Three months ago, we made a pivotal decision to migrate our infrastructure from AWS to GCP. Thanks to our cloud agnostic engineering, it took us just two weeks and a single engineer to get it done.
This isn’t a post that pits hyperscalars against one another and compares their resilience and coverage and five 9s uptime. The truth is, for most key services, the three dominant players offer nearly identical capabilities.
Instead I want to show you why we made deliberate engineering choices to build a cloud agnostic stack, and why startups should invest in becoming cloud neutral from Day 1.
What made us migrate
If all major cloud providers offer more or less the same features, why migrate at all? Here’s the context — it might become relevant to you someday.
Before founding Komment, I was a Senior Prototyping Engineer at AWS, where I built rapid proof-of-concept solutions to demonstrate how AWS services could address complex challenges for customers and internal teams.
This gave me deep, hands-on experience with the AWS stack, making it the natural choice to start building Komment. On top of this, the $100,000 in credits that we were offered as part of AWS Activate made the decision a no-brainer.
But when those credits expired after a year, we were potentially looking at monthly bills in the five-figure range. For a startup focused on staying lean and frugal (cue, Amazon’s Leadership Principle), this was a problem.
Around this time, GCP approached us with an offer of $250,000 in cloud credits spread over two years. This extended runway would give us breathing room to focus on scaling our product without worrying about skyrocketing infrastructure costs.
The cost savings would also allow us to reallocate resources toward innovation and growth, instead of covering operational overhead. That gave us the necessary activation energy to make the switch.
The benefits of becoming cloud neutral
Reducing vendor lock-in helps businesses gain access to competitive pricing, adopt new technologies faster, and stay prepared for changes in the cloud provider landscape. Each of these benefits strengthens a team’s ability to adapt and thrive in a rapidly evolving market.
Here are some of the key benefits we’ve experienced firsthand through our cloud agnostic approach while building out Komment.
1. Leverage competitive pricing
Being easily able to move between clouds helps you negotiate better deals and avoid overspending. When you’re not tied to one vendor, you can shop around for cost-effective options and take advantage of promotional offers, just as we did with GCP’s credits.
2. Avoid doldrums in innovation
Vendor lock-in limits experimentation over time. If a rival launches a better product, a cloud-specific infrastructure can make exploring options costly or entirely infeasible. Cloud neutrality ensures you can adopt the latest technologies without being boxed into a proprietary ecosystem.
3. Shift workloads to best-value environments
Microsoft reportedly charges customers a 400% mark-up to run Windows Server on rival clouds, resulting in European businesses incurring €1 billion annually in fees and penalties. Cloud agnosticism gives you the freedom to choose providers without financial or operational constraints.
4. Cloud neutrality empowers your engineers
When your team isn’t bogged down by a specific vendor’s toolset, they are free to innovate and solve problems with the best available technologies. This autonomy fosters creativity, improves team morale, boosts talent retention, and leads to generally better engineering outcomes overall.
5. Maintain long-term independence
Decoupling your systems from specific vendors gives you the freedom to adopt new technologies, enter new markets, and scale efficiently without vendor-imposed restrictions. A cloud-agnostic stack enables hybrid models, on-prem workloads, or multi-cloud strategies as your business and customer needs evolve.
6. Build resilience against vendor risks
Cloud providers are not immune to service outages, pricing changes, or even policy shifts. A neutral, multi-cloud setup provides the ability to move workloads seamlessly between providers. This flexibility is a cornerstone of operational resilience.
7. Increase valuation and negotiation power
Cloud agnosticism can be a strategic bargaining chip during fundraising or acquisition talks. Andreessen Horowitz highlights how cloud expenses significantly impact company valuations by reducing margins. Demonstrating a portable, cost-optimized infrastructure signals engineering prowess, operational efficiency and future-proofing — making your startup more attractive to investors and acquirers.
10/10 would recommend
Our migration from AWS to GCP wasn’t about favoring one provider but about reaffirming a core belief that startups must retain at least some control over their infrastructure. This means having the flexibility to pivot between providers, minimize reliance on vendor-specific tools, and ensure that your systems remain adaptable to future needs.
It definitely paid off for us — instead of allocating 6-figures for cloud spend each year, we get to benefit from 2 more years of essentially free cloud resources.
For startups, the decisions you make early on define your trajectory. By investing in cloud-agnostic practices, you’re setting up your organization to adapt and thrive no matter how the tech landscape changes.
Think of cloud neutrality as a business enabler that ensures flexibility, cost control, and gives you the freedom to pursue what’s best for your business.
If you’re considering a similar migration or need guidance on implementing cloud-agnostic practices on your business, reach out to us at hello@komment.ai. We’ve run the gauntlet, learned the lessons, built out the tooling, and we’d love to help you do the same 💚