Vendor lock-in
Depending so heavily on one supplier's service that leaving becomes expensive, slow or risky, even when it raises prices or no longer fits.
Updated October 2026 · with examples from our own builds
What does vendor lock-in mean in practice?
Every product leans on suppliers: a cloud, a payment gateway, an AI provider, a subscription service. Lock-in is a matter of degree, and it grows when supplier-specific code spreads through the product and when data lives only in the supplier's format.
Avoiding suppliers isn't the aim; keeping the exit affordable is. Wrapping each one behind a single adapter, keeping your own records of what matters, such as payments and subscriptions, and storing data in portable forms all turn a later switch into a project rather than a rewrite.
Some lock-in is worth paying for. A service that covers two app stores at once saves real work when both are live; when only one is, it may not.
Vendor lock-in at a glance
- Grows with
- Supplier code spread through the product
- Keep affordable by
- One adapter per supplier and your own records
- Sometimes worth it
- When the layer saves more than leaving would cost
Where has vendor lock-in come up in our builds?
In September 2026 we replaced RevenueCat with our own Play Billing integration behind the same one-file purchases wrapper, so not one screen changed. With Android launching first, the honest answer to what RevenueCat did that we couldn't was nothing Google doesn't expose directly.
We made the opposite call for LetSlic: RevenueCat handles receipt checks, renewals and billing retries and covers Apple's store in the same SDK, so iOS becomes a dashboard change later. We kept our own webhook log and ledger of every subscription event.
Storafleet is bring-your-own-storage across 50+ providers: files stay in the customer's buckets, and each provider is a profile in one file rather than its own code path.
Common questions about vendor lock-in
Should I avoid services like RevenueCat or Firebase to stay independent?
Not automatically. Use them where they save real work, keep each behind one wrapper in your code, and keep your own records of what matters, so leaving later is a contained job.
How do I check how locked in my product is?
Ask how many places in the code talk to each supplier directly, and whether your own database holds a complete record of customers, payments and subscriptions without the supplier's dashboard.
Related terms
Planning a product and not sure where vendor lock-in fits? Ask us, or browse all 116 terms in the glossary.