BFI-managed hosting as the ongoing partnership model. Simpler for both parties. No revenue tracking, no monthly Stripe exports, no cap calculations. BFI earns by keeping the platform running — Prashant keeps 100% of platform revenue.
After collaborative discussion, both parties agreed that BFI would host the technical infrastructure for the RealizeAI platform as a separate, perpetual charge. A flat managed hosting fee is the cleanest structure for both parties:
Estimated 24-month cost: $5,000 + hosting + up to $10,000 rev share = $18,120–$20,400
Total 24-month cost: $5,000 + ($249 × 24) = $10,976
Client savings: At moderate platform revenue ($3K/mo), the hosting-first model saves Prashant $7,144–$9,424 over 24 months compared to a revenue share model — and he keeps every dollar of platform revenue. The higher the revenue, the bigger the savings.
| Alternative | Monthly Cost | What's Included | What's Missing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel + Supabase (DIY) | $65–$125 | Hosting, DB, CDN. Client manages 3+ vendor accounts. | No monitoring, no security patching, no incident response. Client is the ops team. Multiple vendor bills. |
| Heroku (managed PaaS) | $150–$300 | Managed hosting, basic monitoring, auto-scaling. | No custom stack support, no security advisory, no Stripe management. Vendor lock-in. |
| AWS Amplify / Lightsail | $80–$200 | Hosting + some managed services. | Complex setup, no concierge support, client needs DevOps knowledge. AWS billing complexity. |
| Hire a DevOps contractor | $500–$2,000 | Full ops management, incident response. | Expensive. Overkill for early-stage SaaS. Contractor may not know the codebase. |
| GCP DIY (self-managed) | $30–$70 | Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, GCS. Client manages everything. | Cheapest raw infra — but client needs GCP expertise, IAM setup, monitoring, security patching. |
| BFI-Managed on GCP (Proposed) | $249/mo | All GCP infra + monitoring + security + incident response + Stripe management | Nothing — full concierge ops on proven platform |
| Model | One-Time | Monthly | 24-Month Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Share Model | $5,000 | $130–$225 + 10% rev share | $18,120–$20,400 |
| Hosting-First (This Proposal) | $5,000 | $249 (fixed) | $10,976 |
| Your savings: $7,144–$9,424 over 24 months — and you keep every dollar of platform revenue | |||
This BOE documents the cost basis, assumptions, and risk factors supporting the $249/mo managed hosting price. Each line item is traceable to a vendor pricing page or BFI operational data.
Costs are estimated using GCP published pricing (Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Vertex AI, Cloud Armor, Firebase Auth) as of March 2026. BFI labor is estimated from 12 months of operational data running 24 production Cloud Run services at $58/mo total infrastructure — proving that marginal cost of adding one more managed service is minimal when existing automation is in place. All services run on BFI's existing GCP organization — no third-party vendor accounts required beyond Stripe (client-owned).
| Line | Item | Est. Monthly | Source / Backup | Assumptions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud Run (Next.js app) | $0–$15 | cloud.google.com/run/pricing — Free tier: 2M req + 360K GB-sec | At moderate traffic (~10K req/day): ~$10/mo. Auto-scales. BFI already runs 24 services on Cloud Run. |
| 2 | Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL) | $11 | cloud.google.com/sql/pricing — db-f1-micro shared core | 10 GB SSD storage. Adequate to ~$50K ARR. Upgrade to db-g1-small ($26/mo) at scale. |
| 3 | Firebase Auth | $0 | firebase.google.com/pricing — Free tier: 50K MAU | Phone auth: $0.01/verification beyond 10K. Email/password + Google OAuth: free. Launch volume: $0. |
| 4 | Cloud Storage (GCS) | $1–$3 | cloud.google.com/storage/pricing — Standard: $0.02/GB/mo | PDF storage. 30-day lifecycle policy. Launch: <1 GB. At 200 PDFs/mo (500KB each): pennies. |
| 5 | Vertex AI / Gemini 2.0 Flash | $5–$20 | cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/pricing — $0.10/1M in, $0.40/1M out | Per PDF: ~$0.003. At 200 PDFs/mo: $0.60. Budget $5–$20 with retries + safety margin (10×). |
| 6 | Cloud Armor (WAF + DDoS) | $5 | cloud.google.com/armor/pricing — $5/mo base | Standard tier. + $0.75/million requests. DDoS protection included. |
| 7 | Domain (amortized) | $1.50 | Registrar annual pricing / 12 | ~$18/yr standard .com. One-time per project. |
| 8 | BFI Ops Labor (marginal) | $44–$66 | BFI internal: 1.75 hrs/mo × $25–$38 marginal rate | Blended marginal rate reflects that BFI's GCP monitoring (NOC agent, Cloud Monitoring, alerting) is already running. Incremental: analyst time to review alerts + apply patches. |
| 9 | Contingency (10%) | $7–$12 | Standard BOE practice | Covers GCP price changes, unexpected incident spikes, or Vertex AI cost spikes. |
| Total BFI Cost Basis | $75–$133 | Client price: $249/mo → Margin: $116–$174/mo (47%–70%) | ||
| Trigger Event | Threshold | Action | Client Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vertex AI cost exceeds $30/mo sustained (3 months) | >400 PDFs/mo | Review pricing; may propose usage-based surcharge above 200 PDFs/mo | 90-day advance notice |
| Cloud SQL upgrade to db-g1-small ($26/mo) | >$50K ARR, high query volume | Upgrade instance; absorbed by margin | None — BFI absorbs within $249 price |
| Incident frequency exceeds 2/mo sustained | 3+ months | Root cause analysis; may require platform patch sprint | Billed separately as change request if not a BFI-hosting issue |
| Vendor price increase (>20%) | Any vendor | Pass through at cost; 60-day notice | Transparent; BFI does not absorb vendor inflation silently |
Price lock commitment: The $249/mo rate is locked for 12 months from launch. After 12 months, BFI may adjust pricing with 90 days written notice and documented cost basis. Client retains the right to self-host at any time per Exit Strategy terms.
Every number in this BOE is backed by verifiable evidence. If challenged, BFI can produce the following:
| # | Claim | Evidence | Verifiable By |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud SQL db-f1-micro costs ~$11/mo | cloud.google.com/sql/pricing — published rate as of March 2026 | Client can verify on GCP pricing calculator |
| 2 | Cloud Armor WAF costs $5/mo base | cloud.google.com/armor/pricing — published rate | Client can verify on GCP pricing calculator |
| 3 | Vertex AI Gemini 2.0 Flash pricing | cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/pricing — $0.10/1M input, $0.40/1M output tokens | Client can verify on GCP pricing calculator |
| 4 | BFI runs 24 services at $58/mo | GCP billing dashboard — bluefalconink project | BFI internal (can screenshot on request) |
| 5 | Marginal ops labor is 1.75 hrs/mo | BFI NOC agent logs — avg time per service per month across 24 services | BFI internal (structured logs in Cloud Logging) |
| 6 | 99.5% uptime is achievable | BFI platform uptime history — 100% since deployment (Cloud Monitoring) | BFI internal (can provide uptime report) |
| 7 | $249 is below DevOps contractor market | Upwork/Toptal DevOps contractor rates: $50–$150/hr × 5–10 hrs/mo = $250–$1,500 | Public market data |
| 8 | Infra doesn't scale past ~$121/mo even at $500K ARR | Cloud SQL db-g1-small handles high query volume; Cloud Run auto-scales; GCS pennies per GB | GCP published limits and pricing calculator |
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vertex AI price increase | LOW | MEDIUM | 10% contingency in BOE. Can swap to Gemini Flash, Gemini Nano, or open-source models (Llama on Vertex). PDF generation is model-agnostic. Google historically reduces model prices. |
| Cloud SQL outage | LOW | HIGH | Cloud SQL SLA: 99.95%. BFI enabling automated backups + point-in-time recovery. Failover to read replica if needed at scale. |
| Platform usage exceeds BOE assumptions | LOW | MEDIUM | Scaling triggers defined in H-04. 90-day notice for any pricing adjustment. This is a success scenario. |
| Client leaves BFI hosting | MEDIUM | LOW | Exit strategy in SOW. 30-day notice. 4 hrs free migration. BFI loses $249/mo but has a case study + reference client. |
| Vendor discontinues service | LOW | LOW | Entire stack runs on GCP — Google Cloud is not going away. Only external vendor is Stripe (payments), which has standard migration paths. No third-party vendor risk. |
The Statement of Work formalizes the hosting-first pricing structure outlined in this BOE. Key terms excerpted below:
S-08 BFI-Managed Hosting & Operations
Client engages BFI for ongoing managed hosting and operations at a fixed monthly rate:
S-09 Exit Strategy & Migration
Mutual Referral (S-10): 10% of first 12 months revenue from referred clients, both directions. This is separate from the hosting arrangement.
| Period | Monthly Revenue | BFI Cost | Monthly Margin | Cumulative Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1–3 (Launch) | $249 | $68 | $181 | $747 |
| Month 4–6 (Early Growth) | $249 | $75 | $174 | $1,494 |
| Month 7–12 (Growth) | $249 | $82 | $167 | $2,982 |
| Month 13–24 (Mature) | $249 | $100 | $149 | $5,976 |
| 24-Month Total | $5,976 | $2,028 | $3,948 | 66% avg margin |
BFI Revenue Model: BFI earns $10,976 guaranteed over 24 months from build + hosting, regardless of platform revenue. Hosting continues past month 24 as long as the partnership remains active. This structure provides BFI with a reliable revenue floor and a long-term client relationship, while Prashant keeps 100% of platform revenue.
Your platform runs on production-grade GCP infrastructure that BFI already operates at scale. No new vendor relationships, no experimental tooling — you're joining a proven stack with 24/7 monitoring, automated scaling, and security controls already in place.
| Capability | Technology | Benefit to You |
|---|---|---|
| Compute | Cloud Run (serverless) | Auto-scales to demand — zero idle cost, instant response to traffic spikes |
| Database | Cloud SQL PostgreSQL | Managed backups, point-in-time recovery, 99.95% availability SLA |
| Authentication | Firebase Auth | Enterprise-grade auth with OAuth, MFA-ready, 50K MAU included |
| Storage | Cloud Storage (GCS) | 11 nines durability, signed download URLs, lifecycle management |
| Security | Cloud Armor + WAF | DDoS protection, bot mitigation, OWASP rule sets |
| CDN | Cloud CDN | Global edge caching, sub-100ms TTFB worldwide |
| Monitoring | Cloud Monitoring + Logging | Real-time alerts, structured logs, uptime checks |
Traditional hosting for an AI-powered SaaS platform requires managing 6+ vendor accounts, coordinating security patches, and troubleshooting integration issues. With BFI-managed hosting, you get a single point of accountability — one Slack channel, one invoice, one team that knows your platform inside out. BFI's operational overhead is already built — adding your workload is incremental, which is why the price is sustainable at $249/mo.