Commitment Manager

Our primary use case for Zesty was Kubernetes cost optimization, especially around EKS clusters running production APIs and internal data services. We were dealing with the classic issue of over-provisioned CPU, memory, and storage because teams were sizing for peak traffic and never scaling back down. Zesty helped us automate pod right-sizing, reduce excess headroom, and manage node-level efficiency without hurting performance. That was the biggest value for us because it solved both cost and operational pressure at the same time.

The biggest benefit of using Zesty is that the team has now removed a lot of repetitive tuning work from DevOps. Our platform engineer used to spend hours every week reviewing cluster utilization, validating recommendations, and manually adjusting requests and limits. Zesty reduced that overhead significantly and let the team focus more on reliability and delivery work. Realistically, it saved us about 10 to 12 engineering hours per week.

The impact was pretty straightforward: lower cloud spend, less manual optimization work, and better cost predictability. It also improved the relationship between engineering and finance because cost conversations became less reactive and more data-backed. Instead of monthly cost surprises, we had much tighter control over spend trends. That made budget planning much easier for leadership. From a metrics perspective, Zesty reduced our Kubernetes infrastructure spend by about 24% in the first six months. We also cut wasted storage costs by roughly 18% and improved saving plan utilization by around 12%. On the operational side, we saved roughly 40 to 50 hours a month in manual cloud cost tuning. That combination made the ROI pretty easy to justify.

The biggest area for improvement is still reporting depth. Zesty is very strong on automation and execution, but the reporting layer is not as deep as some of the broader FinOps platforms. When finance wants highly customized showback or forecasting views, it covers the operational side well, but for more advanced finance reporting, we still had to supplement it. That was probably the most noticeable gap.

I would appreciate stronger documentation in a few areas, especially around Zesty's automation behavior and workload exclusion. The tool itself is easy to use, but there were times when we wanted more detailed technical guidance for debugging specific optimization decisions. Better implementation examples and more architecture-specific playbooks would make onboarding smoother. It is not a blocker, just an area where they could improve the experience.

Monitoring and logging could be a bit more granular. We wanted deeper auditability into why certain automated changes were made, especially when reviewing behavior across multiple teams. The visibility is good, but having more detailed event traces and easier correlation with the cluster would make troubleshooting faster. That would help teams trust automation even more.

I have been using Zesty for a little over two years now, mainly in a Kubernetes-heavy AWS environment where cloud costs were growing faster than engineering headcount.

One feature that deserves more credit is the way Zesty handled commitment optimization alongside infrastructure automation. Most tools treat those as separate problems, but Zesty connected them well enough that we could optimize both short-term usage and long-term commitment coverage in one workflow. That was useful because it gave finance and engineering a more aligned view of cost decisions. It made FinOps feel less fragmented.

That was one of the most useful parts of Zesty because it helped us manage saving plans much more intelligently instead of just locking into static commitments and hoping utilization stays high. Zesty continuously looked at usage patterns and adjusted recommendations based on real demand, which helped us avoid overcommitting during quieter periods or overbuying for short-term spikes. That gave our FinOps team much better visibility into where we are under-covered versus where we were at the risk of committing too much. In practice, it improved our saving plan utilization by around 12% and made forecasting a lot more predictable.

The best feature in Zesty for us was the automation-first approach. A lot of FinOps tools are great at dashboards, but Zesty was stronger at actually taking action: right-sizing workloads, adjusting storage, and tuning commitments continuously. I also appreciated that it was focused on execution instead of just reporting. That made it much more useful for an engineering team that needed operational outcomes, not just visibility.

Those conversations were much more productive because engineering and finance were finally looking at the same set of cost signals instead of debating those numbers. Before Zesty, finance would flag cloud spend after the fact, while engineering would usually have to go back and manually explain what changed. With Zesty, we had shared visibility into usage trends, optimizing actions, and projected savings. Budgeting became more proactive instead of reactive. It made monthly budget reviews a lot smoother and gave leadership more confidence in forecasting because the cost story was much easier to explain.

My advice would be to go into Zesty with clear cost ownership and your tagging already in place. The product works best when teams know what they are optimizing and who owns it. If your tagging and ownership are messy, any FinOps tool gets harder to operationalize. With that foundation in place, Zesty becomes much more effective.

Zesty delivered real value for us because it solved a practical problem instead of just giving us another dashboard. It helped reduce cloud waste, improved engineering efficiency, and made cost optimization much more operational. That combination is what made it worth keeping. It is one of the more practical FinOps tools we have used.

I would rate this review an 8 overall.

We predominantly use Zesty to manage our spend in AWS, specifically around reserving instances for our compute workload. Our workload is dynamic, and it would be cumbersome and difficult for us to maintain and manage the reserved instance profiles ourselves. We leverage Zesty to programmatically adjust our reserved instance purchases and sell off RI contracts as they are no longer needed.

Zesty reduces our monthly bill. On average, between 85% and 95% percent of our environment is covered by some form of reserved instance, and each of these agreements reduces the spend by 30% to 35% percent. This results in a material impact on the bill and allows us to allocate savings to other areas.

The turnkey aspect of Zesty is very valuable. I set it up, spend around 15 minutes granting access, and from there, it operates automatically. Zesty manages the workload, and their pricing is structured in a way that incentivizes them to save us more money.

There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances. Currently, no mechanism within Zesty allows this, but this may be due to AWS limitations. Another point is that Zesty needs to react to any changes AWS makes, but they have been proactive in their communication regarding material impacts.

It's probably been about five years since I began using Zesty, back when they were Cloudvisor.

I have never had any issues or experienced a bug. Occasionally, I might need help understanding the UI to ensure I'm interpreting the data correctly, however, my customer care representative is always there to help. I've never experienced stability or outage issues.

I would rate scalability a ten out of ten. The necessary scaling is transparent to me, and I don't observe any issues.

The customer support has been great. There has been some turnover due to turmoil in Israel, where Zesty is headquartered. However, they transition well across account representatives. In the few instances I've needed support, they have been available despite the time zone difference.

Positive

The setup is straightforward. They walk you through the process, and it's as simple as copying and pasting into the AWS console. Once it's set up, you're done.

We see a return on investment every month.

Their pricing is brilliant. It is a percentage of what they save us by using reserved instances. If they save us $25,000, they might charge five percent of that, which is work we wouldn't do on our own. It's a no-brainer.

I advise that while it may seem like managing reserved instances is something you can do on your own unless you are extremely disciplined, you won't achieve the same consistency and regularity as Zesty would. Not using Zesty leaves money on the table.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We use the solution for savings plans, reserved instances, and automation. We customize the reserved instances of savings plans depending on the account type.

What I like about Zesty is that it's basically being completely hands-off. It does what's expected of it, and you don't have to worry about cost or cost savings. You just automate that part of the cloud, and the buying and selling of all the little businesses and savings plans will be done for you.

One of the things Zesty recently launched was Windows reserved instances because they needed support until recently. One of the reasons we decided to onboard Zesty was that it started supporting Windows instances.

Zesty helped reduce our cloud cost without needing a FinOps team to constantly look at cloud costs. Managing all of that is completely automated now.

I would like to get RDS-reserved instances that I could buy and sell, but that's a limitation on AWS.

I have been working with Zesty in my current company for about three months, but I worked with it for a year in a previous company.

We haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability.

Zesty is a scalable solution. Around four people have access to the dashboard in our organization.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward. To deploy the solution, you need to add an AIM role on the accounts you need to onboard. We enabled SSO on the portal. The SSO is just a question of negotiating the service and sharing the certificates and private keys with them, which was very easy. The initial setup took around five minutes.

We got around 48% cost savings with Zesty.

The solution’s pricing is reasonable.

Before choosing Zesty, we evaluated other tools like Cloudability. We tried other solutions, but Zesty turned out to be the best because of its insurance plan. If Zesty makes a mistake and over provisions the commitment, we don't pay their bill until the commitment is credited to us.

The way we're using it is completely hands-off. We just trust that they do the automation to buy the reserved instances and the same instance for us. The solution has other features like the storage explorer, which can save you money on new storage. It also has the Zesty disk, but I never use those because I never had the use case for them.

The solution's AI functionality is really easy to use and automatic. Since it's all automated, we don't see what the AI is doing. We just keep the savings at the end of the month and pay the bill. It is not difficult to maintain the solution. I would recommend the solution to other users because it is very easy to use.

The solution is easy to use and onboard, and its support team is really good.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.