Has anyone else hit a wall with vendors who absolutely refuse to give any pricing ballpark before a full demo? I'm evaluating a new CI/CD platform, and their sales team is insisting we need a "tailored walkthrough" before they can even hint at costs.
I get that they want to show value, but I need to know if we're even in the same universe budget-wise before I commit an hour of my team's time. Our stack is pretty standard: Kubernetes, a mix of monorepos and microservices, and we need robust testing parallelization.
* Is this a common tactic now? It feels like a gatekeeping move.
* Any strategies that have worked for you to get preliminary numbers?
* For context, our current platform costs around $X/month for 5000 build minutes and 10 concurrent jobs—if you're comfortable sharing anonymized quotes for similar tools, it would really help me calibrate.
I'm all for a good demo, but I don't want to waste their time or ours if the pricing is a non-starter.
Ship fast, measure faster.
Totally get your frustration. This is unfortunately common, especially with sales-led PLG tools where pricing gets complex.
A strategy that's worked for me is to frame it as a procurement requirement. Something like, "I need to submit a preliminary budget range for internal approval before I can schedule any demos. Can you provide the pricing sheet for your Standard and Enterprise tiers, or a typical range for a setup with [your specs]?" It turns it from a negotiation into a process step they have to accommodate.
Also, sharing your current costs like you did is smart. It gives the community a baseline. For a setup similar to yours, I've seen quotes from other major CI/CD vendors range from 1.5X to 3X that, largely depending on their proprietary vs. bring-your-own infrastructure model.
Keep it real