If You Change, I’m Leaving

I hired your product to do a job. At that time, it did the job well. I invested into it by learning its interface, its quirks, and its limits, and by integrating it into my workflow.

We had a simple trade: I give you money, and you reduce the number of things I have to think about by one.

Once I've subscribed to your product, congratulations, you win! You don't have to do anything now, and I'll continue to give you money. Write a novel! Go to the beach! Don't - touch - anything!

I've seen a few products recently that have tried to alter that deal. The worst are the "X is now part of Y!" emails, where tool X that I have been using for years suddenly becomes part of enterprise suite Y. In some cases, X is suddenly sunset and I'm automatically signed up for a brand-new Y account. New login system, new billing system, new UX, new configuration paradigms, and they just.. expect me to do all that work? For free?

My policy now is that if a product changes significantly, I go back to my original selection matrix and evaluate it against its now-competitors, from scratch. There's no "incumbent advantage", because there's no longer an incumbent. It might (still) be the best; our use of Trello has survived multiple transitions and overhauls, and it's looking like Frame.Io won't be joining Evernote, Lightroom, and Papertrail in the graveyard.

But, most likely, I will leave.