The hidden costs of platform lock-in

When was the last time you thought about what happens if you need to leave your current platform? Nobody chooses a platform expecting to leave it. When you sign up for Wix, Squarespace, or a proprietary CMS, the decision feels straightforward, it does what you need, the price is right, and you can get started quickly. The problems only become visible later, usually at the exact moment you need something the platform can't do.

What lock-in actually looks like

Lock-in isn't always about contracts or exit fees, though those exist too. The more common form is structural. Your content is stored in a proprietary format that doesn't export cleanly. Your design is built using the platform's drag-and-drop builder, which means it exists as configuration data rather than code, you can't take it with you. Your URLs, your redirects, your forms, your integrations, all of them are tangled into the platform's specific way of doing things.

I recently helped a client migrate away from a proprietary CMS that they'd been on for four years. The content export gave me a malformed XML file that required two days of cleaning before we could even start the migration. Their forms were tied to the platform's built-in form handler, so every form submission endpoint had to be rebuilt. Their image URLs all pointed to the platform's CDN, so every image reference in every piece of content had to be updated. What should have been a two-week migration turned into six weeks.

The pricing trap

Many platforms start cheap and get expensive. Shopify's basic plan is £25 a month, but once you need Shopify Plus for B2B pricing, scripts, or checkout customisation, you're looking at £2,000 a month minimum. That's £24,000 a year before you've paid for a single hour of development. I've seen similar patterns with BigCommerce Enterprise, HubSpot's CMS, and various proprietary e-commerce platforms. The entry price gets you in the door; the real costs reveal themselves once you're committed.

What the alternative looks like

Composable architecture, where you choose separate, best-in-class tools for your CMS, your front end, your e-commerce, and your hosting, avoids most of these problems. Your content lives in a CMS like Sanity that exports cleanly via API. Your front end is code you own, deployed wherever you choose. Your hosting is infrastructure you control. If any single piece stops working for you, you can replace it without rebuilding everything else.

This approach does require more technical skill upfront. You need developers who can integrate the pieces, and you need to make deliberate choices about each layer. But the total cost of ownership over three to five years is almost always lower than a proprietary platform, because you're not paying the lock-in tax when you eventually need to change something.

Questions to ask before committing

Before choosing any platform, ask: Can I export all my content in a standard format? Can I take my design and code with me if I leave? What happens to my URLs? What does pricing look like at double my current usage? If the answers are vague or uncomfortable, that's worth knowing before you commit rather than after.

If you're feeling stuck on a platform that's no longer working for you, or if you're about to choose one and want an honest second opinion, I'm always happy to talk it through. Drop me a line at [email protected].