Pricing
Transparent, Predictable DevOps Retainer Pricing
StartCloudOps provides experienced Cloud and DevOps expertise on a flexible engagement model—giving you dedicated technical execution without full-time recruitment overhead.
Every infrastructure is different. Final pricing is based on infrastructure complexity, workload, and support requirements.
Essential CloudOps
Early-stage startups & growing SaaS platforms that need reliable, managed cloud foundations.
Core infrastructure setup, automated CI/CD pipelines, and proactive monitoring without hiring full-time.
- Up to 1 Cloud Account (AWS or GCP)
- Basic CI/CD Pipeline Automation (GitHub Actions / GitLab CI)
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) for core resources
- Proactive Monitoring & Alerting Setup (Prometheus / CloudWatch)
- Weekly automated database backups & snapshot checks
- Bi-weekly Cloud Cost & Resource Review
- Direct communication channel (Shared Slack / Discord)
Growth DevOps
Scaling SaaS companies & software teams with active release cycles and multi-service stacks.
Active DevOps management, Kubernetes container orchestration, automated canary releases, and cost optimization.
- Up to 3 Cloud Accounts / Environments (Dev, Staging, Prod)
- Advanced CI/CD with Automated Tests & Safe Rollouts
- Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) cluster management & Helm charts
- Infrastructure as Code with modular Terraform & state management
- Detailed APM dashboards & log aggregation (Datadog / Grafana)
- Monthly Cloud Cost Optimization & Right-Sizing Audit
- Security hardening (IAM least-privilege, KMS secrets, security audits)
- Shared Slack channel for direct developer collaboration
Dedicated CloudOps
Software agencies, multi-tenant enterprise platforms, and complex infrastructure environments.
Dedicated DevOps engineering, multi-cloud architectures, infrastructure migrations, and tailored workflows.
- Unlimited Cloud Accounts, VPCs & Multi-Region / Multi-Cloud Environments
- Dedicated DevOps engineer allocated directly to your workflows
- Custom CI/CD GitOps pipelines (ArgoCD / Flux) & microservices orchestration
- High-priority incident response with direct technical escalation
- Continuous FinOps cloud spend monitoring & automated spot optimization
- Security hardening & audit-ready infrastructure patterns
- Custom SLA, regular architecture syncs, and comprehensive runbooks
What's Included, and What's Not
Clear scope up front, so there are no surprises on your invoice or in your expectations.
Included in every plan
- Initial infrastructure audit and onboarding plan
- All work done in your own cloud accounts and repositories (you keep full ownership)
- Infrastructure changes documented, with runbooks for what we set up
- Monthly summary of work done, issues found and recommendations
- Month-to-month engagement with 30-day notice, no lock-in
Not included (billed or handled separately)
- Cloud provider bills (AWS, Azure, GCP, DigitalOcean) are paid by you directly
- Third-party tool licences (e.g. Datadog, paid monitoring or security tools)
- Application feature development or bug fixes in your product code
- Formal compliance audits and certification fees (e.g. SOC 2 auditor costs)
- 24/7 on-call cover, unless agreed separately on a Dedicated plan
Support hours & response times
| Plan | Support hours | First response |
|---|---|---|
| Essential CloudOps | Mon–Fri, business hours (IST) | Within 1 business day |
| Growth DevOps | Mon–Sat, extended hours (IST) | Within 4 business hours for urgent issues |
| Dedicated CloudOps | Agreed per engagement | Agreed per engagement, incl. optional on-call |
DevOps Cost Calculator
Full-time in-house hire vs. flexible retainer
Compare against a StartCloudOps retainer
- No recruiting or placement fees
- Terraform IaC & documented runbooks
- Monthly model, 30-day notice
* In-house benchmark assumes about one DevOps engineer per ~15 developers, at a realistic average CTC of ~₹60,000/mo (~₹7.2L/yr) in India or ~$4,500/mo globally per engineer, vs. a fractional retainer model. Developer time is valued at ~₹400/hr (~$35/hr), with about 3.5 hours of server work saved per developer each month.
Estimated annual saving
₹3,74,400
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about our engagement terms, onboarding, and support.
Hiring an in-house DevOps engineer requires significant monthly payroll (typically ₹55,000–₹80,000/mo or more), recruiting agency fees, and creates a single point of failure when they leave. StartCloudOps provides experienced Cloud and DevOps expertise on a flexible retainer model starting from ₹20,000/mo—giving you immediate, specialized execution at a fraction of full-time overhead.
Our pricing plans are starting baselines. Every infrastructure is different. Final pricing is based on infrastructure complexity, number of cloud accounts, container clusters, release frequency, and support requirements. We tailor our engagement to fit your exact operational stage.
Our typical onboarding takes 2 to 4 business days. We begin with a non-intrusive read-only security and architecture audit, map out your deployment pipelines, establish secure shared communication channels (Slack/Teams), and immediately identify quick-win reliability and cost fixes.
No. We offer flexible monthly retainer engagements with 30-day notice periods because we believe our reliability, speed, and practical execution will keep you partnering with us long term.
Yes. While AWS is our most common deployment target, we actively architect and manage workloads on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, and hybrid environments.