6 ms·

Get AWS costs posted directly to Slack

104 points by StratusBen 5y ago

adamqureshi 5y ago
ok but I'm on azure. :-(
- AstroDogCatcher 5y ago
  ":-(" indeed.
gagejustins 5y ago
This is great, now I can know how much money I'm losing all the time!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pistoriusp 5y ago
If anyone from Vantage is listening, discord integration would be awesome!
- StratusBen 5y ago
  Hey there! Co-Founder and CEO of Vantage here. We're listening. Happy to get this added as an option :)
StratusBen 5y ago
Hi everyone, I'm Co-Founder and CEO of Vantage We've heard consistently from existing users that they want visibility of AWS costs directly where their teams do work: which tends to be in Slack for the most part. This integration represents us dipping our toes into an integration with Slack. Currently you can get either daily, weekly or monthly cost reports posted to Slack with a breakdown of each individual AWS service. In the future, we're looking to integrate Slack slash commands in for querying information about your AWS account as well as comparing information found on http://ec2instances.info/ http://ec2instances.info/ which we acquired earlier this year. We've also got some things cooking around automated alerts and cost anomaly detections. This is a pretty straight-forward launch but happy to answer any questions :)
- picardo 5y ago
  What would you say is the advantage of Vantage over AWS's Billing Dashboard?[1] I can configure it to send me daily reports and notifications if the costs exceed my daily threshold already. Why do I need Vantage? ---- [1] https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing
  - itisit 5y ago
    If I may add on, what does Vantage give me above and beyond AWS Billing Dashboard and AWS Cost Explorer?
  - StratusBen 5y ago
    Good question. There are a number of things already at the moment and the list keeps growing: - Vantage gives you per-resource costs for every AWS resource broken down by category and subcategory without the need for you to tag anything. This feature is named Advanced Analytics and allows you to see costs for all AWS resources like Lambda Functions, SQS Queues, SNS Topics, S3 Buckets, etc. You can see more here: https://www.vantage.sh/features/advanced-analytics https://www.vantage.sh/features/advanced-analytics - Vantage has Kubernetes service level cost support. We can show you the cost of each individual K8S service by looking at lifecycle events and cross-referencing with underlying EC2 costs. You can see more here: https://www.vantage.sh/features/kubernetes https://www.vantage.sh/features/kubernetes - Cost Recommendations: Vantage will give you not only ways to optimize your costs within the confines of your AWS account but also make third party recommendations in the best interest of your business....AWS will never do this. Here's an example of our Cloudflare cost recommendation: https://www.vantage.sh/blog/cloudflare-specific-cost-recommendations-for-amazon-cloudfront-and-amazon-s3-egress https://www.vantage.sh/blog/cloudflare-specific-cost-recomme... - Ease of use. We've heard consistent customer feedback that most people don't enjoy using AWS billing related tools, APIs or even raw data from Cost and Usage Reports as its hard to use and unintuitive. We have focused really hard on developer experience and ease of use. Vantage has also only been generally available since January of this year...we have a lot more planned for the future and this list will grow.
    - 5y ago
quesera 5y ago
PRICING LINK: https://www.vantage.sh/pricing https://www.vantage.sh/pricing Link in header does not work for me, but I might be special. Link in footer works. Original (misleading) comment follows: -------------------------- Vantage brings you visibility into AWS pricing? Interesting! But Vantage hides Vantage pricing behind a login? Erm. (I'm willing to accept the possibility that I just haven't granted the page adequate permissions, but four external sites should be enough for anyone.)
- StratusBen 5y ago
  Vantage pricing is publicly available here: https://www.vantage.sh/pricing https://www.vantage.sh/pricing Is that what you're looking for?
  - quesera 5y ago
    Yep, that's great. The "Pricing" link in the header takes me to a login page. Maybe it's just me.
    - StratusBen 5y ago
      What browser are you using? Both Chrome and Safari seem fine to me on desktop and mobile for pricing links in the header and footer.
      - quesera 5y ago
        Firefox here. With some content blocking, but progressively disabled before I posted my initial comment. If I make my viewport wider, the "Pricing" and "Login" links are further apart, and hovering "Pricing" no longer highlights "Login" (but clicking the non-highlighted "Pricing" does nothing). Might be a float or z-axis issue compounded by viewport width and content blocking side effects?
        spicybright 5y ago
        Just to add a data point, I also run fire fox with heavy blocking and it seems to work for me. Maybe it got fixed already.
itisit 5y ago
Your docs use the term "master" in regards to AWS accounts in some places [0]. FWIW many companies, AWS included, prefer alternate words for various reasons [1]. You may want to match the language for clarity. [0] https://docs.vantage.sh/connecting/ https://docs.vantage.sh/connecting/ [1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_best-practices_mgmt-acct.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/o...
- StratusBen 5y ago
  Thanks for this call-out. I'll personally get this updated this evening.
  - 0x7265616374 5y ago
    That was a pretty fast cave to Western political correctness manure. Missed opportunity for a CEO to show some backbone.
    - jaredchung 5y ago
      That's not constructive. Please refrain from attacks like this on HN. AWS Organizations is changing the name of the “master account” to “management account”. It makes sense for OP to update their docs accordingly, to remain consistent with AWS's naming system.
      - andrew_ 5y ago
        Objectively speaking, it may not seem constructive if you disagree with the statement. I have no skin in this game, and the change doesn't bother me. I do however, understand the sentiment from a non-western cultural and societal perspective, as I work with a veritable United Nations on a daily basis. Until AWS completely scrubs the language in question from their ecosystem, for example [1], I can see how that call out is misconstrued as being in the spirit of "political correctness" from another's perspective. I believe you missed an opportunity to engage in good faith conversation with information that could have turned their perspective towards something more positive in nature. As such, I view your reply as not constructive. [1] https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/securityhub/get-master-account.html https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/ref...
zmkzrk 5y ago
This (free, unlimited) tool has been working well for us - https://github.com/iandees/aws-billing-to-slack https://github.com/iandees/aws-billing-to-slack. edit - appreciate that Vantage may have better features, but this gives us a reliable daily cost report on Slack.
- StratusBen 5y ago
  Just for onlookers who may be curious about the differences here: The Vantage Slack integration is tied to a primitive called a Cost Report at the end of the day. What this means is if you'd like to configure a Cost Report that filters costs down just for specific AWS member accounts, tags, regions or AWS services (or a combination of the aforementioned) you can do that and then have that be posted to Slack accordingly. Seemingly this tool mentioned above does not allow this to happen and just shows things in aggregate. How we see this used in practice is that customers will create Cost Reports for certain teams in their organization then post to that team's specific Slack channels accordingly. So essentially creating cost accountability per team via Slack. Here is a blog post that describes "Filter Sets" and how to apply them to a Cost Report in more depth if you're curious: https://www.vantage.sh/blog/vantage-launches-filter-sets https://www.vantage.sh/blog/vantage-launches-filter-sets
zitterbewegung 5y ago
This has a high chance of being sherlocked.
- swyx 5y ago
  nah, nobody at aws is building slack integrations lol. billing ux has been notoriously poor for a long time, theres no investment
  - mym1990 5y ago
    Maybe not but Amazon has a massive partnership with Salesforce, and as Salesforce builds out the integrations with Slack I imagine we will be seeing a lot more of these kinds of things(not just in billing, but across the board).
MR4D 5y ago
Title doesn’t match. It should be: “ Vantage Launches Slack Support For Cost Report Notifications” Totally different thing. Figured that out after wasting a few minutes on this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
doktorhladnjak 5y ago
This is just an ad posted by the CEO of this company
- blamazon 5y ago
  Entrepreneurs using HN to drive traffic and discussion of their own sites? What has the world come to!
- weird-eye-issue 5y ago
  A very large part of HN is targeted content marketing
- goforbg 5y ago
  What's wrong with getting feedback for your product?
buryat 5y ago
why I would give access to this tool?
B2B_human 5y ago
Have you considered a Mattermost integration?

104 points by StratusBen 5y ago

adamqureshi 5y ago

ok but I'm on azure. :-(

AstroDogCatcher 5y ago
":-(" indeed.

gagejustins 5y ago

This is great, now I can know how much money I'm losing all the time!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pistoriusp 5y ago

If anyone from Vantage is listening, discord integration would be awesome!

StratusBen 5y ago
Hey there! Co-Founder and CEO of Vantage here. We're listening. Happy to get this added as an option :)

StratusBen 5y ago

Hi everyone, I'm Co-Founder and CEO of Vantage We've heard consistently from existing users that they want visibility of AWS costs directly where their teams do work: which tends to be in Slack for the most part. This integration represents us dipping our toes into an integration with Slack. Currently you can get either daily, weekly or monthly cost reports posted to Slack with a breakdown of each individual AWS service. In the future, we're looking to integrate Slack slash commands in for querying information about your AWS account as well as comparing information found on http://ec2instances.info/ http://ec2instances.info/ which we acquired earlier this year. We've also got some things cooking around automated alerts and cost anomaly detections. This is a pretty straight-forward launch but happy to answer any questions :)

picardo 5y ago
What would you say is the advantage of Vantage over AWS's Billing Dashboard?[1] I can configure it to send me daily reports and notifications if the costs exceed my daily threshold already. Why do I need Vantage? ---- [1] https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing
- itisit 5y ago
  If I may add on, what does Vantage give me above and beyond AWS Billing Dashboard and AWS Cost Explorer?
- StratusBen 5y ago
  Good question. There are a number of things already at the moment and the list keeps growing: - Vantage gives you per-resource costs for every AWS resource broken down by category and subcategory without the need for you to tag anything. This feature is named Advanced Analytics and allows you to see costs for all AWS resources like Lambda Functions, SQS Queues, SNS Topics, S3 Buckets, etc. You can see more here: https://www.vantage.sh/features/advanced-analytics https://www.vantage.sh/features/advanced-analytics - Vantage has Kubernetes service level cost support. We can show you the cost of each individual K8S service by looking at lifecycle events and cross-referencing with underlying EC2 costs. You can see more here: https://www.vantage.sh/features/kubernetes https://www.vantage.sh/features/kubernetes - Cost Recommendations: Vantage will give you not only ways to optimize your costs within the confines of your AWS account but also make third party recommendations in the best interest of your business....AWS will never do this. Here's an example of our Cloudflare cost recommendation: https://www.vantage.sh/blog/cloudflare-specific-cost-recommendations-for-amazon-cloudfront-and-amazon-s3-egress https://www.vantage.sh/blog/cloudflare-specific-cost-recomme... - Ease of use. We've heard consistent customer feedback that most people don't enjoy using AWS billing related tools, APIs or even raw data from Cost and Usage Reports as its hard to use and unintuitive. We have focused really hard on developer experience and ease of use. Vantage has also only been generally available since January of this year...we have a lot more planned for the future and this list will grow.
  - 5y ago

quesera 5y ago

PRICING LINK: https://www.vantage.sh/pricing https://www.vantage.sh/pricing Link in header does not work for me, but I might be special. Link in footer works. Original (misleading) comment follows: -------------------------- Vantage brings you visibility into AWS pricing? Interesting! But Vantage hides Vantage pricing behind a login? Erm. (I'm willing to accept the possibility that I just haven't granted the page adequate permissions, but four external sites should be enough for anyone.)

StratusBen 5y ago
Vantage pricing is publicly available here: https://www.vantage.sh/pricing https://www.vantage.sh/pricing Is that what you're looking for?
- quesera 5y ago
  Yep, that's great. The "Pricing" link in the header takes me to a login page. Maybe it's just me.
  - StratusBen 5y ago
    What browser are you using? Both Chrome and Safari seem fine to me on desktop and mobile for pricing links in the header and footer.
    - quesera 5y ago
      Firefox here. With some content blocking, but progressively disabled before I posted my initial comment. If I make my viewport wider, the "Pricing" and "Login" links are further apart, and hovering "Pricing" no longer highlights "Login" (but clicking the non-highlighted "Pricing" does nothing). Might be a float or z-axis issue compounded by viewport width and content blocking side effects?
      - spicybright 5y ago
        Just to add a data point, I also run fire fox with heavy blocking and it seems to work for me. Maybe it got fixed already.

itisit 5y ago

Your docs use the term "master" in regards to AWS accounts in some places [0]. FWIW many companies, AWS included, prefer alternate words for various reasons [1]. You may want to match the language for clarity. [0] https://docs.vantage.sh/connecting/ https://docs.vantage.sh/connecting/ [1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/orgs_best-practices_mgmt-acct.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/o...

StratusBen 5y ago
Thanks for this call-out. I'll personally get this updated this evening.
- 0x7265616374 5y ago
  That was a pretty fast cave to Western political correctness manure. Missed opportunity for a CEO to show some backbone.
  - jaredchung 5y ago
    That's not constructive. Please refrain from attacks like this on HN. AWS Organizations is changing the name of the “master account” to “management account”. It makes sense for OP to update their docs accordingly, to remain consistent with AWS's naming system.
    - andrew_ 5y ago
      Objectively speaking, it may not seem constructive if you disagree with the statement. I have no skin in this game, and the change doesn't bother me. I do however, understand the sentiment from a non-western cultural and societal perspective, as I work with a veritable United Nations on a daily basis. Until AWS completely scrubs the language in question from their ecosystem, for example [1], I can see how that call out is misconstrued as being in the spirit of "political correctness" from another's perspective. I believe you missed an opportunity to engage in good faith conversation with information that could have turned their perspective towards something more positive in nature. As such, I view your reply as not constructive. [1] https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/securityhub/get-master-account.html https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/ref...

zmkzrk 5y ago

This (free, unlimited) tool has been working well for us - https://github.com/iandees/aws-billing-to-slack https://github.com/iandees/aws-billing-to-slack. edit - appreciate that Vantage may have better features, but this gives us a reliable daily cost report on Slack.

StratusBen 5y ago
Just for onlookers who may be curious about the differences here: The Vantage Slack integration is tied to a primitive called a Cost Report at the end of the day. What this means is if you'd like to configure a Cost Report that filters costs down just for specific AWS member accounts, tags, regions or AWS services (or a combination of the aforementioned) you can do that and then have that be posted to Slack accordingly. Seemingly this tool mentioned above does not allow this to happen and just shows things in aggregate. How we see this used in practice is that customers will create Cost Reports for certain teams in their organization then post to that team's specific Slack channels accordingly. So essentially creating cost accountability per team via Slack. Here is a blog post that describes "Filter Sets" and how to apply them to a Cost Report in more depth if you're curious: https://www.vantage.sh/blog/vantage-launches-filter-sets https://www.vantage.sh/blog/vantage-launches-filter-sets

zitterbewegung 5y ago

This has a high chance of being sherlocked.

swyx 5y ago
nah, nobody at aws is building slack integrations lol. billing ux has been notoriously poor for a long time, theres no investment
- mym1990 5y ago
  Maybe not but Amazon has a massive partnership with Salesforce, and as Salesforce builds out the integrations with Slack I imagine we will be seeing a lot more of these kinds of things(not just in billing, but across the board).

MR4D 5y ago

Title doesn’t match. It should be: “ Vantage Launches Slack Support For Cost Report Notifications” Totally different thing. Figured that out after wasting a few minutes on this.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

doktorhladnjak 5y ago

This is just an ad posted by the CEO of this company

blamazon 5y ago
Entrepreneurs using HN to drive traffic and discussion of their own sites? What has the world come to!
weird-eye-issue 5y ago
A very large part of HN is targeted content marketing
goforbg 5y ago
What's wrong with getting feedback for your product?

buryat 5y ago

why I would give access to this tool?

B2B_human 5y ago

Have you considered a Mattermost integration?