A ceiling, not a meter
You buy a set number of points for a defined term. That's the most it can cost — decided before we start, not discovered on an invoice.
POD Managed Services · Pay per feature delivered
The most expensive word in business is “almost.”
We build and fix the software your company runs on — and we're paid for features delivered, not hours worked. That one difference changes everything.
The big firms bill hours, so slow is profitable. A Cloud Nerd POD is a prepaid bucket of points you redeem for finished, deployed features — each one priced and approved before we build. Your spend has a ceiling, your priorities stay flexible, and for once your incentives and your partner's point the same direction.
900+
Projects delivered
400+
Companies served
140+
Platforms under management
Week 1
First production delivery, every engagement
Trusted by teams at
- Salesforce
- General Mills
- Home Depot
- Nikon
- Invesco
- Raymond James
- Airgas
The POD model
You don't pay for hours. You pay for features delivered.
POD pricing runs on points. You buy a bucket of delivery for a defined term, then redeem it for finished, deployed features as your priorities change. The budget certainty of fixed fee — with the flexibility fixed fee can't give you.
Every cost approved up front
Every feature gets a point cost — S, M, L, or XL — before we build it. You approve the price or it doesn't get built. No surprise burn, ever.
No change orders. Ever.
Priorities shift? The new work gets pointed and slotted into the queue. Nothing becomes a new invoice, and nothing waits on paperwork.
Pay only for finished features
Points redeem for working software deployed in your org — never for meetings, rework, or ramp-up time. You pick what ships next.
T&M has no ceiling. Fixed fee has no flexibility. The POD has both — and the scope-change risk sits with us, not with your budget.
See how the POD works →The hiring math
One decision. Two very different P&Ls.
Move the slider to the team you were planning to hire. We'll show the fully-loaded cost — and the year of ramp time — against a Cloud Nerd POD that ships to production in week one, with a prepaid bucket that caps what you spend.
2 hires
Build in-house
Fully-loaded year-one cost
- Base salary + bonus$314,000
- Benefits & payroll taxes (32%)$100,000
- Recruiting fees (20% of base)$58,000
- Software, tooling & training$24,000
- Office, equipment & overhead$20,000
- Management time & onboarding$24,000
Year one$540,000
⏱ 50–70 days to fill (SHRM) · 6–12 months to full productivity
Retain Cloud Nerd
Everything included in one fixed fee
- Dedicated expert PODIncluded
- DAISA platform accelerationIncluded
- Tooling, QA, documentationIncluded
- Ramp-up periodNone
Fixed monthly$30,000
⚡ Shipping week one — $180,000 less in year one
Sources: ZipRecruiter/Indeed/Glassdoor senior developer & architect salary data for Austin, Dallas & Chicago (2026); BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Mar 2026 (benefits = 30.1% of total comp); standard IT placement fees of 20% of first-year salary; SHRM time-to-fill benchmarks. Tools & overhead lines are estimates. Your briefing includes math built on your actual plan.
Why it outperforms any internal team
Platform. People. Process.
Unmatched together.
Any firm can rent you contractors. What no internal team can replicate is the combination: senior experts, multiplied by a proprietary AI platform, held to a governed delivery process.
I.
Platform — DAISA
Our proprietary AI delivery platform does in hours what takes teams weeks — analysis, build, testing, and documentation across 140+ platforms, with a full audit trail on every engagement.
- 10× throughput per expert
- Complete, automatic documentation
- Institutional memory that never resigns
II.
People — Expert PODs
A dedicated team of senior architects and consultants — the caliber of talent that takes a year to recruit — assigned to your account and accountable to your outcomes.
- Architect-led, senior-only teams
- Deep bench across every major platform
- No junior staffing, no bait-and-switch
III.
Process — Governed delivery
A managed operating rhythm — prioritized backlog, weekly executive reporting, QA gates, and human sign-off on every release. You get managed business systems delivery that runs itself.
- Every feature pointed and approved before build
- Weekly reporting you can forward to the board
- Human approval on everything that ships
Engagements
Priced like one line item.
Delivers like a department.
Every engagement is a prepaid bucket of points for a defined term — one line item with a known ceiling. Scale the bucket up or down as your roadmap changes — something no headcount plan can do.
Starter POD
Your first systems expert, fractional
$5k / month
Senior expert + DAISA, part-time capacity
- One platform, one prioritized queue
- Admin fixes, automations, small builds
- Weekly delivery summary
- Same point system, smaller bucket
Core POD
Replaces two full-time hires
$15k / month
Architect + delivery experts + DAISA
- One primary platform under management
- Prioritized delivery backlog
- Weekly executive reporting
- Production support & maintenance
Growth POD
Replaces four full-time hires
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Senior POD + DAISA + integration coverage
- Multi-platform & integration ownership
- New builds and enhancements each sprint
- Roadmap & architecture governance
- Priority response SLAs
Enterprise POD
Replaces six or more full-time hires
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Full POD + fractional CTO-level counsel
- Entire stack under management
- Strategic planning & vendor governance
- Compliance-ready documentation
- Board-level quarterly reviews
Not sure where you land? Tell us what your business needs done — we'll point it honestly and tell you if a POD is overkill.
Month one
While a new hire is still
in orientation, we've shipped.
Week 1
Embedded & delivering
POD onboarded to your systems, backlog prioritized with your leadership, first items already in production.
Week 2
Backlog burning down
DAISA-accelerated delivery across your queue — the requests that have sat for quarters start closing.
Week 3
Systems documented
Your environment mapped, documented, and governed — often for the first time in the company's history.
Week 4
Executive review
A written report of everything shipped, everything found, and the 90-day roadmap. Forward it to your board.
For comparison: at day 30, an internal hire has completed HR onboarding, met the team, and — if you're lucky — closed their first small ticket. Full productivity arrives around month twelve. Ours arrived in week one.
Bring us your backlog. Leave with a number.
In one 30-minute pointing session we'll put point costs on the results your business actually needs, show you the bucket that fits, and hand you a priced delivery plan for the term — math built on your numbers, not ours.