Cost Optimization
A core principle of this project was to demonstrate financial discipline through cost-effective cloud architecture. This section outlines the specific strategies and service choices that result in a highly performant website with negligible monthly operational costs.
Usage-Based Pricing Model
The entire architecture is built on serverless services with usage-based (pay-as-you-go) pricing. For a low-traffic site, this model is exceptionally cost-effective, as costs are directly proportional to traffic and data transfer, most of which falls within the generous AWS Free Tier.
| Service | Primary Cost Driver | Mitigation Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | Storage (GB/month) & Requests | Site assets are small and highly optimized. Most requests are served by the CDN cache, minimizing requests to S3. |
| Amazon CloudFront | Data Transfer Out (GB/month) | Aggressive caching policies and modern image/asset compression reduce the amount of data transferred to users. |
| Amazon Route 53 | Hosted Zone & Queries | The primary cost is a fixed ~$0.50/month for the hosted zone. Alias records to AWS resources are free of charge. |
Cost-Avoidance by Design
Several key architectural decisions were made specifically to avoid entire categories of cost.
No Third-Party SaaS
The project avoids all third-party Software-as-a-Service platforms for functions like analytics, forms, or content management, eliminating recurring monthly subscription fees and vendor dependencies.
No Server or Database Costs
By choosing a static architecture, there is no need for compute instances (like EC2 or containers) or managed databases (like RDS), which are typically the largest cost drivers in a cloud environment. All logic is handled client-side or at the CDN edge.
Free & Open Source Tooling
The entire CI/CD pipeline and development environment relies on free (for public repos) and open-source software, including GitHub Actions and TailwindCSS. This avoids licensing fees and allows for full control over the build process.