DevOps as a Service

Managed DevOps Services for SMBs and Startups

Your DevOps team without the headcount. PlatOps runs software delivery and infrastructure operations for companies with 10–200 employees and funded SaaS startups that have no platform team, usually where one or two developers do ops on top of their real job.

We take over releases, servers, the 3 a.m. alerts and security updates, and report on all of it every month. Plans start at $3,500 a month, with 24/7 monitoring on every plan.

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What we take off your team

Owned by us, in your repos and cloud accounts

CI/CD pipelines and releases
Terraform and infrastructure as code
Kubernetes, ECS or App Service operations
On-call, patching and upgrades
Monthly cost and security reviews
SOC 2 and HIPAA change evidence

Works on AWS, Azure and GCP, with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Azure Pipelines.

$3,500/mo

Essential plans start at

4 weeks

From kickoff to full handoff

< 15 min

P1 response on Professional

Month-to-month

Or annual, 10% less

Who managed DevOps is for

Companies with 10–200 employees and funded SaaS startups that ship software but have no platform team. Usually that means zero to two engineers handling operations alongside everything else.

It fits if this sounds familiar

One or two developers run deployments and cloud changes on top of their product work
Only one person really knows how production is put together
Builds break, certificates expire and patches slip because ops is nobody's full-time job
Nobody is on call at night, or the CTO is
A customer or investor wants SOC 2 or HIPAA evidence and the change history lives in people's heads
The cloud bill grows every quarter and nobody reviews it line by line

Probably not a fit if

You have 50+ engineers and need people embedded in product sprints full time
Your infrastructure is unusual enough that an outside team would always be catching up (custom hardware, bespoke on-prem networks)
A framework you are bound by requires direct employees in infrastructure roles

What we own, month to month

Eight named responsibilities, each with an owner on our side. You see the work in pull requests, in your Slack or Teams channel and in a monthly report.

CI/CD pipelines

We own the pipelines your team ships through, so a red build is our problem, not a developer's lost afternoon.

Fix failed builds and flaky deploy steps
Keep runners, actions and build images patched
A tested rollback path for every production deploy
Dependency and container image scanning in the pipeline

Pipelines built or rebuilt from scratch

Infrastructure as code

Every change to your cloud goes through review in your own repository instead of a console click nobody can trace.

Terraform, or the IaC tool you already use, for networks, databases, IAM and DNS
Changes by pull request, with the plan output attached
Drift checks against what is actually running
Hand-built resources brought into code as we touch them

Kubernetes, ECS and app platforms

We run Kubernetes if you have it, and ECS, Cloud Run or Azure App Service if that fits better. We don't push Kubernetes on a team that doesn't need it.

Cluster and node upgrades before versions lose support
Autoscaling, resource limits and certificate renewals
Base image updates and rebuilds
Managed database minor versions and backup checks

Kubernetes adoption and migrations

On-call and incidents

Production alerts route to our engineers instead of a founder's phone. Response targets are set by your plan.

Alert routing and noise reduction
P1 response under 1 hour (Essential), 15 minutes (Professional) or 5 minutes (Enterprise)
Incident updates in your Slack or Teams channel
Written postmortems on Professional and Enterprise

Incident response and on-call

Patching and upgrades

The unglamorous work that falls behind first when operations is a side job.

Operating system and package patching on a fixed schedule
Runtime and framework end-of-life tracking
Weekly vulnerability scans with fixes prioritized
Maintenance windows agreed with your team

Cost reviews

A monthly look at the cloud bill with someone who knows what each line item is for.

Idle and oversized resources flagged every month
Reserved capacity and savings plan recommendations
Non-production environments scheduled off outside working hours where safe
Ongoing cost optimization on Professional and Enterprise

A one-off deep dive: the Cloud Bill Sprint

Security baseline

The controls that enterprise security questionnaires and auditors ask about first.

Least-privilege IAM roles and MFA on every account
Secrets in a secrets manager, not in repos or CI variables
Encryption at rest and in transit by default
Audit logging switched on and retained

Compliance evidence

Pull requests, pipeline runs and change history double as evidence for SOC 2 and HIPAA audits.

Change approval trail from Git and CI/CD
Access reviews and offboarding records
Scheduled backup restore tests
Readiness assessment on every plan; full compliance management is included on Enterprise and an add-on on Essential and Professional

Compliance-ready DevOps pipelines

What is not included

Clear edges keep the monthly fee predictable. These sit outside the retainer.

Your product's features

We run the delivery system and the infrastructure. Your developers write the application.

Large one-off projects

Cloud migrations, a first Kubernetes rollout or an internal developer platform are scoped and priced separately, then handed into the monthly service.

Tool licences

Monitoring, paging and CI vendors bill you directly, or we pass their charges through at cost.

Your cloud bill

Workloads stay in your own AWS, Azure or GCP accounts, and you pay the provider directly.

Office IT and helpdesk

Laptops, email accounts and password resets are IT support, not DevOps. Our managed IT plans for small businesses cover them, with a helpdesk up to 24/7.

Round-the-clock response to minor issues on Essential

Essential monitors 24/7 and answers P1 incidents within an hour at any time. Everything else is handled 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET.

Your first 90 days

A typical start. Larger or messier environments take longer, and the week-one gap analysis sets the real plan.

Days 1–30

Take over operations

A structured four-week handover. By the end of it, our engineers carry the pager.

Week 1: access, discovery and a written gap analysis
Week 2: monitoring, alerting and your Slack or Teams channel
Week 3: we shadow your team and validate runbooks
Week 4: full operational handoff

Days 31–60

Fix the biggest risks

We work down the gap analysis in order of risk, agreeing priorities with you before we change anything.

Prove that backups actually restore
Move secrets out of code and CI variables
Clear the overdue patch backlog
Bring hand-built resources into infrastructure as code

Days 61–90

Make it routine

Operations settle into a monthly rhythm you can see and measure.

First monthly cost review and business review
Runbooks for each service, stored in your repository
Deploy and rollback documented and tested
Next-quarter roadmap agreed with your team

How managed DevOps pricing works

A fixed monthly retainer on one of three plans, the same plans as on our pricing page. No hourly billing.

Essential

$3,500–$7,500/mo

Typically 10–50 employees

24/7 automated monitoring and alerts
Expert response in business hours (9–6 ET)
P1 response under 1 hour, 24/7
Patch management and weekly vulnerability scans
Documentation, runbooks and a monthly business review
99.5% uptime SLA

Professional

$8,000–$15,000/mo

Typically 50–150 employees

24/7/365 human response for all issues
P1 under 15 minutes, P2 under 30 minutes
Incident response and postmortems
Cloud cost optimization
Compliance readiness assessment (full management is an add-on)
99.9% uptime SLA

Enterprise

Custom

Typically 100+ employees

Dedicated team
Full compliance management and audit support
P1 response under 5 minutes
Custom SLAs up to 99.99% uptime
Disaster recovery planning and testing
Multi-cloud and hybrid environments
Architecture advisory and roadmap

Where you land in a range depends on environments, services, compliance scope and support level. We quote after a free 1-hour call.
A one-time onboarding fee, typically $5,000–$15,000, covers discovery, tool setup and the shadow period. It is often waived on annual plans.
Annual plans save 10%. Month-to-month agreements are available.
Tool licences pass through at cost. Migrations and platform builds are quoted as separate projects.

Not ready for a retainer? The Cloud & DevOps Audit Sprint is a fixed $5,000, 30-day engagement that finds cost, security and reliability risk and ships three quick wins.

Managed DevOps vs hiring in-house

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has no separate DevOps occupation. The closest, network and computer systems administrators, had a median salary of $99,130 in May 2025. Add benefits at the rate BLS reports for private employers and one hire costs about $142K a year. Treat that as a floor.

Option	Annual cost	Coverage
One in-house engineer	about $142K	Business hours. No cover for holidays, sick days or departures.
Two-person in-house team	about $283K	Business hours, with informal after-hours cover.
Four-person on-call rotation	about $566K	24/7, the smallest rotation that avoids burning people out.
PlatOps Essential	$42K–$90K/yr	24/7 monitoring, P1 response under 1 hour, expert response in business hours.
PlatOps Professional	$96K–$180K/yr	24/7/365 human response, P1 under 15 minutes.

In-house figures are the BLS median salary plus benefits only. Recruiting, tooling, training and turnover add to them.

What the numbers say

Essential costs 36–70% less than a single median hire. Against the four-person rotation that real 24/7 cover needs, Professional costs 68–83% less. At the top of its range Professional costs more than one hire, so the case for it is coverage, not salary.

When hiring makes more sense

Your engineering organization is past roughly 50 people and DevOps work is tied into every sprint
Your infrastructure is unusual enough that knowledge compounds only inside the company
A regulation requires direct employees in infrastructure roles

Managed DevOps vs an in-house platform team

A platform team builds an internal developer platform that several product teams share. It takes several dedicated engineers to run, and it rarely pays off before an organization reaches 30–50 engineers. Below that size, what most teams need is the basics run reliably, which is what this service covers. Our platform engineering vs DevOps guide and DevOps team structure guide go deeper.

Already have one DevOps engineer? Keep them on architecture and product work. We take nights, weekends, holidays and the patching backlog, through the same repositories.

For the full breakdown, read managed DevOps vs hiring: the true cost, compare all three models in managed services vs in-house, or run your own numbers in the ROI calculator.

Where the other DevOps services fit

Managed DevOps is the ongoing service. These are the projects and neighbors around it.

CI/CD Pipelines

A project to design or rebuild your pipelines. Managed DevOps keeps them running afterwards.

Learn more

Kubernetes

Cluster builds, migrations and hardening. We operate the result under the monthly service.

Learn more

Platform Engineering

Internal developer platforms for organizations with several product teams.

Learn more

Incident Management

Someone answers, and fixes it, when something breaks

Learn more

Managed Cloud

Cloud operations for businesses that don't ship their own software: servers, backups, patching, uptime.

Learn more

Cloud & DevOps Audit Sprint

$5,000 and 30 days: find cost, security and reliability risk, with three quick wins shipped.

Learn more

Managed DevOps FAQ

What is managed DevOps?

Managed DevOps, sometimes called DevOps as a service, is an outside team that runs your software delivery and infrastructure operations for a monthly fee. At PlatOps that means owning your CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, container platform, on-call, patching, cost reviews, security baseline and compliance evidence, under a written SLA.

How much do managed DevOps services cost?

PlatOps Essential costs $3,500–$7,500 a month, Professional $8,000–$15,000 a month, and Enterprise is priced to scope. Most plans have a one-time onboarding fee of $5,000–$15,000, often waived on annual plans, which also save 10%. Tool licences pass through at cost.

Is managed DevOps cheaper than hiring a DevOps engineer?

Usually, once you count coverage. BLS has no DevOps occupation; the closest, systems administrators, had a median salary of $99,130 in May 2025, or about $142K a year with benefits. That buys one person in business hours. Essential costs $42K–$90K/yr, and 24/7 cover in-house takes a rotation of about four people.

How is managed DevOps different from managed cloud?

Managed cloud keeps infrastructure healthy: servers, backups, patching and uptime. Managed DevOps adds the software delivery side for companies that ship their own code: pipelines, infrastructure as code, containers, release safety and the on-call that goes with them. Many SaaS teams need DevOps; most non-software businesses only need managed cloud.

Do you manage DevOps on Azure as well as AWS and GCP?

Yes. We work in AWS, Azure and GCP, with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Azure Pipelines, and with AKS, EKS, GKE or simpler platforms such as ECS, App Service and Cloud Run. The in-house cost comparison is the same on every cloud, because the expensive part is people, not the provider.

Do we need Kubernetes to work with you?

No. Many small teams are better served by ECS, Cloud Run or App Service, and we will tell you if Kubernetes is more than you need. If you already run it, we operate it.

Can you work alongside our existing developer or DevOps engineer?

Yes, and it is a common setup. Your engineer keeps architecture and product work; we take nights, weekends, holidays, the patching backlog and the specialist work in between. Everything goes through the same repositories and pull requests.

What happens to our code and infrastructure if we leave?

Everything we build lives in your repositories and your cloud accounts from day one, including infrastructure code, pipeline definitions and runbooks. You keep all of it, and month-to-month agreements are available.

How do we choose a managed DevOps partner?

Ask four things. Does everything live in your accounts and repositories? Are response times written into an SLA by severity? Will they show you a sample runbook and monthly report? Is the price published or quoted per tier rather than billed by the hour? A partner who hesitates on any of these will be hard to leave.

Your DevOps team, without the hiring

See what we would take off your plate

A free 1-hour call maps your pipelines, infrastructure and on-call today, and tells you which plan fits. If managed DevOps isn't the right model, we'll say so.

Book a free 1-hour call Prefer a written review?