It always starts the same way. £50 a month for an all-in-one marketing platform sounds entirely reasonable — until your business grows, which is, after all, the point.
Then you discover the pricing ladder. Automation workflows? That's the next tier up. A second user or shared inbox? Another upgrade. More than 1,000 contacts? Your monthly fee just doubled. Within two years, that £50 has quietly become £400 — and you're paying it forever.
The real sting is the lock-in. Your contacts, your email history, your automation logic, sometimes even your website — they all live inside the platform. Leaving means starting again, so most businesses don't. They just keep paying.
There's a better model: own the system. Open-source tools and bespoke automation built on platforms you control cost more to set up honestly, but the ongoing cost is a fraction of SaaS pricing — and nobody can double your rent because you added a few hundred contacts.
We're not anti-platform; for some businesses the big tools genuinely fit. But before you sign up, do the three-year maths. Add up every tier you'll realistically need, every contact band you'll grow into, and compare it with owning the system outright. The answer often surprises people.