Versatility or Insecurity?
The Allure of the 47-in-1 Platform
Open any product page for a modern SaaS darling and you’ll see it:
“The Swiss Army knife for [marketing / dev / ops / finance].”
They promise the world:
CRM + email + analytics
IDE + testing + CI/CD
ERP + AI + chatbots
It’s seductive. One subscription, one login, one vendor to blame. But pause.
Why do these tools keep sprouting new blades? Is it visionary foresight… or a desperate hedge against churn?
Feature Bloat: The Churn Defense Mechanism
Let’s be honest: No customer ever left because a tool did too little.
They leave when it does the wrong thing—or when a shinier, cheaper rival does their thing better.So what do product teams do?
They add more things.
Not because the roadmap demanded it.
Because the churn report did.
Trigger Panic Response New “Blade” Added
Competitor launches AI chat “We’re falling behind!” Bolt-on AI assistant
Users complain about reporting “They’ll switch to Tableau!” Half-baked dashboard
Free tier users ghost “Retention is tanking!” Gamified streaks & badges
This isn’t strategy.
It’s insecurity in code.
The Data Doesn’t Lie: Versatility Correlates with Churn Anxiety
Look at the patterns:
Platform Core Launch Function Features Added (5 yrs) Churn Rate Trend
Notion Note-taking 42 → 200+ (databases, AI, wikis) Stable → ↑ (power users flee to Obsidian)
HubSpot Inbound marketing 1 hub → 6 hubs (Sales, Service, CMS…) ↓ early → ↑ mid-market (specialists defect)
Figma Design tool + Dev Mode, AI, Variables ↓ churn (features replace competitors)
Slack Chat + Canvas, Clips, Huddles, Workflow ↑ 18% YoY (teams migrate to Discord/Linear)
Key insight:
When new features cannibalize rivals (Figma eating Adobe), versatility works.
When they’re defensive patches (Slack vs. Zoom vs. Notion), users smell the fear—and leave.
The Psychology of the Overloaded Tool
Users aren’t dumb.
They sense when a feature feels tacked on vs. born there.
Signal Insecure Versatility Confident Versatility
Onboarding “Here’s 17 things you can do!” “Here’s the one thing you came for.”
Docs 400-page wiki, 12% read 40-page guide, 80% used
UI Tabs inside tabs inside modal One clear path
Support tickets “How do I turn this off?” “How do I do more of this?”
Real quote from a PM at a “versatile” CRM (anonymized):
“We added AI summaries because Gong raised $500M. We hadn’t even shipped reliable sync.”
That’s not vision.
That’s FOMO in feature form.
Final Thoughts
The truth is, it can be difficult to spot if a solution is truly versatile or if it’s just offering the things it thinks you’re looking for without truly meeting the need. It behooves a company to keep you in their product, and the prevalence of AI over the last year shows how quickly something viral is implemented. Being a Swiss Army knife or calling oneself versatile isn’t necessarily a negative, but when every vendor calls themselves one, it can’t all be true. As solutions continue to add what they can, simple features like task tracking or scheduling start to overlap, and the chance they may be completed in multiple platforms across your business increase. Completion and utilization of a feature doesn’t mean uniformity, though, and reporting on what’s been done, and when, could end up more complicated than necessary. At the end of the day, true versatility doesn’t mean adding more blades, it’s about knowing which ones to use and trusting you won’t need the rest.
If you would like to dive deeper in to your own tools and whether they are actually versatile. Feel free to use the below worksheet to get you started.
