I agree with all you said.

> also worth noting that the market for accounting software is very large...

Yes but I still see the problem of getting connected with a company that may not have a good plan for longevity. I've done a good bit of testing of a particular accounting package that I like, but the longer I've tested it the more I see evidence, reading between the lines, that they don't have the development resources (programmer time, other staff) that they started with. They initially created a great product, but now updates are slow to come out, promised features are still "promised", etc. Basically every small company is trying to look like a big company (or at least not like a fledgling company) to their potential customers...up until the very day they decide to close or sell the business.

So my comment would be that yes, it is possible for a small company to do a decent job of servicing their customer base and stay in business while competing with more-well-funded companies. But unless/until they reach a critical mass of customers it's easy for them to someday wake up and decide to "pull the plug" and shut down the business. Or if not, and it's just a one- or two-person operation (or a few, as I suspect Ambrook is), we as customers have a significant investment in learning/using a particular piece of software, which we risk losing if the company goes belly up.

Contrast this with a company like FreshBooks or Xero.  They may or may not be huge companies, and they may or may not be operating on a very thin margin (we cannot know), but they have enough customers that even if they throw in the towel somebody will want to pick up their customer base and try to service it well enough to maintain/keep it.