Egen Cuts Sifter's Infrastructure Costs by Over 30%
Learn how Sifter, an online grocery platform, reduced infrastructure costs by over 30%, allowing the startup to focus on growth and profitability.
In the bustling world of online shopping, two innovative brothers, Andrew and Thomas Parkinson, found great success with their pioneering venture, Peapod.
Then, armed with the valuable lessons and experience they gained from their first success, they set out to transform the retail world yet again.
So Sifter was born – an online platform designed to nutrition seamless and tailored to each customer's unique dietary and nutritional needs.
But Sifter's journey was not without its challenges. Like any budding startup, they faced the task of evolving their business model to secure a foothold in the industry.
Sifter soon found its niche in B2B sales, offering "Nutrition as a Service" through its cutting-edge API. To attract and retain clients, Sifter needed to adhere to strict security and data handling standards, such as SOC 2 compliance.
The Challenge:
Sifter wanted to reduce costs while maintaining compliance and delivering exciting new features to win over customers.
The Egen team swiftly set to work on a three-pronged approach:
- Optimize logging architecture: By switching from self-hosted Elasticsearch and Azure Log Analytics Workspace to a managed Elasticsearch service, they cut $12,000 per year in costs while reducing operational overhead in a world where every dollar counts; this was a significant victory.
- Compute services optimization: Transitioning from Azure general-purpose VMs in a pay-as-you-go model to a 1-year reservation saved 50% on VM costs. Furthermore, they switched to memory-optimized VMs, extending the reservation to three years without additional cost and scoring an extra 66% in savings.
- Trim excess resources: By removing stale storage accounts, disks, and ACR images from intermediate environments, the team reduced overall utilization.
Sifter's infrastructure costs fell by over 30%, allowing the startup to focus on growth and profitability. The company's CTO, Tim Franklin, acknowledged the Egen team's tireless efforts. And Sifter's fortified financial stability was a testament to the magic of teamwork and determination.

Today, Sifter stands tall – making shopping for groceries a personalized, enjoyable experience for people everywhere. And, with Egen's partnership, their future looks brighter than ever.
