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.