Optimizing Costs and Promoting Innovation Using Amazon CloudWatch with Wix

Founded in 2006, Wix provides cloud-based web development services with tools that make it simple for users to create and customize websites—no coding skills required. As the company grew, its operational footprint became larger, and it struggled to optimize costs while scaling. As the complexity of Wix’s finances increased, it became more important for the company to have visibility and control over its expenditures. These challenges were amplified when Wix migrated to the cloud.

“In 2017, we were about to migrate to AWS from an on-premises data center,” says Dvir Mizrahi, head of financial engineering at Wix. “One of the challenges that we identified before migrating to the cloud was the aspect of financial monitoring, as procurement will move from procurement specialists to engineers. In a click of a button, engineers could impact our bottom line, our budget, and the way that we forecast our usage.”

Recognizing the importance of cost optimization, the AWS and the Wix teams began to explore ways to implement a comprehensive financial monitoring and observability solution. Together, the two teams identified Amazon CloudWatch as the optimal service for revolutionizing Wix’s approach to financial engineering.

“Everyone asked, ‘How can we get cost metrics in near real time?’ Well, you can generate it using Amazon CloudWatch,” says Mizrahi. “You can create an amazing calculator based on your activities, actions, and scaling. You can calculate and monitor in near real time and gain insights on how your environment changes—not once every 8 hours, but once every minute.”

Wix’s Amazon CloudWatch solution provides detailed insights into application performance, system-wide efficiency, and resource usage. Initially, the company used Amazon CloudWatch to help rightsize resources, pinpoint inefficiencies, and identify areas for cost optimization within Amazon DynamoDB, a serverless, NoSQL, fully managed database. By analyzing Amazon CloudWatch metrics for Amazon DynamoDB’s provisioned input/output operations per second and adjusting them to align with actual usage, Wix effectively matched its resource allocation with its needs, optimizing cost efficiency. As a result, the company reduced its Amazon DynamoDB costs by over 50 percent—and chose to implement Amazon CloudWatch across its entire technology stack.

By analyzing data from Amazon CloudWatch, Wix can understand usage patterns, anticipate resource needs, and make data-driven decisions. Its engineering teams can track and analyze various metrics and logs, from CPU usage to network traffic patterns. This approach not only aids in identifying underused resources but also helps in optimizing them for improved performance and cost efficiency. By continually monitoring these aspects, Wix can meet its current customer demands efficiently and scale and adapt its infrastructure in anticipation of future needs.

“Our Amazon CloudWatch solution is completely integrated with our operations and multiple monitoring tools,” says Mizrahi. “I receive daily emails with status updates. It sends me a Slack notification if there is any anomaly detected. That way, we can allocate different incidents to different teams on almost a daily basis. We also get alerts if there are any big changes in our environment, such as if someone provisions a huge instance.”

At the core of Wix’s financial engineering strategy is a suite of automated processes designed to generate financial value, enhance visibility, and optimize resource usage. Its engineers have access to a waste dashboard, updated daily from Amazon CloudWatch metrics, that provides a granular view of resource usage across all workloads. Using the waste dashboard, engineers can identify inefficiencies and make changes to optimize system performance and reduce operational costs.

By offering these insights, Wix has facilitated a culture of continual improvement within its engineering organization. Engineers can make informed decisions on a day-to-day basis to guide their projects and optimize resources. And with centralized access to Amazon CloudWatch metrics, teams can collaborate daily to streamline workflows and strategically allocate resources for maximum impact.

“We share a monthly report with our largest teams to make sure that they know their costs, their waste, and their plan for cost optimization,” says Mizrahi. “On top of that, we send a monthly email with cost trends to create visibility for upper management and celebrate the teams who initiated cost-reduction agendas.”