There’s a special kind of heartbreak that comes with building your business around a platform - only to realize one day that you’re basically renting your own data back from them. Like paying admission to visit your own house.
This isn’t rare. In fact, 64% of companies say they feel locked into at least one major SaaS provider and worry about the cost or risk of leaving (Flexera 2024 State of ITAM). It’s not just a big-enterprise problem. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) suffer more because they lack the budget, staff, or time to pull off a clean escape.
The Sneaky Trap of “Easy”
Most vendor lock-in stories start the same way: something makes life easier. You sign up for a neat tool - maybe a CRM, a database platform, a workflow manager. The free tier is great. The setup is smooth. And before long, you’ve poured years of customer data, invoices, and workflows into it.
Then one day:
- Prices go up - sometimes by 200% overnight (TechCrunch).
- Record limits choke your growth.
- Export options are buried under “Contact Sales.”
It’s like finding out your landlord built a toll booth in front of your driveway. You can leave, but you’ll need a truck, three interns, and a stiff drink.
Why It’s Worse for SMBs
Big companies at least have IT departments and lawyers to negotiate exit clauses. SMBs? We duct-tape solutions together and pray the renewal email doesn’t hit on a Friday afternoon.
The hidden costs pile up:
- Migration complexity: Data exports in proprietary formats that require expensive dev time to convert.
- Downtime: Shifting systems can mean days or weeks of disrupted operations.
- Rebuild effort: Re-creating automation logic or workflows from scratch.
And because these platforms know you’re trapped, they keep tightening the screws - higher per-seat fees, feature gating, “premium support” for problems they created.
The Data Is Yours. Keep It That Way.
The most effective way to avoid lock-in isn’t clever contract language. It’s structural: keep control of your data from day one.
That’s the entire philosophy behind InfoLobby. Instead of uploading your business into someone else’s silo, you connect your own MySQL database - the one you already own, already pay for, and can access directly anytime.
- Your tables live in your database.
- If you stop using InfoLobby, nothing breaks - your data stays put.
- There’s no “export” step because there’s nothing to export.
It’s like building your house on land you own instead of renting space in a mall. Sure, the mall is convenient - until the landlord decides smoothie shops are more profitable than bakeries and you’re out on the sidewalk.
The Bonus: Freedom to Grow
When you’re not locked in, your future stays flexible. You can:
- Move hosts or providers without rewriting your app.
- Connect other tools, APIs, or dashboards to the same database.
- Build custom automation on top of it when you’re ready.
InfoLobby’s mission isn’t to be the walled garden. It’s to be the window into the garden you already planted - and make it easy to share with your team without handing over the keys.
The Bottom Line
Lock-in is how SaaS companies make their money. But it doesn’t have to be how you run your business.
By owning your data and using platforms like InfoLobby that work with your database instead of replacing it, you protect yourself from pricing traps, migration headaches, and feature hostage-taking. And you get the one thing every growing business needs most: the freedom to change its mind.