ablefy cuts RDS costs 65%, loads 10x faster
DoiT Cloud Reliability Engineers re-architected ablefy's Amazon RDS setup with right-sized instances, cheaper storage, and a new caching layer.
Meet ablefy
ablefy is the all-in-one platform for digital growth, enabling more than 68,000 entrepreneurs to create online courses, member areas, e-ticketing, and digital payment interfaces. Founded in Germany in 2017, and securing Series A funding four years later, ablefy has grown to a team of 200 employees. It is now scaling up and expanding internationally as it empowers global entrepreneurs to monetize their digital offerings.
The Challenge
ablefy experienced rapid growth that created performance bottlenecks in its Amazon RDS database, impacting page load speeds and putting customer-facing SLOs at risk. The company's cloud infrastructure had been assembled quickly during startup growth, creating challenges around performance and cost predictability. Amazon RDS had become one of the largest cost drivers with uneven unit economics.
The Solution
DoiT's Cloud Reliability Engineers worked with ablefy to address the underlying architectural causes of RDS performance issues. They recommended changing the instance type to handle more IOPS and switching to a more cost-efficient storage layer. DoiT also helped introduce a caching layer and provided ongoing optimization through DoiT Console and Flexsave for Compute.
Results
- 65% reduction in RDS database costs, saving thousands of dollars per month
- Up to 10x faster page load speeds through database optimization
- 14% savings on EC2 instances with Flexsave for Compute
- Improved customer satisfaction scores and positive stakeholder feedback
- Embedded FinOps governance practices for predictable unit economics
We love working with DoiT. We get cloud optimization experts who can significantly reduce our costs, as well as experienced mentors and sparring partners to help us improve our architecture and experiment with new approaches. We look forward to continuing our collaboration.
Alex Ischenko, VP of Engineering at ablefy
A faster database service, a smaller cloud bill
Cloud Reliability Engineers worked with ablefy to address the underlying architectural causes of the RDS performance issues, with dedicated CRE Pol Alzina being allocated to support the company in reviews and implementations. Alzina recommended changing the instance type to one that could handle more input/output operations per second (IOPS) to relieve contention without code changes. He also advised changing the storage layer to a more cost-efficient type, resulting in a ~90% reduction in RDS costs while maintaining performance and reliability targets. Among these additional architectural changes is the introduction of a caching layer to handle certain data requests, freeing up RDS for other tasks and helping to reduce page load speeds for the end consumer.
Gaining control of cloud expenditure with DoiT Console
ablefy is making significant progress in reducing its overall cloud expenditure with the help of DoiT Console. Alex's engineering team uses Cloud Analytics daily to gain insights into its cloud architecture, allocate costs to specific operations and workloads, and improve cloud governance through Real-Time Anomaly Detection. With regular consultations with the DoiT team and an open messaging channel, ablefy works with DoiT to understand where expenditure can be reduced without sacrificing performance. ablefy also uses DoiT Flexsave for Compute to save on its compute spend by automatically identifying and applying discounted rates to EC2 workloads not already covered by commitments.
Building the right infrastructure for global expansion
ablefy is now working with DoiT to design its architecture to best support its plans to scale globally. This includes a decision to use Amazon CloudFront as its content delivery network, helping deliver content quickly and efficiently. This will allow ablefy to provide a better user experience in international markets while optimizing data transfer and egress costs. As ablefy continues working with DoiT to refine its architecture and support global expansion, the two teams are introducing governed AI services with clear cost guardrails.
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What they say
What I really like about DoiT's approach is that you're very hands-on and proactive. Satyam would ping me a few times a sprint, letting me know about the most current features, checking in on how things are going. When we are going through a peak time, that proactiveness makes a real difference. Satyam always comes through whenever we need support and helps us leverage the right experts to get us where we need to be.
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Ian Fahey, Senior Analytics Engineer at Loop
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