[HN Gopher] SaaS is just vendor lock-in with better branding
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SaaS is just vendor lock-in with better branding
Author : pistoriusp
Score : 121 points
Date : 2025-06-06 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rwsdk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rwsdk.com)
| dasil003 wrote:
| The title is incongruous with the conclusion.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Curious about this. The usual argument is that hosting on
| Cloudflare is vendor lock-in, I am stating that picking _any_
| SaaS induces vendor lock-in.
|
| > No matter what choice you make, it's always going to be
| vendor-locked in. Switching out something, even if it's open
| source and self-hosted, means that you're rewriting a lot of
| code.
|
| The argument is that you might as well not "spend" those 5
| taxes, just use the platform, and write the software.
| yed wrote:
| The title strongly implies that vendor lock-in is a bad thing
| (the phrase "lock-in" has a very much negative connotation),
| but then the article proposes that you should just give up
| and go all in on vendor lock-in with a proprietary platform.
| The alternative to vendor lock-in with SaaS would naturally
| be running standardized open-source or home grown solutions.
| That is what people who complain about vendor lock-in
| generally recommend, not SaaS. The article would be more
| clear if it addressed that.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Ok, that's fair. I think I might have approached this from
| a typical JavaScript/ TypeScript developer - where using
| SaaS is the norm. I'm wondering what you developing in? Not
| wishing to invalidate your point, just curious?
| canadiantim wrote:
| Not if it's open data and people can easily move their data
| between vendors
| pistoriusp wrote:
| That's the dream right, how often is that true? Seems like this
| should be a leading indicator for picking a SaaS!
| hiatus wrote:
| This is a legal requirement of GDPR, no? https://gdpr-
| info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Edit: I am wrong.
|
| AFIAK GDPR only applies if you're profitable, otherwise a
| fine on revenue ... pre-revenue isn't applicable.
| hiatus wrote:
| I don't see anything about revenue here
| https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/r...
| pistoriusp wrote:
| You're right, I read it a few years ago, and my knowledge
| is incorrect. I thought the fine was only a percentage of
| revenue if you're above $10M, or something along those
| lines.
| kavaruka wrote:
| The GDPR always applies regardless of whether a company
| is profitable or not. But it covers only personal
| data/sensible data, not "all data".
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Finding just the right way to tell management it's time to
| re-architect the monolith and move into infra-as-code to
| become agnostic is the dream.
| klysm wrote:
| Not once have I ever seen this happen
| pistoriusp wrote:
| It's so rare, and apparently so unimportant, that I've never
| seen it as part of the marketing strategy.
| fakedang wrote:
| Supabase. Big part of why they're heavily adopted. The only
| issue is that when their client gets big, they usually tend
| to leave Supabase for more proprietary hosting.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Allegedly Allscripts (now Veradigm) made their flagship
| products interoperable, the idea being that customers could
| choose to buy a giant ecosystem from them, or they could bolt
| on small solutions onto the giant monoliths that were their
| competition (like EPIC) and presumably get some revenue they
| weren't going to get otherwise.
|
| Now - I never was tasked with actually _using_ their software
| while I worked there, that was just the talking point in the
| town halls and all hands and such. Being able to export
| /import was part of that interoperability goal.
| gavmor wrote:
| The discovery tax is actually something like O(n log n), because
| you have to also search and also compare. It's part of The Mess
| We're In[0].
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4
| missedthecue wrote:
| That's why there's so much of it. Annuity like income and pricing
| power is an attractive business model to create around.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| So the author is saying, don't buy SaaS, that's vendor lock-in.
| Instead just go all-in on one platform... like Cloudflare, the
| one (& only) platform that the SDK he writes works on. Which
| isn't vendor lock-in? No, wait, _everything_ is vendor lock-in:
| No matter what choice you make, it's always going to be vendor-
| locked in. Switching out something, even if it's open
| source and self-hosted, means that you're rewriting a lot
| of code.
|
| That's not what lock-in means. Just having a vendor-specific
| component or integration, is not the same thing as being _locked-
| in_ to a vendor or integration.
|
| Locked-in means that switching it out for something else is
| either A) impossible, or B) would require an investment greater
| than just sticking with the existing thing.
|
| When you write software in a loosely-coupled, highly-cohesive
| way, the intersection between different components is designed to
| not take much work to replace one component or another. The same
| is true of systems. If the interfaces of those components are
| simple, and their use is cohesive, it should not be difficult to
| replace a part. However, if your components are _not_ cohesive,
| then it will be a huge pain in the ass to replace anything.
|
| So, no, it's not a good idea to choose a platform because
| "everything is lock-in, so fuck it, i'll lock myself in _even
| more_! " As a developer, I can see the appeal, as it means less
| work for you. But as a business owner, this is a stupid reason to
| choose a solution. Choose solutions that will support the
| business and give it flexibility to change over time.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| > But as a business owner, this is a stupid reason to choose a
| solution. Choose solutions that will support the business and
| give it flexibility to change over time.
|
| I agree with you. If you're starting out, if your business is
| not profitable, don't pick SaaS. Don't take the time and pay
| those 5 taxes. Rather just use the platform, and if you're
| scalable and profitable and growing, pick some other technology
| that supports you in the long run.
| lokimedes wrote:
| It is Adam Smith's "rent seeking" in a modern hyper-scalable
| form. It should be shunned and criminalized on a basis of anti-
| social economics. Now the other extreme of free software is,
| arguably, also (economically) bad, as it fails to reward the
| effort of the creators proportionally to the value gained by the
| user.
|
| Let us buy our software, and separately, offer us a service
| agreement that actually has to provide value in its own right.
| The bundling of these in SaaS is what makes this obscene.
| mypornaccount wrote:
| I sell my saas to willing buyers at the fair market price.
| tshaddox wrote:
| That's not mutually exclusive with rent seeking, of course.
| missedthecue wrote:
| But rent seeking implies some sort of external party
| enforcing a non-competitive environment that benefits you.
| Like tariffs or aggressive zoning laws.
|
| Raising the price of your product isn't rent seeking.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| This is exactly how I'm thinking of monetizing the framework.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| I don't quite follow this logic. Nearly all SaaS has ongoing
| costs from the provider: hosting, support, r&d, etc.
|
| How is that rent seeking?
| lokimedes wrote:
| Most of that software could run on prem. The problem is that
| bundling hosting with the actual software in many cases
| translates into a way to confuse the expense of one for the
| other. Things that don't incur operating expenses shouldn't
| be charged as a monthly fee, that is rent seeking. Forcing
| someone to pay for "services" like hosting, "upgrades", etc.
| to gain access to the software is what I find problematic.
| Now that the business model has become dominant, it is hard
| to find any software not on a SaaS-like payment plan. Adobe,
| Autodesk, Microsoft, etc. all sold software and now all sell
| subscriptions with little added value to the customer. But
| the cashflow of a rent model, as forewarned in "Wealth of
| nations" is so ensnaring it can only be avoided by law. Yet
| here we are.
| tshaddox wrote:
| They presumably charge much more than their ongoing costs.
| Rent seeking doesn't mean zero costs.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's just profit, their incentive to actually build the
| thing in the first place.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Doesnt most companies in all industries charge more than
| their operating costs? Same with people, most work for a
| salary higher than their operating costs.
| paxys wrote:
| If you are so passionate about it then start a company that
| builds, deploys and maintains SaaS software on-prem for a
| comparable cost (say $10/user-mo). If you can provide the same
| service, guarantees and price points as the typical SaaS while
| letting companies keep control of their data and preventing
| lock-in then you'll have the largest market in the world.
| lokimedes wrote:
| It was just called software. People ran it on their own
| servers. It worked just fine.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| We should chat. We're busy building a store for source
| code.
| sanswork wrote:
| and instead of a monthly license you paid an annual support
| contract plus salaries of staff to maintain your servers
| and on site support for staff.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It didn't universally work fine. Every non-technical
| organization I know of in my circles remembers "the server"
| with huge disdain, and they're very glad that Google and/or
| Microsoft has allowed them to get rid of it.
| luckylion wrote:
| But you'll also compete with very deep VC pockets that don't
| mind burning lots of money to entrench themselves, so you
| usually can't compete on cost, until they start the squeeze.
| mindwok wrote:
| This would be possible if we could commoditise the
| operational aspects of cloud computing and SaaS providers.
| Some companies are trying!
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Now the other extreme of free software is, arguably, also
| (economically) bad, as it fails to reward the effort of the
| creators proportionally to the value gained by the user.
|
| What's the economic explanation then for why so much high
| quality (or at least, widespread and critical) free software
| exists?
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Probably that free software never actually dies or even
| really degrades in the traditional sense. Given decades of
| time, even small incentives to make things better, like the
| reputational increase one gets from contributing to good FOSS
| projects, compound really heavily.
|
| Take the Linux kernel as an example. If you were a kernel
| hacker, even a minor one, from the 1990s, it's quite likely
| you could parlay that experience into a good job today doing
| something similar. Those 50-100 hours decades ago have
| compounded quite nicely for you. But your contribution didn't
| decay over the next 30 years - worst case scenario, it stayed
| exactly as good as it was when you stopped, and best case
| scenario it's been substantially rewritten and incremented
| upon.
|
| That's how I explain it to myself at least.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| so basically s/subscription/service agreement/ ?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Exercising available pricing power isnt the same thing as rent
| seeking.
| davidpaulyoung wrote:
| Use only open-source SaaS with the option to self-host.
| isaachinman wrote:
| This is the way to go. Also has the added security bonus of
| keeping all your services in a private network, as opposed to
| exposing everything to the internet.
| AstroBen wrote:
| So to fight vendor lock in.. double down by locking yourself in
| _even more_ , tying everything to one platform?
| pistoriusp wrote:
| > locking yourself in even more, tying everything to one
| platform?
|
| I'm saying that if you don't want to use a platform because
| it's "lock-in," but then use SaaS... then the argument doesn't
| hold true, especially if you consider the "taxes" of using
| SaaS.
| exiguus wrote:
| Consider using SaaS only for non-critical sectors where its
| discontinuation would not threaten your business's survival.
| Ensure you have alternatives in place, such as switching to
| another SaaS provider, self-hosting, or developing an in-house
| solution. I have witnessed companies fail because their core
| operations relied too heavily on a SaaS platform."
| solatic wrote:
| OP isn't really arguing against SaaS (after all, OP recommends in
| the end either Cloudflare or Supabase, which are provided _as a
| service_...), that 's just the clickbait title, rather OP is
| arguing against signing up for a hundred different vendors and
| the overhead of commercial relationships with a hundred different
| vendors.
|
| Which is... not really controversial. Fewer vendors makes your
| life easier. Fewer dependencies makes your life easier. It would
| be awesome if you could build your entire product based on the
| standard library alone! Sadly... that's not really realistic.
| Nice pipe-dream though.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Thanks! I think you summarized exactly what I was saying, and
| pointing out that I had a clickbait title. My goal here is if
| you're starting out with something new, consider reaching for a
| platform rather than a bunch of services.
|
| The reason why I really love Cloudflare is because of their
| bindings. A lot of the time you are simply using fetch, so
| request and response to interact with their services. It feels
| as if fetch has become like the Unix pipe of the web.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| IMO Vendor lock in is when you ask your boss why cant we use tool
| NEWTHING? Then they tell you its because they have a 5 year
| contract with Oracle/MS/IBM/Salesforce and that is what we are
| going to use. We aren't going to have 10 platforms.
|
| Which means in 10 years they will really be locked in because no
| one is going to un-entrench that thing.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| if you've made it to 10 years, that's a really nice problem to
| have (or maybe a really boring problem to have). But if you're
| just starting out, I want to prevent you from making all those
| decisions when you could really be focusing on your startup
| instead.
|
| So I'm trying to encourage you to consider picking a platform
| and just sticking with the tools of the platform rather than
| bundling it yourself together.
| tough wrote:
| You can stick with it without legally getting trapped by some
| shady BD getting their sales quota filled
| pak9rabid wrote:
| It's still a good idea to abstract away these services behind a
| standardized interface. This way switching from one service to
| another is just a matter of providing an alternative
| implementation to said interface.
|
| Granted this approach requires a little foresight...something
| many companies seem to not have nowadays.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| The problem is people don't just store data on systems like
| Salesforce, they use them to build very complex applications.
|
| Getting your data into and out of Salesforce is easy, it has
| excellent APIs. Rewriting your applications is the bigger
| hurdle.
| paxys wrote:
| I'm at the stage of my career where vendor lock-in (aka "we are
| going to use this stable boring corporate-backed tech forever
| instead of migrating between your hot new JS frameworks every 6
| months") is a godsend. Yes I'll happily use AWS. No I will not
| spend my time to learn and implement RedwoodSDK, whatever that
| is.
| tough wrote:
| There's a RedwoodJS frontend framework, never heard of
| RedwoodSDK
|
| Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM
| pistoriusp wrote:
| RedwoodSDK is the successor to RedwoodJS. We've rebranded
| RedwoodJS as "Redwood GraphQL" and built this new thing from
| scratch. We are the same people with the same ambitions, but
| more focused. With a narrow niche. I believe that a framework
| requires a platform to be competitive today.
|
| Because of AI, the difficulty in writing code is greatly
| reduced. And because of platforms, the difficulty of shipping
| to production is greatly reduced.
|
| That combination can be really great for your velocity when
| trying to build a business.
| tough wrote:
| Thanks, that does make sense, I just hadn't heard about the
| new direction/rebranding.
|
| Agreed on both of your assesments Best of luck!
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Thank you! We're getting a lot of love! Just need to
| solve distribution. ;P
| lazide wrote:
| I can't tell if serious or not, but I threw up in my mouth
| a little regardless.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Dead serious.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The real issues is that, 3 years down the line, they'll
| dramatically the price, and then raise the price again, and
| again.
|
| Because that's the incentive, particularly with products that are
| naturally fading and ceasing to make new sales.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Good point, I think I should add that to the article.
| Slartie wrote:
| Don't forget that they'll change their API every so often, so
| you'll spend days and weeks to adapt to "v2" before "v1" is
| deprecated and eventually removed. You will usually get nothing
| in terms of desirable features for doing that work, quite often
| you will get new bugs instead that weren't present with the old
| API, or even worse, features you depend on are removed because
| "almost nobody really used them" or "they aren't a good fit in
| the new interface anymore", and of course you won't have the
| choice of simply keep using the old version of the thing for an
| arbitrary amount of time to perform that update on your own
| pace.
| abelanger wrote:
| This reads more like a pitch for open-source than anything else.
|
| > Switching out something, even if it's open source and self-
| hosted, means that you're rewriting a lot of code.
|
| The point of something open-source and self-hosted is that it
| resolves nearly all of the "taxes" mentioned in the article. What
| the article refers to as the discovery, sign-up, integration, and
| local development tax are all easily solved by a good open-source
| local development story.
|
| The "production tax" (is tax the right word?) can be resolved by
| contributions or a good plugin/module ecosystem.
| antithesizer wrote:
| Saas, like streaming media generally, has always been a play to
| remove the control that comes with ownership from customers and
| keep it in the hands of big tech. Remember when they discontinued
| the iPod? It wasn't because people weren't buying.
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