“This Sounds Too Good to Be True...”

A true story of a DevOps Engineer who went from sceptic to advocate. *Names have been changed.

“This is a win-win-win,” Dave said, leaning back in his chair.

That quote stuck with me.

Because thirty minutes earlier, Dave had been convinced Morfless was just another scam.

And honestly, I don’t blame him. When you're a DevOps Engineer, anything promising “57% EC2 savings” sets off alarm bells. Most of the time, it’s either group buying, a spreadsheet dressed up as a dashboard, or someone trying to skim your cloud bill.

So when Dave and I met for the first time, I was ready for the scepticism. His boss Greg had heard about Morfless through a mate and decided to bring us in.

“Just humour me,” Greg told him. “Worst case, we waste half an hour. Best case, we learn something new.”

Dave shrugged. “Bet it’s just another group-buying scheme. They all are.”

He wasn’t being rude. He was tired. Tired of vendors promising miracles. Tired of last-minute cost reviews. Tired of cleaning up architecture decisions made two years ago under pressure. Like a lot of good engineers, he didn’t want a new tool. He just wanted fewer problems.

“So,” he said, arms folded, “what exactly do you guys do?”

“Morfless automatically buys and sells Reserved Instances on your behalf,” I said.

He gave me a flat look. “Sounds like group buying.”

“Actually, no. Think of it like high-frequency trading. But for EC2.”

That made him pause. “Go on.”

“We’re scanning the AWS Marketplace constantly, hunting for the best-priced Reserved Instances that match your workloads. Including the weird, short-term ones people don’t usually find.”

“Okay, but what if our usage drops?”

“That’s the part people usually miss. We don’t just buy RIs. We sell them too - automatically. If your usage drops, we’ve got three options. One: we move the RI to another Morfless customer. Two: we sell it on the public AWS marketplace. Three: if neither of those work, we take it on ourselves. We’ve got a Morfless-owned holding account. We carry the risk.”

Dave’s posture softened a little. I could see him starting to shift from defence into curiosity.

“Wait… so you take on the downside risk?”

“Yeah. That’s what our fee covers. We’re not charging you just to show you some numbers. We’re actually doing the work - and backing it. Our fee is proportional to how much we save you. If we don’t save you anything, we don’t charge.”

Dave raised an eyebrow. “So you’re actively managing a portfolio of Reserved Instances… across customers… in real-time?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re safe?”

“Only need read-only access to understand your environment, and permission to buy and sell savings instruments. We don’t touch workloads. Zero chance of downtime.”

There was a pause.

“This… sounds pretty clever,” he said cautiously.

Greg jumped in. “And we can try it without committing to anything, right?”

“Yep. We run a savings analysis - it’s read-only, no changes to your environment. If we can save you money, we’ll show you the numbers. If we can’t, we’ll tell you (but that’s rare). And if you decide not to move ahead, you just delete the CloudFormation stack. That’s it. No fuss.”

Dave sat back in his chair. Then the line came, the one that always feels like a turning point.

“This is actually a win-win-win. We get higher savings. AWS gets more commitment - although you’re the ones underwriting it. And you get to charge for actually doing the work. It’s great.”

There was a brief silence. Greg grinned.

“Can we get the savings analysis done this week?”

—

If you’re a DevOps engineer reading this, I get the scepticism. But that’s exactly why I’m telling this story. Because when technical people dig into how Morfless works, they often go from cautious to excited. Not because of the pitch, but because it’s automation that actually does something.

It takes something annoying, risky, and hard to do manually, and just… handles it. Cleanly. Safely. Automatically.

So yeah, it sounds too good to be true.

Until you see it in action.

You can run a savings analysis now. Worst case: we tell you it’s not worth it, and you walk away. Best case? You become the next Dave.

Try Morfless free