Guide

12 questions to ask before you sign a cloud migration proposal

Published October 31, 2026 · CloudTiebreak

A migration proposal gives you a number. These questions show you what is behind it. They work whether the proposal came from a cloud provider, a consultancy or your managed service provider, and a good proposal answers all of them in writing.

The cost estimate

1. Is this list price, or does it assume a commitment?

Most cloud estimates look best with a one- or three-year commitment, because committed prices are much lower than on-demand ones. That is fine if you are sure about the next three years. Ask for the on-demand number as well, and ask what happens to the commitment if you shut systems down or move them elsewhere.

2. Was the sizing based on what your servers have, or on what they use?

Servers are usually given more CPU and memory than they need. An estimate that copies the allocated size of every server will overstate the cloud cost; one that trims too hard will cause slowdowns. Ask whether real utilization data was used, for how long it was measured, and whether sizing followed peaks or averages.

3. What does the estimate leave out?

Compute and storage are the easy part. Check whether the monthly figure includes backups and snapshots, monitoring and logging, the provider’s support plan, network components such as load balancers, gateways and VPN links, security tooling, and data transferred out of the cloud. Missing lines are the most common reason real bills come in above the estimate.

4. How are your software licenses handled?

Operating system and database licenses can move the total more than the servers themselves. Ask which licenses are included in the cloud price, which ones you are expected to bring, and whether the proposal checked your current agreements. Licensing rules differ between providers and change over time, so ask which rules the estimate assumes.

5. What does staying put cost over the same period?

A proposal that only prices the cloud cannot tell you whether to move. Ask for a comparison with your realistic alternative, such as renewing your current platform or refreshing hardware, over the same number of years and with the same assumptions. Sometimes the honest answer is that staying is cheaper.

The migration itself

6. What is the one-time cost, and who pays it?

Moving costs money on its own: planning, migration labor, tools, testing and training. These are often presented separately from the monthly run cost, or left out. Ask for the one-time total and include it when you compare options.

7. How long will you pay for two environments?

During a migration, the old and the new environments run side by side. Ask how many months of overlap the plan assumes and whether that double cost is in the numbers.

8. What is in scope, and what is not?

Look for the systems that are excluded or marked “to be assessed”: legacy operating systems, applications with hard dependencies, appliances, anything with special licensing. Ask who decides what happens to them and what it will cost.

9. What happens if it runs late?

Ask whether the migration price is fixed or billed by the hour, what counts as a change request, and who absorbs the cost of delays. A plan of waves with dates is easier to hold someone to than a single end date.

After the move

10. Who runs it afterwards, and for how much?

Someone has to operate, patch, monitor and optimize the new environment. If that is a managed service, ask for the monthly fee and what it includes. If it is your team, ask what skills and tools they will need.

11. How hard is it to leave?

Check the exit costs before you enter: minimum spend or commitment terms, the cost of moving your data out, and how much of the design depends on services only one provider offers. You may never leave, but you negotiate better when you could.

Incentives

12. Is anyone being paid by the cloud provider for this deal?

Cloud providers commonly fund partners and offer credits to win migrations. That is not wrong, and the credits can be real savings for you. But you should know about it. Ask whether the partner receives anything from the provider, whether the credits expire or require a minimum spend, and how the proposal looks without them.

Copy-paste version

Send these to whoever wrote your proposal:

1. Is the estimate on-demand or committed? Please show both.
2. Was sizing based on measured utilization? For how long?
3. Which costs are not included in the monthly figure?
4. Which software licenses are included, and which must we bring?
5. How does this compare with staying on our current platform, over the same period?
6. What is the one-time migration cost?
7. How many months will we run both environments?
8. Which systems are out of scope or still to be assessed?
9. Is the migration price fixed? Who pays for delays?
10. Who operates the environment afterwards, and at what cost?
11. What would it cost us to leave?
12. Do you receive incentives from the cloud provider for this project? How does the proposal look without credits?