Consulting · infrastructure and cloud costs
Cloud exit to bare metal. The audit comes first
A cloud exit moves an application from AWS or Google Cloud to bare-metal or cloud servers at a European provider, when the monthly bill no longer makes sense. It is also called cloud repatriation. Amazing Soft, a software company in Bucharest since 2016, starts with a paid audit that ends in a written report: what your application uses today, what has an equivalent and what does not. Our own product runs on servers in Germany that we create with Terraform and configure with Ansible. If the numbers do not justify the move, the report says so.
The problem. The bill outgrew the product
The application started on a few cloud services because that was the fastest way to launch. Each new feature added another service, and each service added a line to the bill. Today the invoice is long, and nobody in the company can say which lines are needed. For a comparable server in Germany, Hetzner Cloud lists about half of what AWS lists in Frankfurt (list prices checked on 20 October 2026); the figures and their sources are in Hetzner vs AWS.
What the audit covers. Six questions
What does the application use today?
Every service at the current provider, with what depends on it.
What is the bill made of?
Servers, storage, outgoing traffic and managed services, line by line.
What has an equivalent, and what does not?
Plain servers, networks and storage move easily. A managed database with automatic failover, queues or serverless functions have to be rebuilt or kept where they are.
What would the same load cost on servers?
The target setup, with its monthly cost, including backups and monitoring.
How would the move happen?
The order of the steps, the planned window and the way back if something fails.
Who runs it afterwards?
On your own servers, updates, monitoring, backups and security become someone’s job. The report says whose.
What you choose. Stay, move part, move everything
Stay and reduce.
It fits when the application depends on many managed services or you still have cloud credits. The audit shows which lines can be cut without moving.
It does not fit when the largest lines are servers and traffic you need every month.
Move part.
It fits when steady load, storage and outgoing traffic make up most of the bill. Those move to servers, and the managed services stay.
It does not fit when the parts talk to each other so often that traffic between providers would cost more than the saving.
Move everything.
It fits when the application needs servers, networks, storage and a database you are ready to run yourself, or to have run for you.
It does not fit when your users are far from the provider’s locations, or when a client contract asks for an attestation the provider does not hold.
Say your AWS bill keeps growing. What the audit would show
Say you run a SaaS product on AWS: application servers, a managed database and a file store your customers download from. The audit would list each service and its cost, then price the same load at a European provider. Outgoing traffic would be one of the first lines to check. Hetzner’s cloud servers in the EU include at least 20 TB of traffic a month, and AWS in Frankfurt lists data sent to the internet at $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB (both checked on 20 October 2026). The report would say whether the move pays for itself, and when.
How it runs. Audit, move, monthly care
The free 30-minute consultation.
You tell us where the application runs and what it uses. We tell you the order of magnitude and whether an audit is worth doing.
The paid audit.
It ends in the written report. The report is yours, whoever does the move.
The move, as a separate project.
The new servers are built from code while the application keeps running where it is. The data is copied and kept in sync, then DNS is switched in a short planned window.
Monthly administration.
Updates, monitoring, backups and security on the new servers. What we look after is agreed after the audit.
Who this suits. Companies with a large cloud bill
Companies in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada whose application runs on AWS or Google Cloud, with a bill made mostly of servers, storage and traffic. Companies that want their data at a provider headquartered in the European Union.
Proof. Our own servers, built from code
asoft-desk
Our own product runs on Hetzner Cloud, in Germany. So do our GitLab, our internal automation and our monitoring. We create every server with Terraform and configure it with Ansible, so a server can be rebuilt from code with the same settings. Read Hetzner vs AWS →
Today we also run a client’s application on Hetzner Cloud. The list of providers we use is public on our subprocessors page.
When a cloud exit is wrong. Four cases
The application depends on managed services.
Rebuilding a managed database, queues or serverless functions yourself has a cost, and it can be higher than the saving.
Your users are far away.
Hetzner Cloud runs in Germany, Finland, the USA and Singapore. Users elsewhere get lower latency from a provider with a region close to them.
An auditor asks for a specific attestation.
Hetzner names ISO/IEC 27001 certification for its German and Finnish data center parks. If a contract asks for something else, check the provider’s list first.
You already live inside AWS.
Startup credits, or developers who know AWS well, can outweigh the price difference. Moving costs work, and the saving has to pay for it.
Questions. Short answers
What is a cloud exit?
A cloud exit moves an application from a large cloud provider, such as AWS or Google Cloud, to servers the company rents directly, bare-metal or cloud. The same move is called cloud repatriation.
How much can a cloud exit save?
It depends on what the application uses. For plain servers in Germany, Hetzner Cloud lists about half of what AWS lists in Frankfurt, on list prices checked on 20 October 2026. Managed services narrow that difference. The audit gives the figure for your application.
What is the difference between bare metal and cloud servers?
A bare-metal server is a physical machine rented whole. A cloud server is a virtual machine on shared hardware. Steady load suits bare metal, load that changes suits cloud servers, and many setups use both.
Can we move from AWS without downtime?
Usually with a short planned window. The new servers are built while the application keeps running on AWS. The data is copied and kept in sync, then DNS is switched. How short the window is depends on the database and on how much data changes during the move.
Who manages the servers after the move?
You, or the company you work with. The provider runs the hardware, the network and the data center. Updates, monitoring, backups and security on the servers are the customer’s job, and we can take them over on a monthly basis.
How much does the cloud exit audit cost?
We do not publish prices. The audit is paid work at a fixed price, which depends on how many services the application uses. The cost is agreed after the consultation, in the written proposal.
Does our data stay in the European Union?
It can. Hetzner Online GmbH is headquartered in Germany and runs data centers in Germany and Finland. Where the data sits is decided in the audit and written in the report.
Who we are. A software company in Bucharest
Amazing Soft SRL is a software company in Bucharest, Romania, founded in 2016. We work remotely with companies in the UK, the EU, the US and Canada, in English. As a Hetzner customer, we receive nothing from Hetzner for recommending it. Our data processing agreement is published on our legal page. The price is set after the free 30-minute consultation, in the written proposal with a fixed price.
Tell us where your application runs. We price the alternative
In the free 30-minute consultation we tell you the order of magnitude and whether the audit is worth doing. We reply on the channel you wrote on.