Get cloud and vendor spend back in line with what the system needs — without switching what still fits.
(One app I owned went from around $6k a month to around $2k.)
For funded, growth-stage B2B SaaS. The work is the review, the build-vs-buy call, and the migration.
The scored assessment is not on this page yet. Request the vendor cost assessment and I will send the three questions.
Placeholder. These three lines are empty on purpose. A real quote replaces a line. Nothing here is a testimonial.
Quote. Name, role. One concrete result, in their words.
Quote. Name, role. One concrete result, in their words.
Quote. Name, role. One concrete result, in their words.
Done from the inside, twice: at two SaaS companies where I owned the bill.
- Transactional emailMailgun → SendGrid → Postmark
- SearchAlgolia → in-house build on DynamoDB, because the use case fit
- CloudGoogle Cloud → AWS, including complex systems
All three migrations done hands-on, not just recommended.
Where the money usually goes
Ingestion nobody queries
Logging and monitoring bills grow quietly, and part of the cost doesn't even land on the monitoring vendor's invoice. It shows up on your AWS bill instead.
Contracts that renew themselves
Committed plans get signed once and auto-renew. Nobody checks them against actual usage, and vendors are rarely put in competition.
A pricing unit that no longer fits your business
When the business model changes, the vendor decisions from before usually don't get revisited. A vendor billed per peak capacity instead of per transaction can turn into the most expensive line on the bill.
How it works
Work out what the system actually needs.
Before anyone talks price, we look at what your architecture really requires. That number often matters more than any discount.
Review the vendor and decide.
Keep, renegotiate on better-informed requirements, switch, or build. A build-vs-buy call is arithmetic, not ideology.
Migrate, hands-on.
If switching or building wins, I do the technical migration with your team.
Engagements start with a short efficiency audit. Larger work is scoped from what the audit finds.
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About
Hi, I'm Christian Gambardella.
Since 2005. About 45 client relationships, building software. If you already know me from a product build, you are in the right place. The cost work on this page is the same job, narrowed: decide what the system needs, then make the vendor match it.
Twice from the inside. That work was at two SaaS companies I was part of, including a pay-per-view live-event platform I co-founded. I did the requirements and solution planning that our enterprise agreements with Ably, AWS, Mailgun and Stripe were based on, and I ran the vendor migrations myself.
Around $6k a month to around $2k. One Rails app, inside a company I was part of: custom AWS to Kubernetes on Google. The figures are from memory, so they stay "around". No company name on this page.
Today I also work in engineering at a large European e-commerce platform, using Datadog daily for monitoring, alerting, runbooks and on-call.
I've paid these bills myself. What gets cut is spend the system no longer needs. What still fits stays.
Connect on LinkedInFree: The Vendor Cost Review
Three checks, about ten minutes. One for each place the bill usually pulls away from the system.
- Ingestion nobody queries, including logging and monitoring.
- A contract that renews itself.
- A pricing unit that no longer fits.
You run them yourself, in Cost Explorer and on the vendor invoice. No access to your accounts needed.
If you want, send me what you find, and I'll tell you which one I'd tackle first.
Email me for the checklistPlaceholder. A short quote under the review goes here once a real one exists. This line is not a testimonial.
FAQ
- Who have you done this for?
- Honestly: twice from the inside, at two companies I was part of, not yet as an outside engagement. That's why the first step is free.
- What does it cost?
- It depends on what the audit finds and how much of the work you want me to do. The checklist is free. Everything else we scope together on a short call.
- Do you need access to our accounts?
- Not for the checklist. For an audit, read-only billing and usage data is usually enough.
- Will this force a switch?
- No. The review comes first: keep, renegotiate, switch, or build. A switch happens only when the numbers say it should.