Spotting a tool that is about to squeeze its users

Nobody announces a price rise early. But the decisions that lead to one are made months ahead and leave visible traces, because they require changing pages that face the public.

The five signals

1. A feature moves up a tier. Something you use on your current plan now appears one tier higher for new customers. You keep it for now, under grandfathering that has just become a cost line in someone's model. This is the strongest single signal there is.

2. Limits appear where there were none. "Unlimited" quietly becomes "generous", then a number. The number is usually well above what most people use, which is exactly how it passes without complaint — and it is a lever that only moves one way.

3. The free plan stops being advertised. Still there, no longer on the pricing page, no longer mentioned in onboarding. A free plan being de-emphasised is a free plan being wound down.

4. Grandfathering gets an end date. Often in a changelog or a help article rather than an email. "Legacy plans will migrate to current pricing on…" is the announcement, and it usually predates the email by months.

5. An acquisition. The most reliable predictor of all. Pricing alignment with the acquirer's model is standard, and it is rarely downward.

Where to look

None of this requires inside knowledge:

• The pricing page, compared against what you remember. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine shows exactly what changed and when, which turns a vague feeling into a fact.
• The changelog and help centre, where limit changes are documented properly because support needs them to be.
• The community forum, where new users ask why they cannot do something you can. That question is grandfathering, seen from the other side.

What to actually do

Not panic-migrating. Most price changes are reasonable and switching costs more than the rise.

Run your export. Now, while your current plan still includes it. Export is one of the features that moves up a tier, and discovering that during a migration is the worst possible time.

Write down what you would use instead. Not a migration — a name. The absence of an alternative is what makes a rise unarguable, and finding one takes an afternoon you have now rather than an afternoon you will not have then.

Check what you actually use. Teams routinely pay for a tier because of one feature nobody has used in a year. A rise is a good prompt to check, and sometimes the answer is a cheaper plan rather than a different product.

Know your renewal date. Annual plans give notice; the notice is only useful if it arrives before the renewal rather than after.

A price rise is not a betrayal. Being unable to leave is the problem, and that is decided long before the price changes.

When it is genuinely fine

Software gets more expensive because it costs money to run and improve, and a tool that never raises its price is often a tool nobody is working on.

The signals worth acting on are the ones about lock-in, not price: export moving behind a paywall, an open format replaced by a proprietary one, an API deprecated without a replacement. Those change whether leaving is possible.

A tool that raises its price and keeps your data portable is asking you a fair question. One that raises its price after making leaving hard has answered it for you.