Preface – This post is part of the Google Cloud Computing series.

Introduction

By subscribing to Google Cloud, businesses can choose which Google Cloud services and features to use in a la carte fashion. Each service has its pricing structure, and many services are priced based on the service tier needed and usage. It’s crucial how Google Cloud services are priced and metered so that you can choose the services you want while still managing costs effectively. A subscription serves as a single billing unit for Google Cloud resources, used in Google Cloud for billing to a subscription. A Google Cloud subscription is linked to a single account, the one that was used to create the subscription and used for billing purposes. The resources can be provisioned within the subscription as instances of the many Google Cloud products and services.

What is the Google Cloud pricing model?

There are three main types of subscription available: Free tier, pay-as-you-go, and long-term plans

Pay-as-you-go pricing model

Pay-as-you-go on-demand pricing is offered by Google Cloud. This is best for people who just sometimes want to utilize the cloud because it offers you the freedom to add or delete as you see fit. But this adaptability and flexibility come at a price, making the pay-as-you-go model the most expensive choice per hour, depending on the service used.

Long-term plan

You can save more money with the pay-as-you-go approach if you have long-term cloud usage plans and are prepared to commit upfront for an extended time to your cloud execution. Google offers long-term price agreements in which you will get one or 3 year upfront commitments. When opposed to on-demand pricing, this option, Committed Use, offers significant savings—up to 70% on Compute Engine.

Free tier

Google Cloud offers the free tier option across a wide range of products if you are not yet ready to switch to a cloud service. This provides you with a set quantity of resources spread out over a predetermined time period, making it ideal for service trial purposes. Google also offers several free cloud services that are appropriate for many projects with little consumption.

Google Cloud pricing calculator

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator is a tool you can use to gain real-time cost estimates for your services. You can customize these estimates with personal configurations for greater accuracy and can access and modify the forecast through a central dashboard. To get started analyzing your Google Cloud Monitor charges, open Cost Management + Billing in the Google Cloud portal. Select Cost Management, then Cost analysis. Select your subscription or another scope. You might need additional access to cost management data. With Google Cloud, you don’t have to invest in new machines or infrastructure or replace aging servers. You also don’t need to make space for infrastructure and servers. Google Cloud offers flexible expenditure, which means: – You pay according to your needs. Visit here to use the calculator.

Google Cloud Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator

You can make a specific business case using the TCO Calculator to support moving to Google Cloud. You have the choice to alter any assumptions to ensure that the model appropriately represents your company. The result is a thorough report that illustrates how much money switching to Google Cloud can save you. The initial purchase value is added to direct, indirect, and other hidden costs in the TCO calculation methodology. After that, the value so determined is deducted from the asset’s anticipated residual or resale value. Visit here to know more.

How to do cost optimization in Google Cloud

The different ways to help in cost optimization in Google Cloud are:

1. Shut down non-using services.

2. Choose the perfect size of service needed.

3. Make sure extra instances for workloads.

4. Take advantage of the Google Cloud Hybrid Benefit

5. Configure autoscaling.

6. Set up budgets and allocate costs to teams and projects.

7. Choose the right Google compute service.

What is Google Cloud Support Plans?

Google Cloud offers four support plans that can provide you with technical support:

Basic

Available to all Google Cloud accounts, this is the only free plan and does not have any active support from Google Cloud; the user can create as many support tickets as necessary and has access to community forums, self-help materials, etc.

Developer

This plan provides active support from Google Cloud in the form of email access to support engineers during regular Business hours, making it best recommended for trial and non-production situations.

Standard

This plan, an upgrade to the developer plan, is most recommended for environments with production workloads. It offers help in the form of round-the-clock email and phone access to support engineers.

Professional Direct

This plan, which is required for business-critical environments, provides one-hour response times and 24/7 technical assistance in addition to operational support, training, and pro-active advice from a ProDirect delivery manager.

Visit here to learn more about the support plans.

Conclusion

With a combination of reliable infrastructure and distinctive value-added solutions like Spanner, Pub/Sub, and Global Load Balancing, Google Cloud has developed a strong offering. They have been able to learn from the successes and failures of AWS. Their goods are easily understood and work nicely together.