Which of your apps should you keep?

The short version 01

Most rented software is fine, and we’d tell you to keep it. Replace a tool when it hurts your customers, locks you in or charges you for what you don’t use. Connect it when it’s good at its job. Skip it when nothing is needed.

You may not have much of a pile to begin with. In a Small Business Expo survey of 781 owners, 62% paid for two or fewer software subscriptions, and 41% said their software costs had gone up over the past year.¹

Most clients start with a redesign, and that can be the whole job. If one rented tool is costing you, we can replace that one and leave the others alone.

Replace, connect or skip 02

• Replace when it hurts your customers’ experience, locks you in, or charges for things you don’t use.
• Connect when it’s good at its job. Your website and the tool pass information along, and nobody retypes it.
• Skip when nothing is needed. Sometimes the answer is a clearer page.

Email belongs with payments and the books: keep it. Nobody should rebuild those to make a point.

A chat tool can earn its place when customers arrive with real, specific questions. In that same study, chatbots were most valuable when they “functioned as experts.”² If it helps, we can build an assistant that answers from your own pages, says it’s AI, and hands off to a person. For missed calls after hours, a good AI receptionist may be the better thing to connect.

Who holds the login is its own question. We wrote it up in Who owns your website?

Build vs buy: when custom software is worth it 03

For most small businesses, buying is the right call. Custom starts to make sense for the piece your customers see, or the piece that’s specific to how you work.

Rent when the job is the same for every business and plenty of customers are paying to keep it working. Build when your way of doing it is part of what clients are buying from you. A client portal where they see progress and send requests is one example. An inquiry form that asks what you’d ask on the phone is another. So is follow-up that answers every inquiry. We can build any one of these on its own, if it helps, and connect it to the tools you keep.

AI changes two things here. Small tools are quicker to build, which is why the question comes up now. And you can often get AI working without changing tools: it can read a new inquiry, look the person up in your CRM and draft a reply for you to check. If your CRM lets other software connect, we can set that up and leave the CRM where it is.

Custom has a real cost too. Someone has to look after it when a form breaks on a phone or you add a service. We can stay on to do that, and the quote says what it costs. Count it when you compare.

You can own everything outright, or spread the cost over a partnership. What to check before you sign with anyone is in Who owns your website?

What is replacing SaaS? 04

For most small businesses, nothing is. SaaS, software you rent by the month, still does the common jobs well. A few specific things are changing.

• One large company cut many of its tools. Klarna’s chief executive wrote that it shut down about 1,200 by an internal estimate, Salesforce included. In the same post he wrote, “I don’t think it is the end of Salesforce; might be the opposite.” And on others following: “Will all companies do what Klarna does? I doubt it.”⁷
• More people are building specific tools. Retool surveyed 817 builders, including its own customers, and 35% said they’d replaced at least part of a SaaS tool with a custom build.⁸ Microsoft’s chief executive says Copilot will help “every organization stand up their own infinite SaaS factory.”⁹ Both companies sell ways to do this, and Retool doesn’t say how many are small businesses, so read them that way.
• Some prices now follow use. Of Copilot, Microsoft told investors, “Our business model is expanding from per-seat subscriptions to include consumption.”¹⁰ Intercom lists its AI agent from $0.99 per outcome, on top of the seat.¹³ A bill like that can move without you changing plans, so read the invoice.

None of this is a reason to cancel a tool that works.

A 20-minute subscription check 05

You can do this yourself with a bank login and a spreadsheet. You don’t need us for it.

1. Pull your statements (5 minutes). Three months of card and bank statements will show the monthly charges. Search the past year for annual ones, since they’re easy to miss.
2. List every recurring charge (5 minutes). Write down the tool, the monthly cost and the renewal date. If you have last year’s invoice, note the old price too.
3. Mark who used it last month (3 minutes). Count seats against people. If nobody can say they used it, it’s a candidate to cancel.
4. Mark what customers see (2 minutes). If customers never touch it and your team doesn’t complain, it stays.
5. Check the way out (5 minutes). Look up the cancellation terms, whether you can export your records, and whose name is on the account.

Then write one word beside each tool: keep, connect, replace or cancel. Expect most of them to say keep. If one says replace and you’d like a second opinion, send us the list, and we’ll tell you what we’d do, including nothing.

When rented software fits better 06

Rented software is likely the better call if:

• The job is the same for every business, like taking cards, keeping the books or sending email.
• Your team already uses it every day, and customers don’t see it or don’t mind it.
• The bill is small. A few cheap seats don’t need replacing.
• You’re testing an idea, or you need something working this week.
• You need the audit trails, permissions and security reviews a large vendor already has.
• You don’t want anyone looking after it. Custom software needs someone to keep it working.

What it costs 07

These are the prices each company publishes. We checked each company’s own page on 30 October 2026. Prices change, so follow the links.

A small bill is rarely worth replacing. Three seats at $10 a month is $360 a year, and no custom build pays that back. The bills worth a look are the ones that grow with every seat or every use, and the tools that cost you customers.

Our builds are custom, so we don’t publish one price. Tell us what you’re juggling, and we’ll quote it after a first conversation. If a rented tool is the better buy, we’ll say so.

Common questions 08