All of the major ESPs (email platforms) are moving to be marketing clouds. They realized they were well suited as they store much of the audience data and logi

All of the major ESPs (email platforms) are moving to be marketing clouds. They realized they were well suited as they store much of the audience data and logic for that sort of automation. Then they just need to connect to other platforms which is relatively easy integration. This in turn gets them more lock in with features and data. Exporting all that data and logic is a major headache. I know because I've dealt with such a migration twice now. Since there's still valuable data about unsubscribed users if they are wired up to your DB, and since you could presumably still retarget them with audience lists in other channels that aren't impacted, I understand this move. Likewise, their pricing change from auto changing your pricing tier to having you forecast is fairly standard for large email platforms, but frankly a little customer hostile imho. It shifts the risk from them to you to know your volume. Sure if you want true pay as you go, you can use the underlying mailer tools (Amazon SES, Sparkpost, etc) but business users will struggle with that.