Vendor Lock-in

Many website builders and agencies build things so that you can't move on without them: your website, your copy, your customer data are stuck inside one system and can't be cleanly extracted. If you want to switch, you effectively have to start from scratch. That's vendor lock-in — vendor dependency.

We deliberately build the opposite: your website and your data belong to you and can be exported at any time — built on open technology, with your data in the EU. You stay with us because the work is good — not because you can't leave.

An example: an electrical firm had a website built in a site-builder system years ago. Now the provider raises its prices, and the firm wants to move. It then turns out: the domain runs through the provider, the copy cannot be exported, the photos only exist in reduced size inside the system, and the person who originally built it can no longer be reached. The move becomes a complete rebuild — not because the site is bad, but because none of it can be taken along.

Dependencies like this crop up in more places than you would think: in the website builder whose content cannot be transferred; in industry software that stores customer data only in its own format; in email addresses tied to the contract of one particular provider; and in advertising accounts registered to the service provider instead of the business. Each of these on its own is harmless — together they form a web that makes switching expensive and laborious. It is worth going through this list calmly, once, for your own business.

How to assess your own position: do you know whose name your domain is registered in? Do you yourself hold access to hosting, website and data — or only the service provider? Could you download your content and customer data today in a common format? If you answer any of these questions with no or »don't know«, a dependency exists that you should be aware of.

You can take precautions yourself: have the domain registered to your business, not to the service provider. Keep access credentials in a secure place of your own. Have it contractually guaranteed that content and data will be handed over in a usable format at the end of the contract — and test the export once, calmly, before you genuinely need it in an emergency.

A common misunderstanding: that lock-in is always deliberate malice. Often it simply grows out of convenience — a closed system is pleasantly easy at first, and nobody thinks about the exit. Nor does the label »open source« protect you by itself: what decides the matter is not the technology but who actually owns the domain, the access credentials and the data.

Conexa Digital deliberately builds the opposite: on open technology, with your data in the EU; your website and your data belong to you and can be exported at any time. You stay because the work is good — not because you cannot leave.