It’s tempting to see a recently merged platform and think, “Ooh, a neat bundle of tools all in one spot!” Kinda like discovering your favorite pizza place now also sells ice cream. But as any pizza purist knows, sometimes adding too many toppings spoils the original flavor. In our experience, newly acquired platforms often look amazing in theory, yet in practice, they can lead to headaches we’d rather avoid.
The Bundling Dilemma: Too Much Under One Corporate Roof
One of the biggest draws of an acquisition is the promise of bundling. Maybe a social scheduling tool gets snapped up by a parent company offering analytics software. On paper, it’s a match made in heaven: “Why deal with multiple systems when one company can do it all?”
However, we often find that once the ink dries, the newly formed entity starts emphasizing its own “family” of products at the expense of outside integrations. That might mean your beloved tool no longer plays nicely with a competitor’s software. Or if you only want one piece of the suite, you’re nudged to sign on for the entire bundle- like buying a car but being forced to purchase the deluxe sound system and the heated seats—even if all you really wanted was the standard model.
This bundling approach isn’t always a deal-breaker, but it definitely can limit your flexibility. If your marketing strategy requires mixing and matching best-of-breed solutions—say an industry-leading email platform plus a specialized data analytics tool—those nimble combos become harder to maintain once a provider is incentivized to close its ecosystem to outside players.
Juggling Too Much: The Boeing Parallel
Let's talk about 2024's most trusted company: Boeing. Boeing has gone through a series of mergers and reorganizations over the years, and despite being an industry giant, they’ve had some high-profile engineering stumbles (like that door incident mid-flight). It’s not that Boeing forgot how to make airplanes. Instead, when you’re juggling multiple lines of business (planes, aerospace, and more), teams get reshuffled, experienced staff might depart, and essential knowledge sometimes slips through the cracks.
We see a similar challenge with newly acquired tech platforms. When a company suddenly has two or three flagship products to maintain, the original gem that made the brand special might start collecting dust in the back of the workshop. It’s simply a matter of bandwidth. Teams get overloaded. Deadlines stack up. Feature rollouts slow to a crawl. And before you know it, the tool you loved is barely recognizable, lost in the shadow of the “new AI feature” the parent company wants to promote.
As with Boeing, it’s not about a lack of capability—these organizations can still make solid software. But when you stretch focus across multiple priorities, there’s a good chance something essential gets missed. In the tech world, that “something” is usually the steady, incremental improvements that keep a platform sharp and competitive.
When Support Slips and Knowledge Walks Out the Door
Another side effect of acquisitions is the reshuffle of people—and that means years of expertise can walk right out the door. Or put another way, the people who built and loved the product cash out or move on after the acquisition. That leaves you with a support team that may not have the same deep-rooted knowledge or passion for the tool.
Worse yet, parent companies or private equity firms often trim overhead by outsourcing support. Overseas support isn't inherently bad—buut we've found the level of strategic insight goes down once the original in-house folks are gone. You might end up with friendly but surface-level responses, links to generic help docs, and lengthy email chains that end in: “Thanks for your patience, we’re still investigating.” Meanwhile, your project timelines creep along, waiting for solutions that never come.
Why We Steer Clear
We don’t avoid newly acquired platforms because we like being contrarian. We do it because we’ve seen firsthand how quickly a once-great tool can lose its spark under new management. Maybe the parent company prioritizes short-term gains over long-term usability. Or maybe the new leadership has grand plans that, in reality, are AI features nobody asked for.
Of course, there are exceptions. If a platform’s core team sticks around, if product roadmaps stay transparent, and if the acquiring company invests heavily in maintaining quality support, great things can happen. But those situations are the exception, not the rule.
At the end of the day, if you’re choosing between a newly acquired platform and a stable, specialized solution that excels at its one main job, we usually suggest the latter. You’ll likely get better support, fewer surprises, and more freedom to build a tech stack that truly fits your needs. After all, in marketing—just like in life—you can’t do everything well if you’re trying to do it all at once. And if Boeing’s experience taught us anything, it’s that juggling too many tasks under one umbrella can lead to cracks you don’t see until they’re too big to ignore.
