pinpole / case studies

Real teams. Real results.

How engineering teams use pinpole's pre-deployment simulation to find critical failures, validate architectural choices, and avoid costly mistakes — before a single resource is provisioned.

$68K Monthly cost avoided (database selection)
4% First real AWS bill vs. simulation prediction
45 min Simulation that found 2 critical failures
50× Traffic spike survived with zero downtime
Case Study Series B · SaaS Outage prevention
Product launch at 50× traffic: how pre-deployment simulation prevented a public outage
A Series B engineering team was preparing for a high-stakes product launch with a projected 50× traffic increase. Two critical architectural failures were hiding in their design. A 45-minute pinpole simulation found both before a dollar was spent on staging — and before 200,000 users hit the endpoint.
Traffic simulation API Gateway Lambda ElastiCache Spike load
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Outcomes
  • 2 Critical failures found pre-launch
  • 50× Traffic spike handled without incident
  • 45 min Total simulation time to find both issues
18 min read Read →
Case Study Growth Stage · Fintech Cost accuracy
Pre-deployment serverless cost estimation: hitting within 4% of the first real AWS bill
A growth-stage fintech needed to project their AWS spend before committing to a serverless architecture. Using pinpole's simulation and cost modelling, they predicted their monthly bill to within 4% — and identified $690/month in AI-recommended optimisations before writing a line of infrastructure code.
Serverless Cost estimation Lambda DynamoDB FinOps
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Outcomes
  • 4% Variance from first real AWS invoice
  • $690 Monthly savings from recommendations
  • $0 Spend before confident architecture decision
12 min read Read →
Case Study Growth Stage · E-Commerce Architecture selection
DynamoDB vs Aurora: simulation-led database selection that avoided a $68K/month mistake
A growth-stage e-commerce team was choosing between DynamoDB and Aurora Serverless v2. Conventional wisdom pointed one way. Simulation pointed the other. Pre-deployment modelling revealed the $68K/month cost gap — and the performance divergence at their exact traffic profile — before a single resource was provisioned.
DynamoDB Aurora Serverless v2 Database selection Cost modelling E-Commerce
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Outcomes
  • $68K Monthly cost avoided with correct DB choice
  • p99 lat. Latency validated under peak load pre-deploy
  • 1 day Time to confident decision with simulation
14 min read Read →
Case Study Engineering · Multi-scale Cost comparison
DynamoDB vs RDS: simulation-based cost and performance across 10K, 100K, and 1M RPS
A side-by-side simulation of DynamoDB on-demand, DynamoDB provisioned, Aurora Serverless v2, and RDS PostgreSQL across three traffic tiers. The results challenge common assumptions about which database is "cheaper" — and reveal how dramatically the cost story changes with traffic shape.
DynamoDB RDS PostgreSQL Aurora Serverless v2 RPS benchmarks Cost modelling
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Outcomes
  • 10× DynamoDB cost premium vs RDS at steady load
  • 3 tiers Simulated: 10K, 100K, 1M RPS profiles
  • 4 DBs Compared with real simulation data
14 min read Read →

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