Pricing guide
Cloud migration pricing — and the monthly-bill trap
Cloud is not automatically cheaper — it is more flexible, and flexibility has a price.
Let's start with the part the brochures leave out: after migrating, the monthly cloud bill is often HIGHER than the cost of the server you left behind — if you move everything unchanged and never optimise anything. With that on the table, the 2026 numbers: a lift-and-shift migration, meaning servers and applications moved as they are onto virtual machines in AWS, Azure or Hetzner Cloud, costs €2,000–10,000 as a project. Rearchitecting for the cloud — moving to managed services (administered databases, object storage, autoscaling) and refactoring applications to exploit them — climbs to €10,000–50,000. The first path is cheap to migrate and expensive to run; the second, exactly the reverse. What separates a migration you are glad about from one you regret is not the provider but two questions asked in advance: do you have load peaks that justify elasticity, and is someone accountable for optimising spend every month? If both answers are no, the honest conclusion may be that your current server is the right choice. And for teams evaluating a Romanian delivery partner from abroad: hosting lands in EU regions by default, which keeps the GDPR conversation mercifully short.
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Key takeaways
Lift-and-shift: €2,000–10,000
Servers moved as they are onto cloud VMs. Quick and predictable as a project, but you pay monthly for capacity sized like the old physical box — oversized most of the time.
Cloud rearchitecture: €10,000–50,000
Applications adapted to managed services: administered database, autoscaling under load, backup and failover built in. One large investment, then an optimisable monthly bill and far less admin work.
The bill that follows: €100–2,000+/month
Brutally dependent on discipline: identical workloads can cost double or half depending on sizing, reserved instances and clearing out resources left running. Without an owner, the invoice only grows.
When cloud is worth it — and when it is not
It clearly pays off in three situations. Load peaks: an online shop doing 40% of its sales around Black Friday and the holidays pays all year, on its own server, for the capacity of a few weeks — in the cloud you scale for the peak and pay for the peak only while it exists. Distributed teams needing access from anywhere, with contractually guaranteed availability beyond what an office server can offer. And companies without an infrastructure person: managed services push patching, backups and restores onto the provider — work that otherwise either gets paid for or silently does not happen, which surfaces at the first incident.
It clearly does not pay off when load is constant and known: an internal ERP used by 30 people during office hours has no peaks to scale for, and a dedicated server at €80–150/month from a provider like Hetzner comfortably beats the equivalent cloud bill, which runs 2–4 times higher for the same resources at the big providers. An honest worked example: a company with two on-premise servers, total cost (amortised hardware, power, licences, upkeep) around €400/month. Lift-and-shift: a €5,000 project resulting in a €550–700 monthly bill. Only rearchitecting — another €15,000 — brings the bill down to €300–400/month. The mathematical conclusion: if the sole motive is 'saving on infrastructure', demand the 3-year calculation before signing; sometimes the correct answer is not to migrate.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a cloud migration take, and with what downtime?
Lift-and-shift for a small company: roughly 2–6 weeks, with the actual interruption compressed into a cutover weekend if the migration has been rehearsed on copies beforehand. Rearchitecture stretches over 2–6 months, but proceeds application by application, with the old systems running in parallel until each switchover.
Which cloud provider should I pick: AWS, Azure or a European one?
For most small and mid-sized companies, a European provider like Hetzner or OVH offers prices 2–4 times lower than AWS/Azure at comparable capacity, plus EU-based hosting with no extra GDPR gymnastics. AWS and Azure earn their premium when you need advanced services (AI, big data, specific compliance) or when your own clients contractually require them.
Why did the cloud bill grow beyond the initial estimate?
The classic causes, in order: test resources left running, outbound data traffic (egress) never budgeted, backups piling up without a deletion policy, and instances paid on-demand instead of reserved at a 30–60% discount. A one-hour monthly audit of the cost report prevents almost all of it; ask explicitly for that habit from whoever runs your infrastructure.
Can I migrate only part of my systems and keep the rest on-premise?
Yes — hybrid is actually the recommended route for cautious companies: move the obvious wins first (public website, backups, test environments) while heavy systems stay local until they have their own reason to move. The extra cost is the secure link between the two worlds, typically a VPN at a few tens of euros per month.
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Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247