## Cost Optimization

The ability to avoid or eliminate unneeded cost or suboptimal resources.

### Design Principles

There are five design principles for cost optimization in the cloud:

- Adopt a consumption model
- Measure overall efficiency
- Stop spending money on data center operations
- Analyze and attribute expenditure
- Use managed services to reduce cost of ownership

How does Idealstack help you implement this?

- Only pay for what you use
- Utilise reserved instances to reduce costs
- Idealstack manages your stack, operating system updates and other mundane tasks to reduce your cost of ownership

[Read how to optimize AWS costs](/content/help/tips/frequently-asked-questions/what-will-my-aws-costs-be/index.html)