Moving your infrastructure to the cloud is one of the most consequential IT decisions a business can make — and picking the wrong partner can cost you months of downtime, budget overruns, and data headaches. The right cloud migration services provider makes the difference between a smooth cutover and a chaotic scramble. Here's what to actually evaluate before you sign anything.
Start With the Type of Migration They Specialize In
Not all cloud migrations are the same, and not all providers are equally skilled across every approach. The main migration strategies — often called the "6 Rs" — include rehosting (lift-and-shift), replatforming, refactoring, repurchasing, retiring, and retaining. A provider who specializes in lift-and-shift for mid-market companies may be completely out of their depth if you need to refactor a legacy monolith into microservices.
Ask upfront:
- Do they have case studies for your specific migration type?
- Have they worked in your industry (healthcare, finance, retail all have compliance nuances)?
- Do they support multi-cloud or hybrid environments, or only single-platform deployments?
Evaluate Their Certifications — But Don't Stop There
AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure all offer partner certification tiers. A provider carrying an AWS Advanced Partner or Microsoft Azure Expert MSP designation has met documented technical and operational benchmarks. That's a meaningful signal.
But certifications don't tell the whole story. A certified provider with five engineers and no dedicated project managers will struggle with a complex enterprise migration. Ask to see the actual team that would work on your project — not just the company's aggregate credentials.
Demand a Structured Discovery and Assessment Phase
Any reputable cloud migration services provider should begin with a detailed environment assessment before proposing a timeline or price. This phase typically takes one to three weeks and should produce:
- A full inventory of your current infrastructure (servers, apps, databases, dependencies)
- An application dependency map showing what talks to what
- A workload prioritization plan (which systems migrate first, which stay on-prem longest)
- A preliminary cost model for both migration and ongoing cloud spend
If a provider skips this phase and quotes you a flat price in the first conversation, treat that as a red flag. Real migrations surface surprises — a proper assessment minimizes them.
Understand the Pricing Models
Cloud migration pricing varies widely depending on scope, complexity, and provider model. Common structures include:
- Fixed-fee project pricing — works well for smaller, well-scoped migrations (typically $15,000–$80,000 for SMBs)
- Time and materials — more flexible, better for complex or evolving projects, but requires tight change-order controls
- Managed service retainer — covers post-migration management, monitoring, and optimization on a monthly basis (commonly $2,000–$15,000/month depending on environment size)
Get clarity on what's included after go-live. Many providers charge separately for hypercare support, the first 30–90 days post-migration when issues are most likely to surface.
Check Their Security and Compliance Capabilities
Migration is a high-risk window for security gaps. Data in transit, misconfigured IAM roles, and improperly secured storage buckets are common culprits. A qualified provider should demonstrate:
- Experience with your compliance framework (HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, GDPR, etc.)
- A defined process for secrets management and access control during the migration window
- Encryption standards for data at rest and in transit
- Post-migration security review as part of the standard engagement
If you operate under regulatory requirements, ask specifically how they handle data residency and audit logging in the target environment.
Look for Post-Migration Support, Not Just a Cutover Date
The go-live date is not the finish line. Cloud environments require ongoing tuning — right-sizing instances, optimizing reserved capacity, adjusting autoscaling policies, and monitoring cost anomalies. A provider who disappears after the cutover leaves you exposed.
Ask whether they offer:
- FinOps or cloud cost optimization services
- 24/7 monitoring and incident response
- Quarterly business reviews to track performance against benchmarks
- Clear escalation paths and documented SLAs
Use a Comparison Tool to Shortlist Faster
Vetting providers on your own is time-consuming, and it's easy to miss important differentiators buried in sales decks. Mercoly lets you compare and find trusted Cloud Migration & Management providers in one place, so you can filter by specialization, platform, and business size before you ever get on a discovery call.
Red Flags to Watch For
Before committing, watch out for:
- No references from companies your size or in your industry
- Vague statements about their "proprietary methodology" with no concrete deliverables
- Contracts that lock you in without performance milestones
- No mention of rollback planning or migration testing environments
The right provider will welcome hard questions. One who hedges or deflects should make you pause.
Start your search with a clear checklist in hand — the right cloud migration partner is out there, and a little due diligence upfront saves enormous pain on the other side.