Massdriver isn’t aimed at pre-funded startups. Early-stage teams are often better off with a PaaS or setting things up manually until ops challenges become a bottleneck.
Our pricing (5-seat minimum) is intentional to dissuade smaller teams. The real value kicks in when teams need self-service. Ops teams build the modules (not us), and Massdriver acts as the interface. Developers diagram what they need, and Massdriver provisions using the ops team’s standards. This keeps developers focused on building while giving ops visibility and control over what’s deployed.