A review is only as good as its questions
The AWS Well-Architected Framework has six pillars. Most teams have heard of it. Far fewer have actually run a workload through it with someone who knows where the bodies are buried. The framework is a set of questions; the value is in asking the uncomfortable ones.
Here is the shape of the review we run, pillar by pillar, with the questions that tend to surface real findings. You can use this to self-assess before you ever talk to us.
1. Security
The pillar that ends conversations. We look at IAM first: how much role bloat has accumulated, who can do what, and whether least privilege is real or aspirational. Then secrets handling, encryption at rest and in transit, and the blast radius of a compromised credential. The most common finding is an over-permissioned role nobody has revisited since the workload launched.
2. Reliability
What happens when something fails? We look at how the system handles a dependency going down, whether recovery is automated or a 2am page, and whether the backups have ever actually been restored. A backup you have never tested is a hope, not a recovery plan.
3. Cost Optimization
Where the dollar figures come out. Right-sizing, commitment discounts (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances), orphaned resources, and storage that should have aged into a cheaper tier months ago. Most accounts we look at have meaningful savings hiding in plain sight.
4. Performance Efficiency
Are you using the right resources for the workload, or the ones you picked a year ago and never revisited? We look at compute choices, data access patterns, and the places where a different service would do the same job faster and cheaper.
5. Operational Excellence
Can you deploy with confidence and see what is happening in production? We look at infrastructure as code, deployment process, and observability. If a deploy is a manual, white-knuckle event, that is a finding.
6. Sustainability
The newest pillar. Right-sizing and efficient resource use are usually good for the carbon footprint and the bill at the same time, which makes this the easiest pillar to act on.
What you get
The review produces written findings aligned to the framework, a prioritized action plan with effort estimates, and a walkthrough session. Not a 90-page PDF nobody reads - a ranked list of what to fix, in what order, and why.
We scope it to what matters to you. A focused review on one or two pillars and a single workload starts at $1,000. A full six-pillar review runs higher; a multi-account, multi-workout engagement with a facilitated session is at the top of the range, up to $5,000.
A common pairing: a $1,000 Cloud Bill Audit to find the savings first, then a Well-Architected Review to harden what remains. Save money, then make what is left solid.
If you are heading into a security review, a scale milestone, or just want an ex-AWS Solutions Architect's eyes on your workload, book a call.