Cloud Utility Pricing
A smarter, more efficient way to manage discovery hosting. Pay by the minute, not by the month.
Ask Questions > Get Answers > Save on Hosting
Reinventing the Economics of Discovery Hosting
Traditional vendors charge like landlords—monthly rent whether you use the space or not. But what if hosting worked more like a utility?
Alchemy’s Cloud Utility Pricing transforms discovery economics by letting you pay only for what you actually use. When your site is active, you pay the full rate. When it’s not, you pay about 30% of that rate while keeping your data secure and accessible. With a single click, you can power your site down and reduce costs dramatically—all without sacrificing instant access when you need it again.
Why It’s a Breakthrough
Most discovery sites are active only a fraction of the time. Yet traditional vendors bill for every hour, every month. For organizations managing dozens of matters at different stages, that’s a lot of wasted budget.
Cloud Utility Pricing gives you complete control and visibility over your hosting costs. Align your spending with your actual usage while keeping every matter ready to reactivate in minutes.
How Cloud Utility Pricing Works
Turn sites on and off
It takes just seconds to power off your site when you’re finished with work, and just minutes to power it back up when you need it.
Schedule operating hours
Schedule site hours to match your team’s hours, saving on nights, weekends, holidays and longer inactive periods.
Use the Site Energy Saver
Use Alchemy’s Site Energy Saver to automatically turn off sites after a set period of inactivity (e.g., 30 or 60 minutes)
It Just Makes Sense!
When you have 30, even 50 investigations all at different stages of life, those are massive costs. Legal and compliance departments are viewed as cost centers, and we need to be doing what we can to lower costs. Cloud Utility Pricing makes sense.
Managing Site Operations
Turn off your site with a simple click or set a schedule for site operations. During off hours, have our Site Energy Saver shut it down automatically if the site is idle.
Turn on the site by entering a simple passcode. Go get a cup of coffee (or tea) while the site servers rebuild. Then log in as usual and get to work.
Real Results: $395,000 in Hosting Savings
A fintech client hosting a 5 TB site under traditional pricing paid $35,000 per month—even when their case was dormant. When the matter paused for a year, those unused months added up to $420,000 in waste.
After moving to Cloud Utility Pricing, they powered the site down and paid only the offline rate. Total cost during the dormant period: about $60,000.
Total savings: nearly $400,000.
When the investigation resumed, the site powered up in minutes—no lost data, no disruption.
How often do I use the Site?
While complex investigations and litigation matters can continue for years, few need their discovery sites running 24/7. In fact, many sites are in active use for less than 10% of available hours over the life of a matter.
Let’s break down the math:
- An average month has 730 hours
- Working 10 hours per day, 5 days per week = 200 hours
- That’s just 27% of total monthly hours
- Actual site use is often far less
Even during intense review periods, legal teams rarely need constant access. Most discovery work happens in focused periods, with long stretches of inactivity between sessions. Why pay for those idle hours?
The logic is compelling–if your team isn’t actively reviewing documents at 3am (or on weekends), why pay full hosting costs for those hours? Cloud Utility Pricing aligns your costs with your actual usage patterns.
Explore the Savings
Reduce hosting costs by controlling when your sites are in use:
Power Up / Power Down: Run your site during work hours, shut it off when done.
Schedule Operations: Automate site hours and reduce costs during downtime.
Weekend & Holiday Downtime: Plan offline periods for additional savings.
Dormant Phases: Keep inactive matters offline until needed—reactivate instantly.
Site Energy Saver: Let automation manage idle time for maximum efficiency.
For teams managing multiple matters, these savings compound quickly.
Save Money and Go Green!
Turning sites off when not in use doesn’t just save money—it saves energy. Cloud Utility Pricing is the first green computing initiative for investigations and ediscovery, helping organizations meet sustainability and ESG goals while lowering costs.
Schedule predictable downtime or let our automated Site Energy Saver handle it for you.
All Thanks to Single-Tenant Architecture
Unlike multi-tenant systems that must run 24/7 for all clients, Alchemy’s single-tenant design gives each organization its own private, dedicated environment. That means:
Stronger security and data isolation
Full control over uptime and costs
Freedom to power down whenever you choose
Other vendors can’t do this because shared infrastructure can’t be shut off—but we can. And we pass the savings directly to you.
Still Skeptical?
Read Joe Patrice’s article in Above The Law to learn why “Lawyers Waste A Ton of Money On Data Storage And Discovery.” and how Cloud Utility Pricing is changing the game.
Want to see how much you could save? Contact us for a personalized cost analysis.
Once you can marry a single-tenant architecture with speed that can bring the system back up on a dime, there’s an opportunity for a product that toggles on and off. Turn it off at night, turn it back on in the morning. Shut down on the weekends. Set it up to automatically shut off after a period of disuse.