Every time you sign up for a SaaS platform, you're making a bet. You're betting that the company will stay in business. That they won't change the pricing. That they won't remove features you depend on. That they won't get acquired by someone who doesn't care about your needs.
For peripheral tools, these bets are reasonable. For the systems that run your core operations, they're dangerous.
Digital sovereignty means owning the systems that define how your business works. Not because ownership is ideologically superior, but because dependency on third parties creates risks that compound over time.
The Platform Risk Nobody Talks About
Platform dependency feels safe. Big companies, millions of users, surely they'll be around forever. But the history of business software tells a different story. Companies fail, get acquired, pivot to new markets, or simply decide your segment isn't profitable enough to serve properly. When that happens, you discover exactly how much control you've given away.
Pricing changes
SaaS companies regularly adjust pricing. Per-seat models mean your costs grow linearly with your team. Feature-based pricing means what you have today might cost more tomorrow.
We've seen businesses face 200% price increases at renewal. By then, switching costs are enormous.
Feature deprecation
"We're sunsetting this feature to focus on our core product." Translation: the thing you depend on is going away, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Features get removed, APIs get deprecated, integrations stop working.
Acquisition and pivot
Startups get acquired. Acquirers have different priorities. Products you rely on get absorbed, neglected, or shut down entirely.
If you're no longer their target user, your needs stop mattering.
Data portability problems
"Your data is always yours" says the marketing. But try exporting it. Incomplete exports, proprietary formats, missing history.
Getting your data out is often harder than getting it in.
Real Examples of Platform Dependency Gone Wrong
These aren't hypothetical risks. They happen regularly, to businesses of all sizes. The pattern is consistent: a company builds its operations around a platform, the platform changes, and the company has no good options.
The Salesforce pricing escalator
A professional services firm with 40 users built their entire client management process in Salesforce over five years. Custom objects, workflows, integrations with their project management and finance systems. At their 2024 renewal, Salesforce increased their per-seat pricing by 27% and required them to move to a higher-tier product to keep features they already had. The alternative was losing functionality or rebuilding everything elsewhere. They paid.
Total lock-in. Their processes, data, and team training were all tied to the platform. Migration would have cost more than three years of the price increase.
Basecamp's feature removal
When Basecamp restructured its product in 2020, moving to a single flat-fee pricing model, features that some businesses depended on (like client access controls and certain reporting features) were removed or changed significantly. Businesses that had built client communication workflows around those features had to either adapt their processes or find new tools.
The platform's product strategy changed. Users' needs hadn't.
Parse's shutdown
In 2016, Facebook shut down Parse, a backend service that thousands of mobile applications depended on. Developers had one year to migrate their entire backend infrastructure to new services. For some, this meant rebuilding significant portions of their applications. For others, it meant their apps simply stopped working.
A year sounds generous until you calculate the cost of re-architecting your entire application.
Google's product graveyard
Google has discontinued over 290 products and services, including Google Reader, Google+, Google Hangouts, and numerous business-focused tools. Organisations that built workflows around these products had to scramble for alternatives, often losing data or functionality in the transition. Google Domains was sold to Squarespace in 2023, giving users no choice in who now manages their domain registration. The full list is documented at Killed by Google.
Scale doesn't equal stability. Even trillion-dollar companies kill products that millions depend on.
API deprecation cascades
When Twitter (now X) changed its API pricing in 2023, thousands of businesses that had built tools, integrations, and workflows around free or affordable API access found themselves facing costs of $42,000 per month for access they previously had for free. Many simply had to shut down integrations they'd built over years.
Your integration is only as stable as the API you're calling. And you don't control that API.
The common thread: businesses built critical operations on platforms they didn't control, then discovered they had no good options when those platforms changed. This isn't about being pessimistic. It's about recognising that platform incentives and your incentives are not aligned. Understanding when to build versus buy is the first step toward making intentional choices about dependency.
The Regulatory Dimension
Beyond platform risk, there's an increasingly important regulatory dimension to data sovereignty. Where your data lives, who can access it, and under what legal framework: these questions matter more now than ever before.
Data sovereignty vs digital sovereignty: Data sovereignty specifically refers to the legal jurisdiction governing your data. Digital sovereignty is broader: it encompasses data sovereignty plus control over the systems, logic, and processes that use that data.
GDPR and data residency
The General Data Protection Regulation requires organisations handling EU citizens' data to ensure adequate protection regardless of where that data is processed. When your data sits on US-based SaaS platforms, you're trusting that platform's legal and technical infrastructure to maintain compliance. That trust has been tested repeatedly.
The Schrems II decision in 2020 invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield framework, creating legal uncertainty for any EU business using US cloud services. While new frameworks have emerged, the fundamental tension remains: US law allows government access to data that GDPR aims to protect. Every time you store EU customer data on a US platform, you're navigating this tension.
Sector-specific requirements
Some industries have explicit data localisation requirements. Financial services in the UK face FCA requirements around operational resilience and third-party dependencies. Healthcare organisations handling NHS data must meet specific data handling standards. Legal firms have confidentiality obligations that extend to their technology choices.
For these sectors, "where does our data live?" isn't an abstract question. It's a compliance requirement with audit implications. Establishing a single source of truth for your data becomes essential in these contexts.
Future-proofing for regulatory change
Regulation only tightens. The UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's Digital Services Act and Data Act, sector-specific AI regulations: the trend is toward more requirements, not fewer. Businesses that control their own systems can adapt to new requirements. Businesses locked into platforms must hope their vendor adapts in ways that work for them.
Vendor Lock-In: The Hidden Tax on Growth
Lock-in doesn't happen all at once. It accumulates through small, reasonable decisions. Each integration, each workflow built on platform-specific features, each year of data accumulation: they all add to the switching cost. By the time you realise you're locked in, leaving has become prohibitively expensive.
The anatomy of lock-in
Lock-in operates through several mechanisms, each making it harder to leave:
Data gravity
The more data you put into a system, the harder it is to move. Customer records, transaction history, email archives, document repositories: they all accumulate. Even when export is possible, the process is time-consuming, error-prone, and often incomplete. Relationships between records, metadata, and history are frequently lost in translation.
Process dependency
Over time, your team builds processes around the platform's specific capabilities. Workarounds become workflows. Quirks become features you depend on. Training, documentation, and institutional knowledge all assume the platform. Switching means retraining everyone and rebuilding processes from scratch.
Integration complexity
Modern businesses run on integrations. Your CRM connects to your email, which connects to your calendar, which connects to your project management tool. Each integration is another dependency. Replacing one system means reconfiguring or rebuilding all its connections to other systems.
Proprietary formats and logic
Some platforms store data in proprietary formats or implement business logic in ways that can't be replicated elsewhere. Custom fields, automation rules, calculated values: if they're implemented using platform-specific tools, they don't migrate.
The switching cost calculation
When evaluating whether to switch platforms or build custom systems, businesses typically underestimate switching costs by 3-5x. The visible costs (new licenses, data migration, initial setup) are obvious. The hidden costs are harder to see:
- Staff time for migration: Not just IT, but every team member who needs to learn new systems and rebuild their workflows
- Productivity loss during transition: Things take longer when people are learning. Errors increase. Work quality temporarily declines.
- Data quality issues: Every migration loses or corrupts some data. Cleaning up takes months, sometimes years.
- Integration rebuilding: Every connection to other systems needs testing and often reconfiguration
- Historical context: Even perfect data migration loses context. Why was this customer flagged? What was the history behind this decision? Institutional knowledge embedded in notes, tags, and statuses often doesn't transfer.
The lock-in premium: Once you're locked in, vendors know your switching costs. That knowledge informs their pricing. You're not negotiating from a position of "we'll leave if you don't give us a fair price." You're negotiating from "we'll pay whatever's less than our switching cost."
What Digital Sovereignty Means in Practice
Digital sovereignty isn't about rejecting all third-party software. That would be impractical and counterproductive. It's about being intentional about where you accept dependency and where you retain control. The goal is strategic independence: ensuring that decisions made in someone else's boardroom don't derail your business.
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Control over your data Your customer records, transaction history, and operational data live in databases you control. You can back them up, export them, migrate them, analyse them, without asking permission. Standard formats. Your infrastructure.
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Control over your logic The business rules that define how you operate live in code you own. Pricing calculations, approval workflows, notification rules, commission structures: you can change them when your business needs change, not when a vendor decides to support your use case.
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Control over your roadmap Need a new feature? Build it. Need to change how something works? Change it. Your development priorities are yours to set. No voting on feature requests. No hoping the vendor's roadmap aligns with your needs.
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Control over your costs Hosting costs scale with actual usage, not with seat counts or arbitrary pricing tiers. Adding team members doesn't mean stepping up to an "Enterprise" plan. Growth doesn't automatically mean proportionally higher software costs.
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Control over your integrations Connect to any system you need, using standard protocols. No restrictions on which tools you can integrate. No artificial limitations designed to keep you in one vendor's ecosystem.
When Sovereignty Matters Most
Not every system needs to be owned. The value of sovereignty varies by context. Understanding when control matters most helps focus investment where it delivers the greatest return.
High-sovereignty scenarios
Some situations demand ownership. The risks of dependency are too high, or the competitive implications too significant.
| Scenario | Why Sovereignty Matters | Risk of Dependency |
|---|---|---|
| Core operational processes | These systems encode how your business works. They're where your operational advantage lives. | Vendor changes break your operations. You can't differentiate. |
| Customer data and relationships | Your customer history is a strategic asset. It should live in systems you control completely. | Export limitations. Data locked in proprietary formats. History lost in migrations. |
| Regulatory-sensitive data | Compliance requirements around data residency, access controls, and audit trails demand control. | Vendor compliance failures become your compliance failures. |
| Competitive differentiators | Processes that give you an edge shouldn't be replicated by every other user of the same platform. | Your advantage becomes a commodity feature. |
| High-volume operations | Per-transaction or per-record pricing models become expensive at scale. Owned systems have fixed costs. | Success gets taxed. Growth becomes proportionally expensive. |
Lower-sovereignty scenarios
Some tools don't warrant ownership investment. The switching costs are manageable, the functionality is genuinely commoditised, and the best providers are better than what you'd build.
Communication infrastructure
Email, video conferencing, instant messaging. These are commodity functions where the best providers invest more in reliability and features than you ever could. The data that flows through them matters; the platform itself less so.
Standard productivity tools
Document editing, spreadsheets, presentations. Unless you're doing something highly specialised, the major providers offer more than enough functionality. Data exports are standardised.
Development and deployment infrastructure
Version control, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring. The code itself is portable. The infrastructure runs standard tooling. Switching providers, while inconvenient, is manageable.
Specialised third-party data
Credit checks, address validation, fraud detection. These services provide data you can't generate yourself. The dependency is inherent in the function.
The principle: accept dependency where switching costs are low and the provider genuinely offers more value than you could build. Retain ownership where the system encodes your competitive advantage, holds strategic data, or creates significant switching costs.
The Convenience Trade-Off
Platform dependency is convenient. Someone else handles updates, security patches, uptime. You just log in and use it. That convenience is real and valuable, for the right systems.
The question is whether the convenience outweighs the risks and limitations. For peripheral systems, it usually does. For operational core, it usually doesn't.
| For Peripheral Systems: Rent | For Operational Core: Own | |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Email, video conferencing, document storage, basic collaboration | Customer management, order processing, service delivery, project tracking |
| Why | Commodity functions. Best providers are genuinely better than what you'd build. | These systems encode how your business actually works. They're where your competitive advantage lives. |
| Risk level | Low. Switching costs are manageable. | High. Too important to rent. |
| Data sensitivity | Content matters; platform is interchangeable. | Data relationships, history, and context are strategic assets. |
| Customisation needs | Standard workflows work fine. Configuration over customisation. | Your processes are different. The system should match you, not the other way around. |
The Real Cost Comparison
SaaS looks cheap because the costs are distributed over time and hidden in operational friction. Custom systems look expensive because the costs are visible upfront. A proper comparison requires looking at total cost of ownership over realistic time horizons.
A proper comparison considers:
- Subscription costs over 5-10 years: That "affordable" SaaS adds up. A £500/month tool costs £60,000 over ten years, before any price increases.
- Time spent on workarounds: Features you need that the platform doesn't support. Manual processes to fill gaps. Staff time has a cost.
- Integration maintenance: Keeping multiple systems in sync. Dealing with API changes. Fixing broken connections.
- Switching costs: What happens when you need to leave. Data migration, retraining, process rebuilding.
- Opportunity costs: Things you can't do because the platform doesn't allow them. Features you can't build. Processes you can't implement.
A worked example
Consider a growing professional services firm with 25 employees using a standard SaaS stack for project management, client management, and resource planning.
| Cost Category | SaaS Stack (5 years) | Custom System (5 years) |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing/development | £180,000 (assuming modest price increases) | £75,000 (initial build) + £30,000 (enhancements) |
| Hosting | Included in licensing | £12,000 (cloud hosting, monitoring) |
| Workaround labour | £40,000 (estimated staff time on manual processes) | Minimal (system built to fit processes) |
| Integration maintenance | £25,000 (keeping three systems in sync) | £8,000 (single system, fewer integrations) |
| Asset value at end | £0 (subscription, no asset) | Owned system (continues working, can be extended) |
| Total | £245,000 | £125,000 + owned asset |
This isn't true for every situation. Small teams with simple needs often genuinely save money with SaaS. But as team size, process complexity, and operational criticality increase, the economics shift. The question is: where does your business sit on that curve?
When you account for all of this, custom systems often cost less over time, and they create an asset instead of an expense. Systems you own can be extended, adapted, and sold. Subscriptions disappear the moment you stop paying.
Technical Foundations of Sovereignty
Achieving digital sovereignty isn't just about philosophy. It requires specific technical choices that preserve optionality and control.
Open-source foundations
Proprietary technology stacks create their own lock-in. If your system is built on licensed frameworks or components, you're dependent on those license terms. Open-source foundations (Linux, PostgreSQL, Laravel, React) mean the underlying technology can't be taken away or re-priced.
This doesn't mean avoiding all commercial software. It means ensuring the core isn't dependent on any single commercial entity. This approach is central to vertical integration for business software.
Standard data formats
Data should be stored and exportable in standard formats. JSON, CSV, standard relational schemas. No proprietary binary formats. No data structures that only make sense within one system's context.
The test: could a competent developer with no prior knowledge of your system understand the data structure and export it completely within a week?
API-first architecture
Every system should expose its data and functionality through well-documented APIs. Not just for external integrations, but as a principle. If the data and logic are accessible through APIs, they can be accessed by any system, including a replacement for the current one.
Infrastructure portability
Cloud providers offer convenience, but also create dependency. Containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes) and infrastructure-as-code practices make it possible to move between cloud providers or to on-premises infrastructure without rebuilding everything.
You don't need to plan to move. You need to ensure that moving remains possible.
Common Objections and Honest Answers
Digital sovereignty isn't the right choice for every business in every situation. Understanding the legitimate objections helps make better decisions.
"We don't have the budget for custom development"
Legitimate for small teams with simple needs. SaaS genuinely makes more sense when you're small. The inflection point typically comes around 15-20 employees, or when your processes become complex enough that you're spending significant time on workarounds. Before that point, rent and save your capital for growth.
"We don't have technical staff to manage custom systems"
This is a real consideration, but the premise is often overstated. Managed hosting, automated deployments, and maintenance agreements mean you don't need in-house DevOps to run custom systems. You need a reliable development partner and a sensible maintenance arrangement. Many businesses with no technical staff successfully run custom systems.
"SaaS providers handle security and compliance better than we could"
Sometimes true, sometimes not. Large SaaS providers invest heavily in security, but they're also larger targets. Custom systems have a smaller attack surface and can be hardened to your specific needs. For regulated industries, custom systems often make compliance easier because you control exactly how data is handled and can prove it to auditors.
"We need the features that only [large platform] provides"
Worth examining carefully. What specific features? Are they genuinely unique, or do they seem unique because you've been told they are? Often, the features that matter most are ones you'd customise anyway. The "unique" features are sometimes bells and whistles that sound impressive but don't drive business value.
"What if our development partner goes out of business?"
A fair concern, and the answer lies in how the system is built. If it uses open-source technology, follows standard patterns, and is fully documented, any competent developer can take over. The test: could you hire someone else to maintain it tomorrow? Good development partners actively enable this.
"We've already invested too much in our current platform"
Sunk cost fallacy. The investment is gone regardless of what you do next. The question is what serves you better going forward. Sometimes that's staying and making incremental improvements. Sometimes it's a phased migration that captures the most value while managing transition costs. The existing investment shouldn't drive the decision; future value should.
Building Toward Sovereignty
You don't have to replace everything at once. A practical path starts with understanding your current position and making intentional choices about where to invest in ownership.
Audit your dependencies
List every SaaS tool your business relies on. For each one, ask: what would happen if this doubled in price? What if it shut down next month? What if they removed a feature you depend on? Rate each tool by how painful switching would be (1-10). The high numbers are your strategic vulnerabilities.
Identify the critical few
Some dependencies are fine. Others are strategic vulnerabilities. Focus on the intersection of high switching cost and high business impact. These are the systems where dependency creates real risk or limitation. Usually there are three to five critical dependencies worth addressing.
Plan your exit paths
For critical platforms, understand what leaving would require. Can you export your data? In what format? How long would migration take? What would you migrate to? Having this knowledge changes your negotiating position and makes future decisions possible.
Build or migrate strategically
When you invest in owned systems, start with the areas of highest dependency risk or limitation. Build from understanding, not reaction. The goal isn't to replace everything, but to own the systems that matter most, while maintaining sensible dependencies where they make sense.
This isn't a one-time project. It's an ongoing posture of intentionality about technology choices. Each new tool you adopt, each integration you build, each process you implement: they all either increase or decrease your sovereignty.
How We Approach This
We build systems that our clients own completely. The code, the data, the hosting choices: all theirs. We're not the landlord; we're the builder.
- Open-source foundations: Laravel, PostgreSQL. No licensing dependencies. MIT and BSD licenses mean you're not at the mercy of any vendor's business decisions.
- Standard data formats: Export cleanly. No proprietary lock-in. Data models documented in plain language.
- Full documentation: Any competent developer can take over. Code comments, architecture diagrams, operational runbooks.
- Hosting flexibility: Your servers, your cloud provider, your choice. AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, bare metal: the application runs wherever you want it.
- Source code ownership: It's yours from day one. Not licensed to you. Yours.
We want our clients to be able to fire us and keep everything working. That's what ownership means. If we do good work, you'll keep working with us because you want to, not because you're trapped.
Since 2005: We've built over 50 custom business systems. Many are still running, maintained by us or by other developers our clients hired. The systems outlast the relationships because they're built to be owned.
What You Get
Digital sovereignty isn't an abstract concept. It delivers specific, tangible benefits that compound over time.
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Independence from vendor decisions Price changes, feature removals, acquisitions, pivots: none of these affect your operations. You're insulated from decisions made in someone else's boardroom.
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Control over data Your data in your databases, exportable and analysable. No permission needed. No rate limits on your own information. No wondering what happens if the vendor is breached.
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Control over logic Business rules you can change when you need to. New requirements get implemented on your timeline, not the vendor's. Your processes, your way.
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Control over roadmap Features built on your priorities, not a vendor's. No feature voting. No hoping your request makes the cut. If it matters to your business, it gets built.
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Control over costs Predictable infrastructure costs, not per-seat surprises. Adding team members doesn't trigger upgrade requirements. Growth doesn't get taxed.
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Regulatory confidence Know exactly where your data is, how it's handled, and who can access it. Prove it to auditors. Meet compliance requirements on your terms.
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A real asset Systems you own have value. They can be extended, adapted, sold as part of the business. Subscriptions are expenses that disappear the moment you stop paying.
Independence from decisions made in someone else's boardroom. The freedom to run your business on your terms.
Further Reading
- Open Source Alternatives - Directory of open-source replacements for commercial SaaS products
- EU Data Act - Upcoming regulation on data portability and sovereignty
Take Back Control
If you're concerned about platform dependency, or you're feeling the pain of features you can't change and prices you can't control, let's talk about what sovereignty could look like for your business. A 30-minute conversation can help you understand where you're most vulnerable and what your options are.
Book a discovery call →