The renewal checklist: 5 questions to ask before you renew your edge/CDN contract

Edge and CDN contracts tend to renew on a predictable rhythm: a reminder shows up a couple of months before the end date, someone forwards it to engineering with “anything we need to change?”, and the most common answer is “probably not.” The contract renews at roughly the same scope, sometimes with a few more add-ons.

That’s a missed opportunity. A renewal is the one moment each year when it’s normal to ask what you’re paying for and whether it’s working. It’s also when you have the most leverage to change it, in either direction: dropping what you don’t use, or getting help activating what you’ve been paying for all along.

Here are five questions we think every team should answer before signing, along with how to find the answers and what to bring to the conversation.

1. What exactly are we paying for?

It sounds obvious, but in practice few people on the engineering side have read the order form. Start by building a single list of every line item in the current contract:

Line item              Unit / limit        Price    Owner
---------------------  ------------------  -------  ---------
Base plan              per property / tier  ...      Platform
WAF / managed rules    per property         ...      Security
Bot mitigation         per request tier     ...      Security
Load balancing         per pool / origin    ...      SRE
Advanced caching       included / add-on    ...      Platform
Support tier           ...                  ...      ...

Give every line an owner. A feature with no owner is a feature nobody will check on, and nobody will defend at renewal. If you can’t find an owner for something, that’s your first finding.

2. Is each feature actually deployed?

For every line item, confirm that it’s not just available but turned on and attached to real traffic. This is where the gap between “paid for” and “used” usually hides:

• Security features may be enabled in log-only mode, or deployed on some hostnames but not others. (We covered how to check in You’re paying for a WAF. Is it actually blocking anything?)
• Performance features like tiered caching may be off on most properties. (See Tiered caching: the checkbox that cuts origin load.)
• Reliability features like load balancers may have no health monitor attached, which means no failover. (See Load balancers without health checks are just expensive DNS.)

Mark each line item as one of: deployed and enforcing, deployed but not enforcing or partial, or not deployed.

3. Is it configured to do its job?

Deployed isn’t the same as effective. A feature can be on and still deliver very little because of how it’s configured. A few examples worth checking:

• Cache rules that bypass on every cookie, or cache keys that include every query string, can make “advanced caching” behave like no caching. (More in Your CDN cache hit ratio is lying to you.)
• Bot mitigation can be enabled but scoped to a single path, or set to a mode that only scores traffic and never acts on it.
• Rate limits can exist with thresholds so high they never trigger.

For each feature, write one sentence describing what it should be doing for you, and one piece of evidence that it is: a log query, a metric, or a test result.

If you’ve done questions 1 through 3 honestly, you now have a picture like this: a column of things you’re paying for, and a usually shorter column of things that are deployed, configured, and producing evidence. The difference between the two is what the rest of the checklist is about.

4. What has changed since we signed?

Your infrastructure has probably changed more than your contract has. Before renewing, list what’s different:

• Traffic. Has volume grown or shrunk? Has the mix changed, for example more API traffic and less static content?
• Properties. Which hostnames or applications launched, moved, or were retired? Are new ones covered by the features you pay for?
• Architecture. Did you move origins, add regions, or adopt a new framework that changes cacheability?
• Requirements. Are there new compliance, security, or availability requirements that change what you need?

Some line items may now be oversized, and some gaps may now matter more than they did a year ago. Both are worth knowing before you sign.

5. What proof will we bring to the conversation?

A renewal discussion goes very differently when you bring evidence instead of impressions. Prepare a short summary, one page is enough, with:

1. The feature inventory from question 1, with owners.
2. The deployment status from question 2, per feature and per property.
3. Evidence of value from question 3: what each enforcing feature actually did over the last few months.
4. The gaps: features you pay for that aren’t deployed or aren’t effective, and why.
5. What you want: drop it, right-size it, or get help activating it, with a date.

That last point matters. “We’re not using this, so remove it” is one valid outcome. “We’re not using this, and we want help turning it on properly before renewal” is often a better one, because the feature may be exactly what you need, just never configured.

A simple timeline

You don’t need a big project. Starting about 90 days before the renewal date works well:

T-90 days   Build the line-item inventory and assign owners
T-75 days   Check deployment status for every feature and property
T-60 days   Collect evidence of value; list the gaps
T-45 days   Decide: keep, right-size, drop, or activate
T-30 days   Bring the one-page summary to the renewal discussion

Closing thoughts

Renewals are usually treated as paperwork. They’re better treated as an annual review of whether your edge setup is doing what you’re paying it to do. Five questions, a spreadsheet, and a few log queries will put you in a much stronger position than “probably not.”

This is exactly the review we’re building Plimie to do. It’s a read-only check of your edge and CDN configuration that shows which features you pay for are deployed, which are working, and where the gaps are, without changing anything in your account. Our pilot is free and invite-only.

Renewal coming up? Request a free review and we’ll help you walk into it with evidence.

• renewal
• cost
• procurement
• checklist