AWS Case Studies: Solutions and Costs for Different Startups

1. E-commerce Startup (50,000 visitors/month)

Background

An online fashion startup with:

• 50,000 monthly visitors
• 10,000 products
• 1,000 orders per month
• Traffic spikes during sales

AWS Solution

• Frontend: S3 + CloudFront

  • Image storage: 100GB
  • Data transfer: 500GB/month
  • Cost: ~$50/month

• Backend: Lambda + API Gateway

  • 100,000 requests/month
  • 1M GB-seconds
  • Cost: ~$5/month

• Database: DynamoDB

  • 10GB of data
  • On-demand mode
  • Cost: ~$25/month

Total Cost: ~$80/month

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2. B2B SaaS (100 business customers)

Background

A project management startup with:

• 100 business customers
• 1,000 active users
• Sensitive data
• High availability requirements

AWS Solution

• Application: ECS Fargate

  • 2 services (frontend/backend)
  • 2 vCPU, 4GB RAM
  • Cost: ~$150/month

• Database: RDS (PostgreSQL)

  • db.t3.small
  • 50GB storage
  • Multi-AZ
  • Cost: ~$100/month

• Storage: S3

  • 200GB of files
  • Cost: ~$5/month

Total Cost: ~$255/month

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3. Mobile App (500,000 users)

Background

A fitness app with:

• 500,000 users
• 50,000 daily active users
• Video streaming
• User data

AWS Solution

• Backend: Lambda + API Gateway

  • 5M requests/month
  • Cost: ~$10/month

• Database: DynamoDB

  • 100GB of data
  • Provisioned mode
  • Cost: ~$200/month

• Storage: S3

  • 1TB of videos
  • CloudFront for streaming
  • Cost: ~$100/month

Total Cost: ~$310/month

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4. Marketplace (10,000 sellers)

Background

A marketplace platform with:

• 10,000 sellers
• 100,000 products
• 5,000 transactions/month
• Images and descriptions

AWS Solution

• Application: EC2

  • t3.medium (2 instances)
  • Auto Scaling
  • Cost: ~$64/month

• Database: Aurora

  • db.t3.medium
  • 100GB storage
  • Cost: ~$150/month

• Storage: S3

  • 500GB of images
  • CloudFront
  • Cost: ~$50/month

Total Cost: ~$264/month

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Cost Comparison Table

Startup Type	Main Solution	Monthly Cost	Key Points
E-commerce	Serverless (Lambda)	~$80	Cost-effective, scalable
B2B SaaS	Containers (Fargate)	~$255	High availability
Mobile App	Serverless + NoSQL	~$310	Performance, scale-out
Marketplace	EC2 + Aurora	~$264	Full control

Tips for Optimizing Costs:

1. For E-commerce:

   • Use S3 Lifecycle for old images
   • Enable CloudFront caching
   • Optimize your DynamoDB queries

2. For B2B SaaS:

   • Use Reserved Instances
   • Right-size your containers
   • Enable data compression

3. For the Mobile App:

   • Use DynamoDB on-demand mode
   • Optimize video sizes
   • Enable CloudFront caching

4. For the Marketplace:

   • Use Spot Instances
   • Optimize your Aurora queries
   • Enable multi-level caching

Key Takeaways:

Every case is unique, but the principles are similar:

• Start small and scale as needed
• Use serverless services whenever possible
• Continuously optimize costs
• Monitor usage and costs