The average startup pays for 12 SaaS tools and actively uses 6. The other 6 are zombie subscriptions draining cash every month. This is the stack we recommend to founders who want full business coverage for under $200/month — no bloat, no feature overlap, no tools that get forgotten.
The $197/month stack
CRM: HubSpot Free → $0
HubSpot's free CRM is enough for a pre-product-market-fit startup. Unlimited contacts, deal tracking, email sync. Upgrade when you hit specific limitations — not before.
Email marketing: Kit Free (up to 10k subscribers) → $0
Kit's free plan covers newsletters, landing pages, and basic automation for up to 10,000 subscribers. That's genuinely enough for most startups in their first 18 months.
Project management: ClickUp Free → $0
ClickUp's free plan is unusually generous — unlimited tasks, 5 spaces, docs, time tracking. For a team under 5 people, the free plan covers everything. The Unlimited plan ($7/seat/month) is the right upgrade when you need more views and integrations.
Accounting: Wave → $0
Wave handles invoicing, expense tracking, and basic financial reporting at no cost. Connect your bank and credit card accounts and you have real-time cash flow visibility. Pay for payroll ($6/employee/month) when you hire.
Customer support: Freshdesk Free → $0
Freshdesk's free plan covers unlimited agents with basic ticketing. For early-stage support volume, this is more than enough. Upgrade to Growth ($15/agent/month) when you need automations and collision detection.
Automation: Zapier Free (100 tasks/month) or Make Free (1,000 ops/month) → $0
Use free automation to connect your tools. Most early startups don't hit free tier limits if they're thoughtful about what they automate.
Video and async comms: Loom Free (25 videos) → $0
Loom for async demos, onboarding walkthrough, investor updates. 25 videos on free is limiting — upgrade to Business ($15/seat/month) when you use it daily.
When to upgrade
The stack above gets most startups to their first $10k MRR without paying a cent on tooling. The trigger to upgrade any tool isn't time-based — it's when a specific missing feature is blocking a real workflow. Don't pay for features you're not using yet.
The stack that kills startups
We see founders buy Salesforce, Slack Business+, Notion Teams, and a premium design tool on day one. That's $500+/month before writing a single line of code. Start with free tiers. Upgrade exactly one thing when you hit a real constraint.