If you're managing cloud infrastructure costs on AWS, you've probably heard that Savings Plans (SPs) and Reserved Instances (RIs) can save you significantly compared to On-Demand Instances. But maximizing those savings isn’t just about purchasing commitments — it’s about making the right commitments at the right time, for the right services, and with the right strategy.

AWS offers significant discounts for committed resource usage, but choosing the right option is key to avoiding wasted spend or overpaying for On-Demand instances. Refer to this guide to AWS and Google Cloud Savings Plans to understand more about the different discount offerings. 

Over many years, while working with different customers, I have identified common mistakes organizations make when it comes to AWS commitments - and how to avoid them to drive smarter cloud economics.

1. Waiting Too Long to Commit
2. Not Committing Across All Eligible Services
3. Automating Commitment Management Too Early
4. Defaulting to One-Year Commitments
5. Overlooking Spot vs Commitment Strategies 
6. Only Using a Subset of Commitment Options
7. Delaying Enterprise Commitments (PPA/EDP)

1. Waiting Too Long to Commit

The Mistake:

Organizations often hesitate to make long-term commitments until they feel absolutely confident in their infrastructure choices. But while they wait, they continue to pay higher On-Demand rates.

Real-Life Example:

A growing SaaS company delayed committing to Savings Plans during their microservices migration. They were unsure which services would become permanent. In just three months, their On-Demand spend ballooned by 30%. A staged commitment strategy could have captured savings without locking them into the wrong setup

The Fix:

Even in uncertain times like migrations, testing, or new product rollouts, consider committing portions of your usage. Mix short-term and long-term Savings Plans or RIs based on your confidence levels. This approach lets you start saving immediately without overcommitting.

Bonus Tip:

With DoiT Cloud Intelligence Reports, you can easily create reports to analyze EC2 cost and usage on an hourly or daily basis, helping you make informed decisions before committing

2. Not Committing Across All Eligible Services

The Mistake:

Focusing only on the most obvious services—like EC2 and RDS—and overlooking opportunities to save on others like Lambda, Fargate, EKS, or OpenSearch.

Real-Life Example:

A fintech startup committed only EC2 and RDS workloads, ignoring their growing use of EKS and Lambda. After a cost audit, they realized 40% of their monthly compute costs were going untouched by commitments.

The Fix

In French, we say "look at the forest, not just the trees." Similarly, if you're running serverless apps, containerized workloads, or data analytics, you likely have commit-eligible usage in Fargate, Lambda, EKS, OpenSearch, and more. These services can and should be discounted with the right SP or RI strategy.

 

Bonus Tip:

With DoiT Cloud Intelligence insights, customers receive actionable recommendations to optimize costs, track progress, identify commit-eligible usage across all services—not just EC2 and RDS—enhance cloud security, and adopt FinOps and Well-Architected best practices.

3. Automating Commitment Management Too Early

The Mistake:

Automating commitments before you truly understand your usage patterns can lead to poorly optimized purchases—or worse, overcommitment.

Real-Life Example:

An e-commerce business set up automated commitment tooling with a "percent-of-savings" vendor. The tool aggressively bought RIs assuming steady usage. Later, the customer changed the instance family, leaving them with unused OpenSearch RIs that didn’t match their updated workloads. They were left paying for unused commitments plus vendor fees.

The Fix:

Before automating:

• Understand your cost patterns and forecast usage
• Model commitment utilization over 1- and 3-year horizons
• Choose tools that allow granular control and customization

Automation should enhance your strategy, not replace it.

Bonus Tip1:

With DoiT Cloud Intelligence Dashboard, customers can create custom views to monitor cost and usage across commitments. Subscribe to dashboards for regular updates via email or Slack.

Bonus Tip2: 

With DoiT Cloud Intelligence CloudFlow, a GenAI-powered, no-code FinOps workflow solution—customers can effortlessly automate and manage FinOps processes.

For example, you can set up a simple workflow to receive notifications when Reserved Instances (RIs) are about to expire, ensuring you stay proactive and avoid surprises.

4. Defaulting to One-Year Commitments

The Mistake:

Many teams default to one-year commitments, thinking they’re less risky. But this may mean missing out on higher savings from longer-term or more flexible commitment structures.

Real-Life Example:

A media company stuck with one-year SPs to "stay agile." By layering longer-term commitments for predictable baseline usage and shorter ones for dynamic workloads, they could have saved an additional 20% annually.

The Fix:

If you have steady-state workloads, don’t be afraid of longer-term commitments. Blending commitment durations often delivers the best balance of cost and risk.

Bonus Tip:

With DoiT Cloud Intelligence Flexsave for Compute, customers get automatic savings without the need for upfront commitment. It’s an ideal solution during transitions like cloud migrations, enabling you to stay flexible while reducing costs. For stable workloads, we recommend a 3-year Own SP, which can yield around 50% more savings than Flexsave alone.

5. Overlooking Spot vs. Commitment Strategies

The Mistake:

Overcommitting to RIs or SPs without evaluating if workloads could run more cost-effectively on Spot Instances.

Real-Life Example:

A data analytics company committed 100% of its batch processing workloads to RIs. These were actually ideal for Spot Instances, being fault-tolerant and time-flexible. They missed out on 70-90% savings.

The Fix:

Before locking in commitments, assess if parts of your workload—especially dev/test or batch jobs—can run reliably on Spot. A mixed strategy often delivers optimal results.

Bonus Tip:

With the DoiT Cloud Intelligence Spot Scaling solution, customers can seamlessly integrate Spot Instances into Auto Scaling Groups. It's ideal for batch processing, stateless apps, and dev/test environments—maximizing savings without compromising reliability.

6. Only Using a Subset of Commitment Options

The Mistake:

Many companies focus solely on EC2 RIs or Compute SPs, ignoring other commitment options like Redshift, SageMaker, and OpenSearch.

Real-Life Example:

An energy platform spent heavily on Redshift, SageMaker, and OpenSearch, but only committed to their EC2 usage. They missed out on up to 76% savings on Redshift and 64% on SageMaker—resulting in over $100K in missed savings annually.

The Fix:

Explore the full range of commitment options: EC2 Convertible RIs, OpenSearch RIs, Redshift Reserved Nodes, Compute Savings Plans, and more. Evaluate all eligible services and combine commitments strategically to maximise savings across the board. You may refer to this DoiT Blog to understand more about different discount offerings

Bonus Tip:

Along with the above-mentioned Flexsave and Insights, DoiT Cloud Intelligence also gives you access to a human expert who can work closely with you to understand your unique business objectives and recommend the right commitment strategy—ensuring cost savings align with your operational goals.

7. Delaying Enterprise Commitments (PPA/EDP)

The Mistake:

Eligible customers often delay signing a Private Pricing Agreement (PPA) or Enterprise Discount Program (EDP), leaving significant savings on the table.

Real-Life Example:

A healthcare company reached PPA eligibility six months before acting on it. In that time, they overspent by over $200,000 on On-Demand services they could’ve gotten at enterprise rates.

The Fix:

As soon as you're eligible, begin modeling your spend and negotiate a PPA/EDP. These agreements can unlock blanket discounts and provide financial predictability. Partnering with a cloud cost expert like DoiT can help you:

• Model growth and usage over 2–5 years
• Optimize your spend ramp
• Minimize shortfall risk through proactive planning

Bonus Tip:

With DoiT’s Commitment Manager, customers gain a deeper understanding of their AWS commitments by visualizing commitment coverage, usage trends, and remaining balances. It enables proactive planning and decision-making to maximize savings and reduce unused commitments.

Final Thoughts

AWS commitments are a powerful lever for controlling cloud costs—but only when used strategically. Whether you’re a startup scaling fast or an enterprise modernizing your infrastructure, avoiding these common pitfalls can drastically improve your financial efficiency.

At DoiT, we help customers make smarter commitment decisions through real-time visibility, usage modeling, and expert guidance—all without hidden fees or rigid automation.

Ready to optimize your AWS commitment strategy with DoiT?

Let’s chat. Contact us or schedule a free AWS commitment review and cloud cost analysis to uncover savings opportunities and improve your commitment planning.