A key factor that needs to be considered in adopting these tools is how well you can manage your risk exposure to abuse. If you are paying fees based on "usage

A key factor that needs to be considered in adopting these tools is how well you can manage your risk exposure to abuse. If you are paying fees based on "usage", what prevents a bad actor (competitor, hacker, a bug in your own code) from causing you to rack up huge fees? And if these features are providing critical functionality for your own app or service, it might not be feasible for you to simply "turn it off". Another key question is whether or not the third-party you are relying on is an actual reliable business partner. Will they get acquired and/or go out of business unexpectedly (a la Parse)? Will they get hacked and create a risk exposure for you that way (PII, PCI, etc.)? What kind of internal controls do they have? And lastly... how do they integrate with devops? A lot of these tools have web-based administrative consoles that require you to log in and make changes. That sort of thing flies in the face of using tools like chef/puppet/salt/ansible--instead you've got to write detailed release notes that typically a product manager will execute, not an operations person. I agree that this is a new reality for a lot of companies/developers. But it comes with a lot of risks and issues.