Sponsor my work

Free tools for the Microsoft community, funded by the people who use them.

I build Maester, Lokka, idPowerToys, cmd.ms, Graph X-Ray and more, and give them away. There is no company or investor behind them. If they save you time, you can help me keep building.

Sponsor on GitHub See all three ways

pwsh

PS> Invoke-Maester -Path ./merill -Tag Funding

✓ PassedME.1001Tools are free and open source

✓ PassedME.1002Mission: keep building Maester

✓ PassedME.1003Kids to feed: 4

✓ PassedME.1004Mortgage: present

✗ FailedME.1005Investors or outside funding: none found

Remediation: become a sponsor

Tests: 5 · Passed: 4 · Failed: 1

625kMaester installs

4.3m+views across my sites

119kmonthly visits to cmd.ms

20Kweekly Entra.News subscribers

Why I'm asking

No investors.One mission.

Keep building Maester and free tools for the Microsoft community.

How the free work is paid for

• Maester Cloud
• Ad sponsorson Entra.News and Entra.Chat
• Sponsors like youon GitHub and through your company

I spent years on the Microsoft Entra product team. In 2026 I left to build tools for this community full time.

I give away most of what I build, and I want to keep it that way. None of the free work has outside funding. I pay for the hosting, the test tenants and the Microsoft licences myself.

I support myself through paid work that sits alongside the free tools: Maester Cloud and ad sponsors on the newsletters and podcast. Sponsorship is the part that pays for the time I spend on everything that stays free.

It isn't only the tools. I write Entra.News every week, host the Entra.Chat podcast, and post what I learn about Entra, security and Graph on LinkedIn and X. If something I shared taught you something and you'd like to give back, this is how.

I also have a mortgage and four kids, so this work has to pay its way if I'm going to keep doing it.

My mission is to keep building Maester and keep helping the Microsoft community. If my tools save you or your team time, sponsoring is how you keep them coming.

Merill FernandoMaintainer of Maester · ex-Microsoft Entra PM · Melbourne

Three ways to sponsor

Pick the one that fits you.

A coffee from one admin, a subscription for a team, or a company backing the project. All three keep the tools free for everyone else.

For individuals and teams

GitHub Sponsors

from$5/ month, or a one-off

Learned something from a post, the newsletter or the podcast? Shout me a coffee, or sponsor every month.

• $5 Coffee fuel. A sponsor badge and your avatar on the sponsor wall on merill.net.
• $15 Admin's thank-you. A larger avatar on the sponsor wall.
• $100 Company sponsor. Your logo on the sponsor wall and the tool READMEs.
• $500 Lead sponsor. A large logo at the top of the sponsor wall.

Sponsor on GitHub

A donation to my open source work. It doesn't include Maester Cloud.

For teams that run Maester

Maester Cloud

from$99/ month

Sponsor Maester and get a product in return. Maester Cloud runs Maester for you and keeps the history.

• Deploys into your own Azure subscription.
• Posture across all your tenants, with history for every check.
• Shows what drifted between runs and alerts you when it changes.
• Every subscription funds new checks, docs and fixes in open source Maester.

Get Maester Cloud

Open to companies and individuals. maester.cloud

For companies that rely on Maester

Company sponsor

Let's talk

Sponsor my time on Maester directly. In return you get logo placement and a bigger say in what gets built.

• Pays for maintainer time on checks, releases and reviews.
• Your logo on the Maester home page, sponsor page and README.
• A bigger say in the Maester backlog and what I work on next.

Email me

Write to [email protected] and tell me a little about your company.

Looking to advertise instead? Newsletter ads across Admin.News, including Entra.News, are booked at sponsors.admin.news.

Where it goes

What your sponsorship pays for.

My time

Writing checks, reviewing pull requests, shipping releases and answering the community.

Test tenants and licences

Maester checks are verified against real tenants, and those tenants need Microsoft licences.

Hosting

The servers and domains behind the free sites, so they stay fast and free of ads.

What you're backing

Tools and teaching you may already rely on.

Free tools, a weekly newsletter, a podcast, and the posts I share on LinkedIn and X to help you learn Entra, security and Graph.

MaesterSecurity testing for Microsoft 365

LokkaMCP server for Microsoft Graph

idPowerToysConditional Access visualizer

cmd.msYour Microsoft Cloud command line

Graph X-RayPortal clicks to Graph scripts

Graph Permissions ExplorerWhat each Graph permission exposes

YakoStart page for Microsoft admins

MSIdentityToolsPowerShell cmdlets for Entra

Entra.NewsWeekly newsletter, 20K subscribers

Entra.ChatPodcast with the people behind Entra

Admin.NewsWeekly and daily newsletters, 34K+ subscribers

Intune NewsWeekly Intune roundup

Defender NewsWeekly Defender and Sentinel roundup

AD NewsWeekly Active Directory roundup

Purview NewsWeekly Purview roundup

Microsoft AI NewsWeekly Microsoft AI and Copilot roundup

Posts on LinkedInTips and explainers, 50K followers

Posts on XTips and explainers, 21K followers

And many moreSee everything on merill.net

Sponsor wall

Thank you to the 51 sponsors backing this work.

Everyone who sponsors Maester, subscribes to Maester Cloud or sponsors me on GitHub, and chose to be listed. Updated daily.

Company sponsors

Maester Cloud supporters 46

Derek Morgan Stefan Wey / Alweys Conflux Cloud Greenwire Solutions

EZErica Zelickowski

BSBen Seaba St Vincent's Institute Devote Crimson Owl Technologies Zitac Stevez Gomes TDC Erhverv UpTime IT Management Jan Bakker Declarative Ltd Blue Hybrid Steel Shed GRC Softwaremanagement AG Bastien Perez Horizons Consulting, Inc. conode Systemhaus GmbH SECOTRON (Thomas Geens) JWJeff Weitz Thomas & Hutton De Technische Jongens MSX Security - Marcus Burnap Nymbol IT Solutions AppControl.ai -Kim Oppalfens Jesper Raarup Ultra Tendency International GmbH 365cloud GmbH CSC Pauly JAJian An Lim zwobyte GMGijs Meulenbroek JWJérémy (Wakers) Quantei Lutz Mueller-Hipper Sword Group NIL, part of Conscia Brainpulse IT Paul Schnackenburg

CCloudNovum

Langtech Inc. Fortytwo.io IKT-People ApS +Your name here

GitHub sponsors 3

Anton W Graham Gold Steven Lorenz +Your name here

Keep the tools free for everyone.

Can't sponsor right now? Starring Maester on GitHub or telling a colleague about a tool helps too.

Sponsor on GitHub Get Maester Cloud