Hosting Lock-In Cost Curve

AI website builders bundle generation, hosting, and CMS into one subscription, so the real cost of a build is not the monthly fee but the cost of leaving. Every site a client adds raises the number of domains, DNS records, SSL certificates, and content records that must be migrated if the agency switches platforms. That exit cost compounds per site, not per account, which means a 40-site portfolio carries roughly 40 times the migration exposure of a single build. The framework asks agencies to price the exit before signing the entry. A white-label platform such as Duda or Lindo can look cheap at $20 to $50 per site per month until a client asks to move to a different host and the agency absorbs the rebuild. Forrester's September 2026 finding that private AI deployments outperform shared public models applies here too: the more client context lives inside one vendor's hosted layer, the harder it is to move without losing differentiation.