What we stopped paying for, why we dropped it, and what took its place. This is where the real savings happen.
We track our tool stack like a business -- because it is one. Every dollar spent on tools needs to earn more than it costs.
We were paying for Grammarly Pro ($12/mo), Hemingway (one-time but limited), Copy.ai ($36/mo), and SurferSEO ($89/mo) separately. ChatGPT Plus handles grammar, rewriting, and general copy. Jasper handles the marketing-specific SEO content that Copy.ai and Surfer were doing -- but better, with brand voice training.
DALL-E 3 is now built into ChatGPT Plus -- no need for a separate subscription. Midjourney handles the high-quality, stylized visuals that Canva's AI and Adobe Firefly were doing poorly. Canva's free tier still works for layouts, but we dropped Pro.
Descript ($24/mo) was overkill for our short-form workflow. Loom was redundant once Synthesia handled explainer videos. Opus Clip replaced the clipping and captioning workflow we were doing manually in CapCut Pro. Net result: faster output, fewer tools.
Notion AI ($10/mo add-on) was doing basic summarization we could get from ChatGPT. Zapier Premium ($49/mo) was running 3 automations that we rebuilt as custom GPTs with simple API calls. Same output, less vendor lock-in.
Fewer tools. Better output. More money in your pocket. This is what optimization looks like.
See Our Current Top 5 →