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Full Disclosure: I worked for a sales intelligence tool that competed against ZI. This is absolutely true and I know dozens of companies that had to fall in line and renew their ZI contracts. ZI usually inserts a data purge clause into their contracts. So if after using for 3 years you decide not to renew, you are asked to remove all contacts from your systems. Trouble is by this time, the data has travelled into your sales execution platform, CRM, marketing automation. They know there is no way you can remove them all. And then they have what is called Trojan contacts, and the moment you send emails any of those contacts through your domain, their legal team hits you. That being said, large enterprises with sound legal teams easily get away. They know ZI has no legal grounding because if they go to court that can open a Pandora’s box on how ZI collects and processes data, but for small companies it is a different matter. They often shut up and pay. So read your contracts carefully before onboarding and negotiate any purge related clauses. Not just for ZI, a lot of other Sales Intelligence Vendors are also inserting these clauses these days.

Here's my answer - Yep.

Over the last 15 years, I have noticed many of our clients renewing marketing data products like ZoomInfo, not because they like the solution or it's solving the problem but because of contractual obligations! We had to pay one such partner until the end of the contract while shutting down our last company.

Zoominfo is just nasty that way. They are always willing to get ugly in negotiations too. They had asked me to delete data that was sourced by us but was 'cleansed' by them too. But you can insure yourself from these with good CRM design. And most importantly preparing for a Zoominfo renewal atleast 3 months in advance.