Pump.co Review: The Free, Fast Solution to AWS Cost Savings

In 2022, a whopping $491 billion was poured into cloud computing services like AWS. This number is projected to increase by around 21.7% in 2023, making it nearly $597 billion. Absolutely insane, isn’t it?

While enterprises like Netflix can comfortably afford these rising costs at an estimated spending of $9.6 Million each month, it raises the question: What about the smaller guys? What can they do to combat this?

What is Pump?

Pump helps startups & small businesses save up to 60% on their AWS bill without paying a single penny or disrupting their workflow.

Pump utilizes advanced AI tech to analyze usage patterns and identifies optimization opportunities, ensuring customers capitalize on commitment-based discounts such as Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. With the distinctive approach of group billing, companies benefit from collective purchasing power, magnifying savings.

This, combined with their free pricing model, has positioned Pump as a trailblazer in the world of cloud financial operations, ensuring businesses no longer view cloud costs as a challenge.

Spandana Nakkaan founded Pump in 2022, a year after her previous company Sleek was acquired.

What Companies Should Use Pump?

Startups and SMEs

Smaller businesses like startups may not have the in-house expertise to know how to optimize their AWS bill or the resources to constantly monitor and adjust the usage. And since Pump is free, they don’t need to allocate extra budget to get there

Large Enterprises

Businesses with significant AWS usage can benefit from Pump.co's advanced AI-driven cost optimization, so they’ll be sure to always get the best price for their usage patterns.

Businesses with Dynamic AWS Needs

Many businesses experience different levels of workloads and have different requirements throughout the year. Businesses with these types of needs hence would benefit from the flexibility that Pump offers with Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. Again… it’s all free!

Organizations without Dedicated FinOps Teams

Companies without a dedicated financial operations team focused on cloud expenses can leverage Pump as their external FinOps team, ensuring they always stay on top of cost-saving opportunities.

Businesses looking for Group Benefits

Any organization that wishes to leverage the benefits of group billing, capitalizing on economies of scale, and accessing discounts usually reserved for high-volume companies.

What Are Their Key Features?

Pump Offers 12 AWS Services: EC2 (LinuxUnix), Sagemakerm RedShift, EC2 Data Transfer, ECS, Lambda, EBS, ElasticCache, OpenSearch, RDS (coming soon), S3, and MediaLive. You can view savings based on groups and see the estimated savings you’ve kept using Pump:

Autopilot Reserved Instances

Within Pump, you’re able to see quite a few data points about each reserved instance. You’re able to see the specific subscription id, the type, the term of the instance, and the discounted rate.

Autopilot Savings Plans

Within this tab, you’ll see the amount committed, the end date, and the term length of the savings plan.

Group Discount & Unlimited AWS Accounts

Whether you're a startup or a large enterprise, you’re able to easily manage multiple projects all under one Pump account.

Unlimited Users

Regardless of your company's size, everyone who needs an account can easily set one up.

They offer 24x7 Slack support, monthly billing reviews, a 60-day cancel policy, and a money-back guarantee. Pump gives you AWS credits capped to your entire AWS bill.

Pump’s Pricing

Pump's pricing model is very simple: It’s free. Yes, free.

It’s quite different from the other competitors in the space. While most might charge businesses directly for their services, Pump adopts a unique approach. They focus on collective savings and directly profiting from the money saved with AWS. (capturing a small % from the volume tier discount of the collective group buying spend).

By monetizing solely through a percentage saved, this ensures that all companies get the most value out of their cloud services, but it also ensures that their success is directly tied to the dollar amount saved for other companies with their AWS bill. 

Pros & Cons

Popular Alternatives

Zesty.co

When comparing Pump and Zesty, a big difference users describe is the user experience that Zesty offers, Many in the community feel that Zesty's UX can be challenging and less user-friendly compared to what Pump is currently offering. Also, Zesty focuses primarily on savings for EC2, whereas Pump offers savings for multiple other services. 

Prosperops.com

Unlike Zesty, but similar to Pump, many users describe the process to be simple and relatively easy to set up. A reviewer from G2 described it as a “plug-and-forget model”. Though it isn’t clear what their pricing model is, one user had wished for a lower rate for the service, but many users seem to like the product and its service. 

Usage.ai

Similar to Pump, usage.ai prides itself on being easy and simple to use when it comes to optimizing your AWS spend. Though two big differences are pricing and the types of services they work with. Usage.ai only works with EC2, RDS, Redshift, OpenSearch, and ElasticCache. Whereas, Pump works with up to 12 different services offered by AWS. Regarding pricing, Usage is up to 35% of savings, whereas Pump is free because they monetize a small % from the collective group buying spend. 

What People Say

A lot of people expressed how helpful Pump is without the annoyances of sacrificing performance for money. Atharva on Product Hunt said “managing costs without affecting performance can be demanding. However, Pump’s features like cost mirroring and group buying discounts have taken much of the guesswork out of the equation.”

Another emphasized how Pump's potential 60% savings caught their attention, especially given the pain points of intricate engineering and financial risks. Multiple users praised the platform's simplicity, with one user gushing about the onboarding process and another appreciating the product's intuitive communication.

There were notable mentions of the group buying volume discounts, with many eager to see the actual savings on their AWS costs.

Compliments flowed about the quality of service, with some even suggesting that Pump should charge for their excellent offerings, which is kind of an insane remark!

Overall, the consensus is clear: Pump.co is a very promising solution to the longstanding challenges of AWS cost management.

Our Final Remarks

With cloud computing expenses on the rise, Pump should be seen as a must-have tool for businesses that use AWS of all sizes. Leveraging AI for optimization combined with collective savings through group billing and commitment-based discounts is a no-brainer for any company trying to save money on services they can’t get around using.

We’ve worked with the team to offer a $250 gift card on top of the insane benefits you get from using them. This is one of the goldmine products that truly benefit both parties.

While giants like Sony and Adobe have the resources to pay for their AWS costs, Pump.co seems to be the tool that many companies have been searching for. 

Frequently Asked Questions

How Does Group Buying Work?

Large companies get to strike special deals with cloud providers because of their size, leaving smaller players like startups out in the cold. But Pump levels the playing field. They consolidate everyone’s billing, so small to medium-sized companies are really just part of a big company. That unlocks volume discounts. Plus, their AI is there 24/7, making smart buying decisions on AWS commitments for you. Whether you're growing, downsizing, or hitting peak loads, Pump handles it all and dynamically adapts.

What Does Pump Need Access To?

They only want to see your billing. You're basically just letting them into your AWS organization. They use roles and permissions to do their thing: optimize costs and tap into AWS APIs for savings. They don’t look at anything else.

What Are The Risks?

Nothing. Pump isn't messing with your actual infrastructure. They don't have the keys to change or mess anything up.

What Do I Need to Be Spending on AWS?

The minimum AWS spend to get the benefits of Pump are $1000/month. They work with companies spending $1k all the way up to those spending millions.