If your monthly software bill is over $1,500, you're probably wasting ~$500 of it. Checklist before your next renewal.
Quick disclosure up top: I build custom tools for a living. Not pitching anything.
Sharing the checklist I run on my own subscriptions because it works the same whether you hire someone or do it yourself.
If your monthly software bill is creeping past $1,500/mo, you're probably wasting roughly a third of it. That's what every audit i've sat through keeps showing, three things stack:
- 38-44% of paid seats haven't been used in 30+ days (Zylo, Productiv)
- 30-40% of spend pays for overlapping features (BetterCloud)
- Roughly two-thirds of small business apps got bought by individual employees on personal cards (Productiv)
Order I'd run it in:
Step 1. Pull every recurring software charge off your card statements. The card statements specifically, because the "tools we use" list is fiction. Almost always 30-50% more on the card than in the doc.
Step 2. For each tool, six questions:
- Does someone actually use this every week, or is it the "we might need it" subscription
- How many features do we genuinely touch vs. what we're paying for
- Is it wired into 1-3 other tools, or 5+
- Could a competent dev rebuild the workflow in 4-6 weeks
- Do we genuinely need SOC 2 / HIPAA on this specific tool (most small businesses don't)
- Have we negotiated the price at renewal in the last 12 months
Answer "no, few, 1-3, yes, no, no" and the subscription is either replaceable or renegotiable.
Step 3. Before doing anything else, call the vendor and threaten to cancel, because guess waht? Dirty secret of SaaS: most vendors will quietly drop the price 40-50% at renewal once you mention you're evaluating alternatives.
Cheapest "replacement" you'll ever do!
Step 4. If you still want to replace, pick the highest-spend tool that flunked the test. One project. Don't try to consolidate five tools at once or you'll be paying for both versions six months in.
Real numbers from things I've replaced:
→ $300/mo outreach tool
Build: $6,500 · Runs at: $74-104/mo · Break-even: month 24
→ $400/mo content + LinkedIn stack
Build: $5,000 · Runs at: $46/mo · Break-even: month 14
→ $1,200/mo CRM + booking + follow-up stack
Build: $14,000 · Runs at: $100/mo · Break-even: month 12-13
Categories where the math almost always works: scheduling, outbound, social posting, starter CRMs, scraping subs, simple dashboards.
Categories where it almost never works: Stripe, email sending, Slack, Notion, anything payroll. Don't fight those, you'll lose.
Worst mistake I keep watching owners make: see the math, get excited, try to kill five tools at once with nobody actually running the project. Six months in they're paying for old and new. One tool. One project. Then move on.
Anyone here actually run this on their own stack lately, what did your waste percentage land at?