Highlight competing offers from other similar IaaS providers to leverage better pricing or terms. It's beneficial to have recent quotes from competitors showing lower prices or better terms to apply pressure in your negotiations with DigitalOcean.

Discuss the possibility of waiving any overage fees positioned by DigitalOcean, especially if you're forecasting increased usage of their services. By anchoring on your growth projections, you can argue that you shouldn't be penalized for scaling your resources.

Negotiate against any proposed uplift in your pricing, particularly if you're able to document underutilization or less than satisfactory service from previous contract periods. Leverage the expected budget changes driven by your finance team as a key component of this discussion.

If you're planning to scale up your usage significantly with DigitalOcean, use that growth as a negotiating point. The expectation that increasing your usage will come with improved rates can yield substantial savings over the term of your contract.

Stress the need to remove auto-renewal clauses from your contract due to internal legal and budgeting processes. This tactic emphasizes that you want the ability to renegotiate or reevaluate terms before committing to another term.