How Shaped Achieved 87% Faster and More Reliable Builds with Namespace

Executive Summary

Shaped, a fast-growing SaaS company, was hitting scaling challenges with GitHub-hosted runners. Their main usage are Docker builds that were driving up costs more and more and slowing developer productivity. After adopting Namespace, Shaped cut build times dramatically while gaining reliability. Today, their engineering team runs "lightning fast docker builds”, improved observability, and peace of mind knowing their pipelines won’t fail unexpectedly.

“Super reliable, I don’t recall us ever having an issue that impacted us.”
Karl Lyons, Site Reliability Engineer

The Challenge

• Long Build Times: Docker builds took a long time on GitHub runners.
  Escalating Costs: High frequency of builds on every commit and pull request drove spend upward.
• Efficiency Barriers: Developers faced frustrating delays waiting for builds to complete.

As their company grew, Shaped needed a CI/CD solution that could deliver speed, reliability, and scalability without adding operational overhead.

The Solution: Namespace

Shaped selected Namespace for its ability to integrate seamlessly with GitHub Actions while offering:

• Lightning-fast Docker build times: cutting build times by up to 87%
• Built-in caching: eliminating redundant work.
• Detailed observability: visibility into test times and failures.
• Competitive pricing: reduce cost.

“It’s a no brainer if you’re using GitHub Actions. You can enable it with 1 or two lines of yaml.”
Karl Lyons, Site Reliability Engineer

Implementation & Adoption

Adoption was straightforward: within minutes, Shaped integrated Namespace runners directly into their GitHub Actions workflows. Developers quickly saw the benefits, and the switch required no significant adjustments to existing pipelines.

Results and Impact

Performance

• 87% faster Docker builds compared to GitHub-hosted runners, going from 11m38s to 1m36s.
• No disruptions: Namespace consistently delivers reliable runs.

Operational Efficiency

• Reduced costs thanks to efficient caching and pricing.
• Observability that highlights test duration and failure patterns for continuous improvement.

Developer Experience

• Consistent reliability: no lost productivity from failed or flaky runs.
• Faster feedback loops: developers get rapid CI results and can move forward confidently.
• Team morale improved as engineers spend less time waiting and more time building product.

Conclusion

For Shaped, Namespace has proven to be the perfect combination of speed and reliability. By switching away from GitHub runners, Shaped eliminated costly inefficiencies, accelerated their development process, and gained unwavering confidence in their CI/CD infrastructure.

Namespace empowers Shaped’s engineering team to focus on building product, not managing pipelines. And to scale with confidence.