Example: S3 charges a fee for objects deleted before 90 days in S3 Intelligent-Tiering. 

Management and analytics fees 

• Charges for using additional features for managing and analyzing data stored in S3, such as inventory and analytics reports. 

• Example: S3 Inventory report costs $0.0025 per 1,000 objects listed. 

Replication fees 

• Fees for replicating data across regions or within the same region for enhanced data protection. 

• Example: Cross-region replication costs depend on the amount of data replicated, with prices similar to egress fees. 

Transfer acceleration fees 

• Charges for using Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration, which speeds up the transfer of files by using Amazon CloudFront's globally distributed edge locations. 

• Example: AWS charges an additional fee for using Transfer Acceleration, starting at $0.04 per GB transferred in/out of Amazon S3. 

Lifecycle transition fees 

• Fees associated with moving data between different storage classes automatically based on lifecycle rules. 

• Example: Moving an object from S3 Standard to S3 Glacier has associated costs per 1,000 requests, plus the storage cost difference. 

Provisioned capacity fees 

• For certain storage classes, such as Glacier and Glacier Deep Archive, users can purchase provisioned capacity to ensure a certain level of request capacity. 

• Example: S3 Glacier Deep Archive charges for provisioned requests to ensure expedited access to data when needed. 

Storage class analysis fees 

• Charges for using the Storage Class Analysis to monitor access patterns and suggest cost-optimizing storage classes. 

• Example: The analysis itself may be free, but accessing the report data may incur costs depending on the size and frequency of the reports. 

These examples are based on general AWS S3 pricing and can vary based on region, the amount of data, and other factors. For the most accurate and up-to-date pricing, it's recommended to check AWS's official pricing page or contact AWS support. 

Media files are some of the largest unstructured data types in the world. Object storage in the cloud needs to be robust and scalable to accommodate such large amounts of data. But beyond that, the cost needs to be predictable. This is why Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage product offers the same reliability, access, and storage capabilities as the hyperscalers but doesn’t have any fees whatsoever. You will always know what your storage costs will be, regardless of how your data access needs change from month to month. That reliability can’t be found with the hyperscalers. 

Don’t overpay for your cloud storage, and improve your ROI with predictable pricing by getting started with a free trial right now.