Just had a scary call with a vendor 😅. I'm setting up an ELT pipeline (Airbyte → BigQuery) and was comparing BI tools. One seemed perfect, but their "Enterprise" plan had a **$50k annual minimum spend commitment**.
My naive thought: "We'll just use it and pay for what we need!" But what if our usage drops? Or we switch to another tool mid-year? Still owe the full amount.
This feels like a hidden trap, especially for startups. It locks you in.
Has anyone else hit this? Are there common pitfalls I should look for in these contracts? Like:
- Minimums based on "seats" vs. "query volume"
- Automatic renewal clauses
- How they define a "monthly active user"
I'm now paranoid about reading the fine print on everything... BigQuery, dbt Cloud, even orchestration tools. Any advice is welcome!