Unlimited DevOps requests from $2,999/month
No recruiting · No overhead · No contracts · Cancel anytime
See why teams are switching from hiring to subscribing
$300K+/year
Pros
Cons
Best for: Companies with constant, heavy DevOps needs and big budgets
From $2,999/mo
Pros
Cons
Best for: Startups, growing companies, and anyone who wants DevOps done right without the full-time cost
$150-300/hour
Pros
Cons
Best for: One-off tasks with clear specs
No hidden fees. No surprises. Cancel anytime.
Perfect for startups and small teams
For large organizations
Hiring is not wrong, it is just rarely the fastest or cheapest way to get DevOps done. A subscription wins in the situations most teams actually find themselves in.
DevOps work is bursty by nature. You need heavy lifting during a cloud migration, a launch, or a compliance push, then far less once the pipelines are stable. A full-time engineer costs the same $20,000 to $25,000 a month whether the queue is full or empty, so you end up paying premium salary for idle time. A subscription matches spend to demand: you queue as much as you need when it is busy and pause when it is quiet, with unused days carried over.
DevOps-as-a-Service also beats hiring on breadth. One person cannot be an expert in AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, observability, and security all at once, yet real infrastructure needs all of them. With a service you tap a team that covers the whole stack, so a Kubernetes autoscaling problem and an IAM hardening task get handled by the right specialist instead of one overstretched generalist. If you want that model as a deeper ongoing engagement, our DevOps as a Service and managed DevOps services build on the same foundation.
Finally, it beats hiring on speed and risk. There is no 3 to 6 month recruiting cycle, no ramp-up, and no single point of failure if someone quits. For a fuller framework on this decision, read our guide on DevOps for startups: build vs buy.
If several of these describe your team, a subscription or a fractional engineer will serve you better than a $300K full-time hire right now.
If you cannot keep a full-time engineer busy every week, you are paying six figures for idle time. Match the spend to the actual workload instead.
Recruiting a senior DevOps engineer takes 3 to 6 months. If a launch or migration cannot wait that long, a subscription starts delivering in about 48 hours.
AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Terraform, monitoring, and security are a lot to ask of one hire. A team covers all of them without gaps.
If one engineer leaves, their knowledge of your infrastructure leaves too. A service keeps documented context across a team.
Fully loaded, a senior hire runs $250K to $300K annually. At $2,999 to $4,999 a month you get senior work without betting the runway.
Somewhere between freelancers and a full-time salary sits the option most growing teams actually want. Explore a fractional DevOps engineer, weigh the numbers in fractional DevOps vs a full-time hire, or compare plans on our pricing page.
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