✓ Storage cost down 60% ($4.1k → $1.6k/month)
✓ Asset delivery 3× faster (p95 900ms → 280ms)
✓ Archival fully automated with lifecycle rules
Before → after
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly storage cost | $4,100 | $1,640 |
| Asset delivery (p95) | 900ms | 280ms |
| Archival | Manual | Automated |
A media company’s asset library was growing fast and costing a fortune. Everything lived in one hot storage tier, delivery was slow, and archiving was a manual chore nobody did.
The challenge
- All assets in expensive hot storage, including years-old files.
- Slow asset delivery with no CDN, hurting the reading experience.
- Manual archival that never actually happened.
- No way to serve private assets securely.
What we built
- Lifecycle rules moved older assets to cold storage automatically, cutting cost dramatically.
- CDN put a content delivery network in front of hot assets for fast global delivery.
- Signed URLs served private assets securely with time-limited links.
- Upload pipeline wired Cloud Functions to process and organize assets on upload.
- Monitoring added usage and cost dashboards so storage spend stays visible.
The results
Storage cost fell 60%, from $4,100 to $1,640 a month, while asset delivery got 3× faster (p95 900ms to 280ms). Archival now happens automatically, and the library scales without a matching cost curve.
The takeaway
Storage cost is mostly a lifecycle problem. The right tiers, a CDN, and automation turn a growing library from a liability into a non-issue.
Stack Cloud StorageCDNLifecycle rulesSigned URLsCloud Functions
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Storage costs dropped 60% and the site got faster at the same time. It paid for itself immediately.