Exactly! That has been my experience with corporate software, too. I used free versions and all at first until I started being a tiiiny bit late for a few deadlines and not quite being able to do some things.
It would have been alright for me as a normal user but clients don't change their minds. They don't want to install new things or be flexible. They just want things done quickly in what they believe is the best way. So I just had to adapt and use the corporate licensed software and it always worked right for me and I delivered the best for the clients.
(I'm talking about MemoQ and professional translations.)
edit: Though, sometimes, there can be better software. In our case, MemoQ was particularly great, but it was an old-timer. The industry standard was another one, I can't recall its name, but our clients were already accustomed and it was absolutely impossible to change the software we used.
Same goes for messaging. Slack would have been better but we used Skype because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. When people are accustomed to things, and it gives you money, you just do exactly that and earn your monthly allocation of goodies.