Not every SaaS company has endless spare money.
It might be because you’re bootstrapped. Or you might have a limited runway. In any case, you need to be economical. That’s just smart business.
When we think about what SaaS companies spend on, we tend to consider the big things:
- Hiring and salaries
- Equipment
- Taxes
- Office costs
Fundera created a great list of 14 common small business startup costs.
There’s one cost that often slips our minds. It’s the tools we use in our everyday work.
SaaS tools don’t always seem like big expenditures. However, SaaS companies and startups use a lot of tools for their everyday operations. Most of them aren’t outrageously expensive.
What’s another 20 bucks a month for a service that makes your life easier? But how many of these “only 20 bucks a month” tools do you already have? Do you know?
It adds up. Big time.
We all want quality tools to run our business, even if we’re on a budget. That doesn’t mean you have to necessarily empty your pockets for it.
Canny is a fully bootstrapped SaaS company. We know exactly what it’s like to be mindful of money.
In this post, we’ll explore:
1. Main operating areas of a SaaS company
2. Free SaaS tools to consider
3. Affordable alternatives (when free SaaS tools aren’t available)
4. A pre-formatted spreadsheet for easy calculations
You can make a copy of this spreadsheet to:
- Analyze your current tech stack costs and see where you can cut costs
- Outline your desired tech stack and predict future costs
Let’s roll!
The SaaS tool categories
We’re going to be looking at the following big categories for SaaS tools:
We’ll list a few options that have free plans.
We’re not going to go into super hacky alternative options for saving money (e.g., maybe you can just use a Google Doc for team chat?) Nobody has time for that. We need to be efficient.
But, hopefully, you will find some new and cool tools to check out and save costs. Remember: only you know what is the right tool for your team. Use this article as a guide.
PS: there’s a little ♥ next to the tools we use or have used and/or would recommend. If you have questions about our experience with them, reach out to us!
Product management
Customer feedback
♥ Canny
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $79/month
Internal communication
♥ SLACK
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $7.25/active user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
♥ TWIST
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $8/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
FLEEP
Free plan: no
Entry level pricing: €5/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Marketing and external communication
COMMUNICATION
♥ MISSIVE
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $14/member/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
EMAIL MARKETING
♥ MAILCHIMP
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $13/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
EMAILOCTOPUS
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $8/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
HUBSPOT’S EMAIL MARKETING TOOL
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $45 for the entire marketing hub
Pricing page
Third party reviews
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT
♥ BUFFER
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $6/month/channel
Pricing page
Third party reviews
HOOTSUITE
Free plan: free trial
Entry level pricing: $99/month (1 user)
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Customer support, customer service, and customer success
TICKETS
FRESHDESK
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $15/agent/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
ZOHO DESK
Free plan: no
Entry level pricing: $19/agent/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
NPS (customer satisfaction)
DELIGHTED
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $17/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
CRM
HUBSPOT CRM
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $45/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Task management and project management
♥ CLICKUP
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $7/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
TRELLO
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $5/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
ASANA
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $9.25/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Jira software
Free plan: yes
Entre level pricing: $8.15/user/month
Documentation
♥ NOTION
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $8/member/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
♥ XTENSIO
Free plan: Yes
Entry level pricing: $50/month (2 users)
Pricing page
Third party reviews
♥ Google workspace
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $6/user/month
Metrics/analytics
CHARTMOGUL
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $100/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
♥ AIRTABLE
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $10/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
♥ MIXPANEL
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $779/year
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Google Analytics
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Design
♥ FIGMA
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $12/editor/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
INVISION STUDIO
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Landing page
Third party reviews
WAKE
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: enterprise, custom price
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Engineering
CLOUD SERVICES
♥ AMAZON WEB SERVICES
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: custom
Page about free tier
CLOUDFLARE
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $20/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: custom
Page about free tier
Third party reviews
CODE EDITING
♥ ATOM
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Pricing page
Third party reviews
SUBLIME TEXT
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $80
Purchase page
Third party reviews
VISUAL STUDIO CODE
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Pricing page
Third party reviews
CODE REPOSITORY
♥ GITHUB
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $9/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
GITLAB
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $4/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
ERROR REPORTING
♥ SENTRY
Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $26/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews
Happy budgeting!
Hopefully you found some new, cool, and wallet-friendly SaaS tools to check out for your team.
Have anything awesome to add to the list? Let us know!
Don’t forget to check out that budgeting spreadsheet.
For affiliate marketing, ReferDigital.com could be added to this list – it doesn’t have any sign up or monthly fees. It charges only a fraction of actual commissions earned on sales from affiliates (no sales, nothing due).
Great list, thank you I actually didn’t know about some of these!
All the best with Canny!
I like Rollbar as well for error reporting. It’s not quite as fancy as Sentry but it gets the job done!
Discord definitely deserves a place in the Internal communication section
So Azure does not qualify as a valid cloud service option?
Actually, Zoho has integrated suite with 1 dollar per month per user for all tools including CRM, Helpdesk, Docs, HRM, Finance, Marketing, Mail, Analytics, Business process and lot more as an integrated tool. Also, they provide free tools in some applications up to 5 users.
https://www.zoho.com/one/
For virtual bug testing you can add https://w3dart.com/ to your list.
It has free plan and starting price of $19/Month for unlimited users.
Very interesting , good job and thanks for sharing such a good blog. Thanks
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