The vendor lock-in you signed up for
Lock-in rarely arrives as a dramatic decision. It accumulates quietly until leaving a tool means rebuilding half your operation.
Vendor lock-in sounds like something you'd notice and avoid. In practice it sneaks up on you — not as a single bad decision, but as a thousand small ones that each made sense, until one day switching away from a tool would mean rebuilding a chunk of how you operate.
Convenience is the trap
The features that make a tool convenient — deep integrations, proprietary formats, workflows built entirely around it — are the same features that make it hard to leave. You adopt them because they help, and each one quietly raises the cost of ever switching. By the time you want out, the exit is enormous.
Keep your exits open
You can't avoid all lock-in, and you shouldn't try — some depth is worth it. But you can stay aware of it: keep your data exportable, avoid building your entire operation around one proprietary thing, and know what leaving would actually cost. Lock-in you chose with open eyes is fine; lock-in you backed into is a problem.
Nobody decides to get locked in. They accept a hundred conveniences and discover the exit is gone.