Cloud storage has become a basic utility for modern business — as essential as electricity and internet access. But unlike power or internet service, cloud storage comes with hidden costs that can explode your IT budget if you’re not prepared for them.

And the biggest culprit is something most organizations barely understand until it’s too late:

Egress Fees.

These “data transfer out” charges are applied every time you move data out of a cloud provider like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.

For companies storing:

• Backups

• Digital evidence

• Body-camera video

• Medical images

• Municipal data

• SaaS application logs

• File archives

…these hidden fees can become one of the largest unexpected IT expenses of the year.

---

What Are Egress Fees?

In simple terms:

Egress fees = the penalty for retrieving your own data.

Want to download a backup?
Upload files to another system?
Run analytics?
Move archives between cloud regions?

You pay for it — and often a lot.

AWS typically charges $0.09 per GB for standard data egress. That means:

• 10 TB of data transfer = $900

• 50 TB of data transfer = $4,500

• 200 TB of video or evidence = $18,000

Multiply this across a year, and the numbers get ugly fast.

---

Why Egress Fees Hit Public Safety & Municipalities the Hardest

Police services, especially those using body-worn cameras, generate massive volumes of high-definition video.

Municipalities produce:

• Traffic camera footage

• Utility infrastructure archives

• Public works files

• GIS datasets

• 311 system logs

Healthcare providers store large PACS images and backups. SMEs store security footage, application data, logs, and customer files.

All of these workloads involve frequent retrieval — which is where egress costs hurt the most.

---

The Trap: Cloud Providers Encourage Single-Vendor Lock-In

The big three cloud platforms use egress fees strategically:

• To keep your data inside their ecosystem

• To make it expensive to switch providers

• To push you into their proprietary services

• To discourage multi-cloud or hybrid environments

Once your data grows large enough, moving it becomes financially painful.

This is why many police services across North America avoid Axon for cloud storage — the costs escalate unpredictably.

---

The Solution: Zero-Egress Cloud Storage With Cloud Haven

Cloud Haven (powered by Wasabi) eliminates egress fees entirely:

$0 egress charges

Download or transfer as much as you want — no penalty.

S3-compatible

Works with any backup tool or application you already use.

Canadian data residency

Meets compliance needs for police, municipalities, and healthcare.

Predictable pricing

One low monthly rate — no surprises.

Ideal for video, evidence, and backups

Large datasets? No problem.

---

Conclusion

Egress fees are one of the biggest hidden costs in cloud storage — and most organizations discover them after the bill arrives.

If your business relies on:

• Backups

• Video

• Evidence

• SaaS tools

• Large files

…you need a pricing model built for real-world usage.

Cloud Haven is the simplest way to eliminate hidden fees and finally control your cloud budget.