AI agents are reshaping vendor selection: SaaStr’s AI picks Render over Vercel

The Gist

• SaaStr’s AI agent evaluated hosting vendors based on workload needs, not brand familiarity
• Render was chosen over Vercel and Railway for its fit with SaaStr’s app requirements
• The AI agent wrote its own requirements before recommending any vendor

• AI agents are reshaping vendor selection by evaluating options based on workload requirements rather than brand recognition.
• Vendors must optimize their documentation and public pages to be accurately represented in AI agent evaluations.
• Render won the evaluation over Vercel and AWS due to its alignment with specific workload needs (web server, background worker, long-running jobs).
• Traditional vendor awareness strategies are becoming less effective as AI agents prioritize technical fit over brand familiarity.

• Test your product's visibility and description across multiple AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) to understand how you're represented.
• Identify and address any negative short phrases ('strikethroughs') that AI agents associate with your product in evaluations.
• Clearly articulate the specific customer use cases your product is designed for, using language that AI agents can easily match to workload descriptions.

• $1.5B (Render's valuation from its latest funding round earlier this year.)