How to evaluate a vendor before you're locked into their roadmap

Signing with a vendor isn’t just buying a feature set, it’s agreeing to move at their pace from now on. Their roadmap becomes your roadmap, whether you meant it to or not. Most evaluations never test for that.

Four questions that test for lock-in

Can you export everything, cleanly, today? Not “eventually,” not “talk to support.” If the answer requires a ticket and a wait, that’s your future exit cost, priced in advance.

Who decides what gets built next? If a feature you need is on their roadmap but not yours to prioritize, you’re a passenger. Fine for a commodity tool. Risky for anything core to how you operate.

What breaks if they get acquired? Most vendors don’t plan to get acquired, and most eventually do, or shut down a product line. Ask what happens to your data and your integrations in that scenario, and watch how confidently they answer.

How many other tools does this one require to actually work? A vendor that only functions bolted to three others isn’t one dependency, it’s four.

How to actually run this before signing

Put these four questions in the sales call, not a follow-up email. A follow-up email gets a scripted response. A direct question in conversation gets a real one, or an obvious dodge, either of which tells you something.

The part worth being honest about

No vendor relationship is zero risk. The goal isn’t finding a vendor with no lock-in, that vendor doesn’t exist. The goal is knowing exactly how much lock-in you’re accepting, and deciding that consciously instead of discovering it later at the worst possible moment, mid-renewal, with no leverage.