AWS Well-Architected Framework Review: Free evaluation and optimization

An AWS Well-Architected Review is a structured check of a workload against the AWS Well-Architected Framework. We walk through six pillars—operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, cost, and sustainability—inside the Well-Architected Tool. You get a clear list of High-Risk Issues (HRI), quick wins, and a step-by-step plan to fix gaps without breaking what already works.

Cloud setups drift over time. A review shows where risks and waste hide before they turn into incidents or big bills. You’ll get practical fixes across security, reliability, and spend, plus a simple order of work. Many teams uncover easy savings and remove noisy alerts. It’s a fast way to regain confidence in a growing AWS footprint.

You receive a workload report from the Well-Architected Tool, a prioritized list of HRIs, and a 30/60/90-day remediation plan. We include links and code notes where helpful, cost and performance tips, and owners for each task. The goal is simple: a clear path your team can execute without guesswork or long detours.

The Well-Architected Review process is designed to be fast and collaborative. First, Cloudvisor will work with you to identify a specific workload or application in your AWS environment to review (usually one that is critical or representative of your infrastructure). We’ll schedule a discovery meeting (which can be remote) where an AWS-certified solutions architect leads a structured discussion about your architecture, using the AWS Well-Architected Tool and question framework.

Typically, we only need about 1–4 hours of your team’s time for the review meeting, depending on the size and complexity of the workload. During this session, we’ll ask questions and perhaps look at your AWS console read-outs – it’s an interactive whiteboard-style conversation, not an intrusive audit. After gathering information, our team analyzes the findings against the 6 pillar best practices. Within a few days (up to about two weeks at most for very complex environments), we deliver a report detailing any high-risk issues and improvement recommendations.

In short, the effort from your side is a brief meeting, and then we handle the analysis and deliver results swiftly.

An AWS Well-Architected Review helps you align your cloud architecture with AWS best practices, resulting in tangible benefits for your business. Cost savings is a major benefit – the review often uncovers unused resources or misconfigured services that drive up cloud bills, so you can eliminate waste. It also boosts performance and reliability, by identifying bottlenecks or single points of failure and recommending optimizations (for example, improving autoscaling or fault tolerance). Security gets stronger too: AWS-certified reviewers will flag security gaps (like missing encryption or overly permissive access) and guide you on how to fix them. Overall, you get a prioritized action plan to improve your infrastructure’s operational excellence, security, reliability, performance, and cost efficiency. Most organizations find the improvements extremely valuable – over 80% of reviews surface critical issues to address, which once fixed lead to more stable, efficient systems. For you, this means better application uptime, happier customers, and peace of mind that your AWS environment follows proven best practices.

It costs nothing when you work with an authorized AWS partner like Cloudvisor. AWS sponsors the Well-Architected Review program, making the entire process free of charge for customers. There’s no catch or hidden fee; the goal is to help you improve your cloud deployments. In fact, AWS is so invested in this process that if you decide to implement the recommended improvements, you can qualify for up to $5,000 in AWS service credits to offset the costs of those fixes. This incentive (often called the AWS remediation credit) is AWS’s way of encouraging businesses to close any high-risk gaps found during the review. In summary, the review itself is 100% free, and it may even pay you back in credits once you take action on the results.

An HRI is a gap that could cause an outage, security incident, data loss, or needless cost. Examples include broad IAM permissions, missing backups, weak logging, or no multi-AZ plan. We rank each HRI by impact and effort, then map it to a fix. Clearing HRIs is the fastest way to reduce risk and calm on-call.

We cover all six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability. The mix depends on your goals. A payments app may lean on security and reliability; a data platform may care more about performance and spend. We keep the session practical and tie every finding to a clear action.

Yes. If your workload is serverless, SaaS, or machine learning-heavy, we include the matching lens. Lenses add domain-specific checks that catch issues general guidance can miss, such as event retries, tenant isolation, model drift, or feature store design. You’ll see lens findings alongside standard pillar items in the same simple action plan.

Reader-level access to the AWS account is usually enough, along with architecture diagrams and a quick system overview. We run the questions in the Well-Architected Tool and review logs, metrics, and alerts where needed. No risky changes happen during the review. Any fixes are planned and executed later with your team’s approval.

After the review, you will receive a detailed Well-Architected Review report summarizing our findings. This report includes a list of any high-risk issues (HRIs) or deviations from best practices that were identified, organized by priority. We’ll walk you through specific recommendations for each issue – for example, enabling multi-AZ for a database, adjusting IAM policies, resizing or right-sizing instances, improving monitoring, etc.

You’ll essentially have a clear roadmap of what to fix and how to fix it. At that point, it’s up to you how to proceed. You can take the plan and have your team implement the changes, or you can engage Cloudvisor to assist with remediation. There’s no obligation to use additional services, but most teams choose to fix at least the critical items. If you do address at least 25% of the high-risk issues within 30 days, AWS will award you $5,000 in AWS credits as a thank-you for improving your architecture.

These credits can be applied to your AWS bill. Finally, once improvements are made, we can even run a follow-up to validate the fixes. Many companies make the Well-Architected Review an annual or bi-annual practice to continuously improve their cloud environment.

Plan on a full review every 6–12 months, or sooner after big changes like new regions, major releases, traffic spikes, or a security event. Smaller quarterly check-ins help keep drift in check: verify backups, access, cost coverage, and incident learnings. This rhythm catches issues early, keeps standards current, and prevents surprises from piling up.

Your review is led by certified AWS architects from Cloudvisor, senior experts who run these sessions every week. Cloudvisor has a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with AWS, so we follow current guidance and know how funding and follow-up work. Expect people who can read your setup quickly, ask the right questions, and turn findings into a clear, do-able action plan.

No – the review process is non-invasive and will not cause any downtime or service interruptions. A Well-Architected Review is essentially an assessment and discussion. We don’t make any changes to your live environment during the review itself. Instead, our experts examine configurations, ask questions, and use read-only tools to gather data. It’s important to know this is not a formal audit or compliance check; think of it as a cloud architecture consultation.

The atmosphere is collaborative – we’re here to help, not to find fault. In fact, AWS emphasizes that a Well-Architected Review is a “discussion, not an audit,” focused on identifying improvements.

Your systems continue running as normal throughout. After the review, you choose which improvements to implement and when – any changes are done on your schedule. Many clients appreciate that the WAR process gives valuable insights without any risk to their production uptime.

AWS provides the Well-Architected Tool in the AWS console, which means you can attempt a self-guided review of your workloads. The framework is designed to be accessible to customers directly. However, working with a certified AWS partner is highly recommended for the best results. The AWS Well-Architected Framework is vast – it involves dozens of questions and checks. For busy teams, it can be challenging to interpret the results and know exactly how to apply the recommendations.

We have conducted many reviews and can streamline the process, asking the right questions and drilling into areas that matter most for startups and tech teams. We bring expert knowledge to help quickly identify issues and recommend practical fixes, saving you time and effort.

Additionally, only reviews conducted by authorized AWS partners qualify for the $5k credit incentive. In short, while you can use AWS’s tool on your own, teaming up with a partner ensures you get maximum value with minimal hassle – it’s a faster, more thorough path to an optimized cloud.