Case Study: WhyDonate achieves 8× lower database costs and zero downtime with PlanetScale

How WhyDonate switched from Google Cloud, saved 80+ work hours, and now pays 8x less

WhyDonate, a global fundraising platform, was growing quickly but struggled with Google Cloud Platform’s CloudSQL as its small development team had to handle DevOps-heavy database work, painful schema migrations, and performance issues during peak traffic. These problems slowed development, caused anxiety around database changes, and even required major manual remediation after one botched migration.

By moving to PlanetScale, WhyDonate gained easier schema branching and safer migrations, reduced database downtime concerns, and freed its developers to focus on building features instead of database maintenance. PlanetScale also delivered major cost savings: WhyDonate said it now pays 8× less than on GCP, saved 80+ work hours, and improved velocity by cutting about 10% from feature development time.

Whydonate

Neils Corver

Co-Founder and Managing Director