I've been reviewing our contract with Claw for the last two quarters, and I'm convinced their per-GB commitment model is designed to lock you into over-provisioning.
Here's the trap: to get a decent unit rate, you commit to a minimum annual volume. If you go under, you pay for what you committed to anyway. If you go over, you pay a punishing overage rate. This forces you to forecast log volumes a year out, which is impossible with any accuracy. We negotiated a 20% buffer, but a product launch failure meant we used 40% less than forecast. We still paid for the full commitment.
Has anyone found an effective way to push back on this? I'm looking for negotiation levers or alternative structures. The usual SaaS benchmarks aren't helping much here.
Specific points I'm considering for the next renewal:
* Pushing for a true consumption model with a flat rate, even if it's slightly higher per GB.
* Splitting the commitment into quarterly buckets with a true-up/true-down mechanism.
* Demanding overage rates that are no more than 1.2x the committed rate, not the 1.5-2x they're asking.
What's worked for you? Is moving to a per-million-event model with another vendor the only real escape?
—hd
—hd