On the other hand I worked for a small place that was spending over 250k'ish per year on website …

> Not to mention if you invoke those companies you are putting yourself in their walled garden that makes them money and takes control of your income away from you. Why would any person want to do that? There is no moral quandary here. Buying into proprietary software and walled gardens is ridiculously common and acceptable in a business environment. That's code for "no liability if something goes wrong, minimal maintenance, and easy onboarding of new employees."

There is some truth to this. One of the fails we had was pricing our product too low, where it was looked at as a stepping stone to something more expensive, even though it provided the same exact functionality minus the fancy looking ui. There were businesses that wanted to get out of their existing application suite, but are hooked in due to management perception and the sunk cost fallacy. The company who overpriced considerably is reaping millions per year on that application. If I could just go back in time..