COGS includes all expenses directly associated with delivering the product or service. For a tech company, this might include:
1. **Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Costs** – Fees paid to providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud for hosting the platform or application.
2. **Software Licensing** – Costs for any third-party software essential to the core product or service that scales with usage or customers.
3. **Customer Support and Success (if directly tied to the product)** – Salaries or costs of staff providing support for paid customers (not general customer service).
4. **Data Storage** – Fees for storing data used by the product, if significant and directly tied to usage.
5. **Transaction Fees** – Costs like credit card processing fees, if the company is processing transactions directly.
6. **Salaries and Benefits for Production Teams** – Typically includes costs for employees directly working on the production of the product, such as DevOps, quality assurance, and sometimes engineering.