The vendor moves that change your exit math
Every entry below is a real, dated pricing or licensing change, each linked to its source. We track the ones that matter for a migration decision: perpetual licenses ending, per-metric repricing, EOL deadlines that force a move, and the acquisitions that usually precede a bill increase. Reviewed July 2026.
- Repricing reported 8–15× VirtualizationBroadcom — VMware Cloud Foundation
The European cloud trade body ECCO and multiple customers publicly reported VMware renewal increases in the 800–1500% range following Broadcom's licensing overhaul.
- Repricing 72-core minimum (later walked back) VirtualizationBroadcom — VMware Cloud Foundation
Broadcom was reported to raise the VMware minimum subscription order to 72 cores, up from 16, raising the entry cost for smaller estates; it later walked the 72-core minimum back.
- Price increase Pro +80%, Team +67% Containers & PaaSDocker — Docker subscription plans
Docker restructured its paid plans and Hub usage limits, with the Pro tier rising from $5 to $9 and Team from $9 to $15 per user per month, effective December 2024.
- Reversal / relief open source again (AGPL) Search & dataElastic — Elasticsearch / Kibana
Elastic added the AGPL as a license option, making Elasticsearch and Kibana open source again roughly three years after the SSPL move.
- Reversal / relief now free for personal use VirtualizationBroadcom — VMware Workstation / Fusion
Broadcom made VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, a rare cost cut amid the wider subscription changes.
- Acquisition IaC & secretsIBM — HashiCorp (acquisition)
IBM announced an agreement to acquire HashiCorp; acquisitions of this kind are commonly followed by packaging and pricing changes worth watching at renewal.
- Acquisition MonitoringCisco — Splunk (acquisition)
Cisco completed its acquisition of Splunk; buyers frequently reassess observability spend and packaging after large platform consolidations like this.
- EOL / forced move forced to Cloud / Data Center DevOps & ITSMAtlassian — Server products (EOL)
Atlassian ended support for its self-hosted Server products, forcing customers onto Cloud or the pricier Data Center tier and often a materially higher bill.
- License change subscription-only VirtualizationBroadcom — VMware vSphere / VCF
Broadcom announced the end of VMware perpetual licenses, moving the portfolio to subscription and collapsing the catalog into a handful of bundles.
- License change BSL, no longer open source IaC & secretsHashiCorp — Terraform, Vault, others
HashiCorp relicensed its core products from MPL to the Business Source License, which led the community to fork Terraform as OpenTofu and Vault as OpenBao.
- Price increase ~9% list SaaS / CRMSalesforce — Sales/Service/Marketing Cloud
Salesforce announced an average 9% list-price increase across several clouds, which it described as its first list increase in seven years.
- License change source access restricted Operating systemsRed Hat — RHEL source code
Red Hat restricted public RHEL source distribution to CentOS Stream and paying customers, prompting the AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux communities to change how they rebuild.
- License change subscription-only · seat minimums VDI & EUCCloud Software Group — Citrix
After the Citrix take-private, the vendor pushed customers to a Universal Subscription and was reported to end perpetual maintenance and impose seat minimums that pressured smaller customers.
- Repricing per-employee Runtimes & middlewareOracle — Java SE
Oracle moved Java SE subscriptions to an employee-count metric, meaning the bill can scale with total headcount rather than the number of Java users or installs.
- Price increase first commercial list increase SaaS / productivityMicrosoft — Microsoft 365 (commercial)
Microsoft announced list-price increases on several Microsoft 365 commercial plans, effective March 2022, its first substantive increase since Office 365 launched.
- License change SSPL / Elastic License Search & dataElastic — Elasticsearch / Kibana
Elastic relicensed Elasticsearch and Kibana away from Apache 2.0 to a dual SSPL/Elastic License, which triggered AWS's OpenSearch fork.
- License change SSPL DatabasesMongoDB — MongoDB Community
MongoDB adopted the Server Side Public License, constraining how cloud providers and some self-hosters can offer it and pushing managed users toward Atlas.
How this list is maintained
This is an editorially curated tracker, not an automated feed. An editor adds each entry by hand from a primary announcement or a reputable report, writes a single factual sentence, and links the source so you can verify it. We deliberately do not accept open submissions, which keeps the list accurate and free of spam.
What we log is scoped on purpose: changes that alter the cost or difficulty of leaving a vendor. A routine feature release isn't here; a shift from perpetual to subscription, a new per-employee metric, or an end-of-life date that forces a platform move is. When a change has a matching guide, the entry links straight to the exit path. For the weekly narrative around these moves, see Vendor Watch; to price your own move, use the Switching Cost Calculator.
Disclaimer: entries summarize publicly reported information as of their date and are provided for general guidance only. They are not statements about any specific customer's contract, not legal or financial advice, and magnitudes shown are widely-reported ranges, not quotes. Always confirm current terms with the vendor or an authorized partner. Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.