I've been trying to wrap my head around the real cost of CI/CD for my small team. We're using a managed service, and the monthly invoices were starting to add up with our increased build frequency.
While digging into the pricing pages, I noticed something obvious that I'd totally missed: most of the big providers (like GitLab CI, CircleCI, etc.) offer significant discounts if you commit to a yearly spend upfront instead of paying month-to-month. We're talking 20-30% sometimes. It's like a SaaS contract, but just for your CI minutes.
Has anyone here actually switched to an annual commitment? Did the math work out for you, or did you get burned by a change in build volume? I'm curious if it's a good move for a team that's growing but still has somewhat predictable usage.