Solv migrates database to Amazon Aurora with AWS support, cutting costs by 30%

With demand for urgent care surging across the US health market, Solv has become a trusted platform—2 out of 3 Americans are within 5 miles of a Solv-powered provider, and the network has facilitated over 100M+ healthcare visits to-date. To stay ahead in a competitive landscape, the company needed to keep innovating and delivering greater value to patients and providers.

However, Solv’s managed database created barriers. Scaling was expensive and timeconsuming, diverting engineering effort away from innovation. ““We were overpaying due to the lack of flexibility in our prior tech stack,” says Nico Raffo, principal engineer at Solv. To overcome these challenges, Solv set out to modernize its data foundation by migrating to Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL. The transition needed to be seamless and maintain compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). “It was our first time moving a database into Aurora, but we knew we had to approach the work like experts,” says Raffo.

To prepare for its database migration, Solv partnered closely with the AWS Customer Solutions Management and Database Specialists Team, who organized an Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA) review to accelerate planning ahead of its deadline. “I listened to the AWS team describing previous database migrations to AWS, and I felt relieved because of their combined experience,” recalls Raffo. “We immediately had a lot of confidence in their expertise.”

The AWS team also recommended AWS Countdown Premium, an enhanced service under AWS Enterprise Support that provides designated engineers and real-time guidance for critical events. This engagement helped Solv validate its operational readiness, ensure HIPAA compliance, and successfully test the two-hour migration window—all while exiting its legacy system on schedule.

Working side by side with AWS migration experts, Solv’s engineering team refined the architecture, strategy, and testing process, holding weekly reviews to track progress. The database migration was completed in twelve weeks, paving the way for the full AWS migration to be finished within nine months. “If we had an issue crop up, we could immediately go to AWS to help fix it,” says Raffo. “This level of support and cadence ensured we met our deadlines.”

In total, Solv migrated 3 terabytes of active data into Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL, with the new database supporting up to 5,000 transactions per second for more than 500 applications. The company also transitioned robotic process automations, integrations, web services, APIs, and containerized applications to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). “It was a true modernization—not just a lift-and-shift. With AWS facilitating a Migration EBA and helping us containerize the applications, we hit our targets,” says Jarrett Irons, staff engineer at Solv.

The migration lowered Solv’s database costs across hundreds of applications, thanks to pay-as-you-go pricing and right-sized server instances. Improved scalability also eased engineering workloads by reducing database DevOps effort by about 20–30 percent, giving the team more time to focus on innovation. “Migrating to Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL with support from AWS Countdown Premium reduced our database costs by 30 percent and gave us the flexibility to scale efficiently during a high-growth phase,” says Raffo.

The shift also unlocked new possibilities for development. “It has taken the handcuffs off the platform development team,” says Irons. “If we want to explore streaming data or serverless services, we can now do so because we’re no longer facing database challenges.”

Building on this foundation, Solv is expanding automation features, AI integrations, and advanced analytics to improve the patient experience. “We’re enhancing automation and chatbot capabilities to make scheduling appointments easier,” adds Raffo. “With AWS, Solv now has the flexibility and efficiencies it needs to accelerate the pace of digital health innovation.”