Vendor lock-in is a barrier to switching providers for a hosted mail solution that has increased its monthly subscription rate every year. Vendor lock-in is a situation where a customer becomes dependent on a vendor or provider for a product or service and faces difficulties or costs in switching to another vendor or provider.
Vendor lock-in can occur due to various factors, such as proprietary technology, contractual obligations, data migration challenges, compatibility issues, etc. In this case, the customer may face vendor lock-in due to the large amount of data being hosted by the mail provider and the potential challenges or costs of transferring or migrating the data to another provider.