For most of its history, martech has been characterized by relentless churn. Marketers frequently swapped out core systems. Vendors battled over feature sets. Moving from one platform to another — even mission-critical ones — was commonplace. That cycle has now broken, and the data makes it clear. The 2025 MarTech Replacement Survey reveals a steep decline in replacement activity across key categories. Marketing automation replacements dropped from 31.1% in 2024 to 19.4% in 2025. CRM fell from 22.1% to 9.7%. Email platforms slid from 24.3% to 13.7%. This isn’t a migration from one category to another. It’s a broad, cross-category retreat from replacement behavior. It’s occurring even as some areas — such as analytics/BI — continue to expand, underscoring that this is not just weaker demand but a fundamental shift in how teams evolve their stacks.
Download the MarTech Replacement Survey
No registration required
Martech replacements changed course dramatically in 2025, with many of the apps that were most frequently replaced in earlier years now holding steady. Get the full story in this complimentary report.
Download for free
5 years of stability, spike, then pullback
Looking at a five-year window, the change comes into sharp focus. From 2021 through 2023, replacement rates for core platforms were strikingly consistent. Marketing automation stayed near 24%, and CRM and email showed comparable stability. In 2024, several categories surged — especially marketing automation, which climbed to 31%. Then in 2025, replacement activity fell off sharply in nearly every major category. This stability → spike → pullback pattern signals a decisive break from earlier norms.
The churn era
From 2021…