What SaaS tooling costs a small business, and where the money leaks
A made-up 5-person business on a normal set of tools pays about $308 a month at list price, roughly $3,700 a year, before it adds a CRM. The bigger leak usually isn't the price of any one tool, it's paying for ten tabs of something and using two.
This is the topic I care about most, because it's what most of my builds have come from. Here's how I'd add it up and where I'd look first. Hope this helps.
Founder, Handled. Greenville, SC. Updated October 2026, 7 min read.
A quick example: a made-up business, real prices
Five people, a service business, the kind of tools I see all the time. List prices checked October 2026.
| What it's for | Tool and plan | Math | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email and docs | Google Workspace Business Standard, paid yearly | $14 a user x 5 | $70 |
| Accounting | QuickBooks Online Essentials | flat | $85 |
| Team chat | Slack Pro, paid yearly | $7.25 a user x 5 | $36.25 |
| Notes and projects | Notion Plus | $12 a user x 5 | $60 |
| Booking | Calendly Standard | $12 a user x 2 | $24 |
| Email marketing | Mailchimp, 500 contacts | entry tier | $13 |
| Connecting it all | Zapier | entry plan | $19.99 |
| Total | Seven tools | About $308 |
That's a lean setup. Now add a CRM. GoHighLevel Starter is $97 a month flat. HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional is $800 a month with 3 seats, plus a $3,000 onboarding fee before you send anything. Same business, very different bill.
None of these tools are bad. The question is how much of each one you actually open.
What makes the bill grow
Five things, and none of them show up on the pricing page as a warning.
Most tools charge per person. Notion Plus is $12 a user, so it's $60 for five people and $120 for ten. Every hire quietly raises every seat-based bill at once.
Email tools charge by list size. Mailchimp starts at $13 for 500 contacts and is about $75 at 5,000 on the same plan. Cleaning out people who never open anything can drop you a tier.
Yearly is cheaper, like Slack Pro at $7.25 a user instead of $8.75. But prepaying for a tool you cancel in six months isn't a discount. Prepay only for what you use every day.
When tools don't talk to each other, you pay something like Zapier (from $19.99 a month) or Make (paid plans from $10.59 a month) to connect them. It doesn't feel like a tool, but it's on the bill, and somebody has to fix it when it breaks.
A tool for a project that ended. A free trial that turned into a charge. Someone who left and still has a seat. The only way to find these is to read the card statement line by line.
The feature you want is always one tier up. Before you upgrade, write down the one thing you need from it. Sometimes the upgrade really is the cheapest fix, cheaper than switching tools or building anything.
How I'd cut it, in order
Same order I use with every business.
1Learn what you have
List every charge from the last three months. Next to each one, write who uses it and which parts. Most owners find at least one tool they forgot about and a couple that overlap. Do this before you price anything new.
2Pick a tool if one really fits
If three tools overlap and one of them does all three jobs well, keep that one and cancel the others. An all-in-one like GoHighLevel can replace several smaller bills, but only if you'll actually use what it does.
3Build what's missing
If you're paying for ten tabs and using two, or the learning curve and support costs more than building, that's when custom makes sense. Our Stack Replacement builds start at $5,000, with a fixed quote after a free scoping call. Support after the build is $2,500 a month if you want us to keep it running.
Do the math honestly on step three. A build plus ongoing support has to be worth more than the subscriptions it replaces plus the hassle it removes. Sometimes it isn't, and then the answer is step one or two.
Questions people ask me
Got one that isn't here? Ask me on a free call →
How much does SaaS tooling cost a small business?
It depends mostly on how many people you have and how many tools charge per seat. A made-up 5-person service business on common tools at list price (Google Workspace, QuickBooks Online, Slack, Notion, Calendly, Mailchimp and Zapier) comes to about $308 a month, or about $3,700 a year. Add a CRM like GoHighLevel at $97 a month or HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional at $800 a month and the number jumps fast.
Why does my software bill keep growing?
Usually three things: per-seat pricing (every hire raises every seat-based tool), contact-based pricing (email tools charge more as your list grows), and tools that got added for one project and never canceled. The fix starts with a list of every charge on your card statement, not with a new tool.
Is an all-in-one platform cheaper than separate tools?
Sometimes. GoHighLevel, for example, is $97 a month flat with unlimited contacts and covers a CRM, email, texting and booking. That can replace several smaller bills. But if you only use two of its features, you are back to paying for ten tabs and using two. Count what you would actually use before you switch.
Should I pay for software yearly or monthly?
Yearly is usually cheaper if you are sure you will keep the tool. Slack Pro, for example, is $8.75 a user on monthly billing and $7.25 on yearly. Only prepay for the tools your team opens every day. Anything you might cancel in six months stays monthly.
When does it make sense to replace tools with something custom?
When you are paying for a lot of a tool you don't use, or when learning it and getting support costs more than building what you actually need. That is what our Stack Replacement builds are for, from $5,000 with a fixed quote after a free scoping call. If learning the tool you already have would fix it, do that first.
When you don't need me
Most of this you can do with a bank statement and an afternoon.
Your list is short and you use all of it. If every tool gets opened every day, you're in good shape. Leave it alone.
The problem is forgotten subscriptions. Cancel them yourself. You don't need anybody for that.
One upgrade would fix it. If the feature you need is one tier up on a tool your team already knows, upgrading is cheaper than switching or building.
What changed
- October 2026 (later): Make's entry price corrected to $10.59 a month (it had said $12), and the Mailchimp 5,000-contact figure now uses the same Essentials plan as the $13 entry price ($75, not the $100 Standard price).
- October 2026: rewritten top to bottom. Replaced the three example businesses and their savings figures, which weren't real clients, with one clearly made-up example priced from vendor pages. Removed unsourced claims about average spend, redundant tools, renewal price increases, context switching and consolidation savings.
- April 2026: first published.
Sources
Every price and outside fact on this page comes from the sources below, checked October 12, 2026. Prices change often, so check before you buy.
More from the resource library
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