BuildFire, an app-development platform, ran on AWS EC2: roughly 22 instances and 5 load balancers. The architecture was stable. Running it was the expensive part. Engineers needed AWS access, and often SSH access to individual instances, just to troubleshoot or read logs, sometimes updating security rules to allow their own IP first.
Once a build cleared QA: deploy manually to a beta instance over SSH, validate, create an AWS image, update launch configurations and Auto Scaling Groups, launch replacements, detach the old instances. The AWS portion alone ran 30 to 60 minutes, every step hand-selecting the right resource, where one wrong pick could cause a production issue. That risk kept production deploys limited to 2 or 3 engineers and consumed an estimated 5 to 10 engineering hours weekly.
BuildFire is a large platform with many microservices, so the team migrated incrementally rather than big-bang, onto infrastructure that stays in BuildFire's own AWS account. The hardest part was translating an established AWS security model into the new architecture, plus a learning curve sizing CPU and memory per service on Kubernetes. Once those foundations were set, each additional service became straightforward and repeatable.
Deploys now run through the normal PR and merge flow: merge, and Convox builds and deploys, in a few minutes instead of 30 to 60 of manual AWS work. The deployment efficiency gains compounded: BuildFire ships multiple times a day. The broader engineering team deploys to UAT safely with no AWS access or infrastructure knowledge required, and the estimated 5 to 10 hours a week that went to infrastructure now go into product development and AI initiatives.
BuildFire's overall infrastructure spend stayed roughly in the same range; some costs shifted rather than disappeared, with Convox and Kubernetes now carrying responsibilities that previously required direct AWS management from the engineering team. The return is engineering time and deployment safety, not a lower AWS bill.
"For a team our size, Convox made DevOps much easier to operate by simplifying the architecture, reducing deployment risk and engineering time, simplifying AWS access, allowing more engineers to deploy safely, and making deployments faster, automated, and repeatable, so engineers can spend more time focused on the product, application, and business needs instead of infrastructure." CEO, BuildFire
