You rarely find lock-in during evaluation. It's almost always at renewal. You know, when the quote goes up 40% and you start wondering if it’d be worth it to explore other options. That’s when you find out that leaving is going to be an absolute nightmare.
Whoopsie.
Fortunately, you can find this out before you commit to your next customer engagement platform. Ask these seven questions. Ask them during the pilot, get the answer in writing, and assume vagueness has poor intentions.
1. Can I export everything, and how long does it take?
Every vendor says yes. That’s not the important part, though. You want to know:
- What formats
What formats
- How complete
How complete
- How fast
How fast
Ask specifically whether the export includes conversation history, customer profiles, configuration, and the mapping between them. Profiles without the conversation history attached are half a dataset.
- A good answer: A documented API or export process, a format you can name, and a customer who has run it.
A good answer: A documented API or export process, a format you can name, and a customer who has run it.
- A bad answer: "Our team can put that together for you."
A bad answer: "Our team can put that together for you."
Then run it during the pilot. Seriously. Give it a try with some sample data.
2. Do my phone numbers port out?
This is the question that separates people who have migrated before from people who haven't.
Phone numbers are identity. They're on your invoices, in your customers' contacts, printed on physical mail, embedded in a decade of collateral. If they don't move, you're not really free to leave regardless of what the data export says.
Ask:
- Which number types port?
Which number types port?
- In which countries?
In which countries?
- How long does the process take?
How long does the process take?
- What does it cost?
What does it cost?
Regulatory requirements vary enough by market that a vendor who answers globally hasn't answered the question.
Ask what can't move, too.
Short codes are assigned rather than owned and generally don't transfer the way long codes do. Toll-free numbers follow a different process from geographic ones. Numbers in some countries carry local presence or registration requirements that a new provider has to satisfy before a port completes.
And any number still under contract or with an outstanding balance can be blocked until that's settled. None of these are unusual, but all of them are definitely cheaper to learn about now.
3. Where does my business logic live?
If your eligibility rules, routing decisions, and escalation thresholds exist only inside a vendor's configuration UI, you've handed over the part of your business nobody else can rebuild for you.
Juliano Skrzyszowski, CTO at Nova Gestões, is direct about this in Twilio's Innovators Report:
- Don't hand your core business to third parties
Don't hand your core business to third parties
- Build your own orchestration layer
Build your own orchestration layer
- Keep your own decision engine
Keep your own decision engine
They handle millions of sensitive financial negotiations monthly and integrated communication through documented APIs precisely so the logic stays theirs.
Ask: If we left, would we be rebuilding the infrastructure or rebuilding how our business decides things?
4. Can I run you in parallel with someone else?
This is the sharpest portability test available, and most buyers never think to ask it.
A platform you can run alongside a second vendor for one journey, one region, or one channel is a platform you can leave incrementally. One that requires an all-or-nothing cutover means any future migration is a single high-risk event that nobody ever wants to approve.
It's also the test of the campaign-level claim vendors like to make about adopting only what you need. Parallel operation is what that means in practice.
5. What happens to conversation history and AI memory?
If your AI agents have been building customer context for years, that context is an asset. Ask whether it exports, in what structure, and whether it's usable outside their system.
84% of brands say their AI can access customer history while only 40% design personalization around it. If the history only exists as vendor-specific embeddings or proprietary profile objects, exporting it gives you a file but not really functionality.
6. What does wind-down look like in practice?
Ask for the operational detail:
- Notice period
Notice period
- Data retention window after termination
Data retention window after termination
- Whether support continues during migration
Whether support continues during migration
- Whether you keep API access while you move
Whether you keep API access while you move
- What happens to in-flight conversations on cutover day.
What happens to in-flight conversations on cutover day.
A vendor confident in their product will describe leaving without flinching because they don't expect you to.
7. Can I talk to your product engineering team?
Arun Rao, CTO at Eltropy, recommends valuing the depth of the relationship above the product sheet and choosing partners who open direct lines to their product engineering teams and co-author roadmaps with customers.
The lock-in signal runs underneath that. If your only route into a vendor is through an account executive, you're a line item in a renewal forecast. If engineering will take your call about a roadmap gap, you have influence over whether the platform keeps fitting you—which does more to prevent lock-in than an exit clause you hope never to use.
Get these three in writing
Most of the above can be a conversation, but these absolutely belong in the contract:
- The export specification. Formats, scope, and a time commitment.
The export specification. Formats, scope, and a time commitment.
- The notice period and post-termination data window. How long your data remains retrievable after the relationship ends.
The notice period and post-termination data window. How long your data remains retrievable after the relationship ends.
- Continued access during migration. API access and support through the transition (not up to the termination date).
Continued access during migration. API access and support through the transition (not up to the termination date).
Ask us the same questions (please)
Everything above applies to Twilio, too, and it should. A platform that only looks good when you don't ask about leaving isn't a platform you should be evaluating.
The five executives in the Innovators Report each kept something deliberately:
- Systems of record
Systems of record
- Decision engines
Decision engines
- Existing infrastructure
Existing infrastructure
That's what a buyable layer looks like. Run these seven questions against every vendor on your list, including this one, and compare the answers.
Ready to test it yourself? Start with Twilio for free.
