Free SaaS tools for companies on a budget (and a pre-formatted budgeting sheet)

· 5 min read
Free SaaS tools for companies on a budget (and a pre-formatted budgeting sheet)

Not every SaaS company has endless spare money.

It might be because you’re bootstrapped. Or you might have a limited runway. In any case, you need to be economical. That’s just smart business.

When we think about what SaaS companies spend on, we tend to consider the big things:

  • Hiring and salaries
  • Equipment
  • Taxes
  • Office costs

Fundera created a great list of 14 common small business startup costs.

There’s one cost that often slips our minds. It’s the tools we use in our everyday work.

SaaS tools don’t always seem like big expenditures. However, SaaS companies and startups use a lot of tools for their everyday operations. Most of them aren’t outrageously expensive.

What’s another 20 bucks a month for a service that makes your life easier? But how many of these “only 20 bucks a month” tools do you already have? Do you know?

It adds up. Big time.

We all want quality tools to run our business, even if we’re on a budget. That doesn’t mean you have to necessarily empty your pockets for it.

Canny is a fully bootstrapped SaaS company. We know exactly what it’s like to be mindful of money.

In this post, we’ll explore:

1. Main operating areas of a SaaS company

2. Free SaaS tools to consider

3. Affordable alternatives (when free SaaS tools aren’t available)

4. A pre-formatted spreadsheet for easy calculations

You can make a copy of this spreadsheet to:

  • Analyze your current tech stack costs and see where you can cut costs
  • Outline your desired tech stack and predict future costs

Let’s roll!

The SaaS tool categories

We’re going to be looking at the following big categories for SaaS tools:

We’ll list a few options that have free plans.

We’re not going to go into super hacky alternative options for saving money (e.g., maybe you can just use a Google Doc for team chat?) Nobody has time for that. We need to be efficient.

But, hopefully, you will find some new and cool tools to check out and save costs. Remember: only you know what is the right tool for your team. Use this article as a guide.

PS: there’s a little next to the tools we use or have used and/or would recommend. If you have questions about our experience with them, reach out to us!

Product management

Customer feedback

♥ Canny

Free plan: yes

Entry level pricing: $79/month

Pricing page

Third party reviews

New call-to-action

Internal communication

♥ SLACK

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $7.25/active user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

♥ TWIST

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $8/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

FLEEP

Free plan: no
Entry level pricing: €5/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Marketing and external communication

COMMUNICATION

♥ MISSIVE

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $14/member/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

EMAIL MARKETING

♥ MAILCHIMP

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $13/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

EMAILOCTOPUS

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $8/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

HUBSPOT’S EMAIL MARKETING TOOL

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $45 for the entire marketing hub
Pricing page
Third party reviews

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

♥ BUFFER

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $6/month/channel
Pricing page
Third party reviews

HOOTSUITE

Free plan: free trial
Entry level pricing: $99/month (1 user)
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Customer support, customer service, and customer success

TICKETS

FRESHDESK

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $15/agent/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

ZOHO DESK

Free plan: no
Entry level pricing: $19/agent/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

NPS (customer satisfaction)

DELIGHTED

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $17/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

CRM

HUBSPOT CRM

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $45/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Task management and project management

♥ CLICKUP

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $7/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

TRELLO

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $5/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

ASANA

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $9.25/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Jira software

Free plan: yes

Entre level pricing: $8.15/user/month

Pricing page

Third party reviews

Documentation

♥  NOTION

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $8/member/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

♥  XTENSIO

Free plan: Yes
Entry level pricing: $50/month (2 users)
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Google workspace

Free plan: yes

Entry level pricing: $6/user/month

Pricing page

Third party reviews

Metrics/analytics

CHARTMOGUL

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $100/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

♥ AIRTABLE

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $10/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

♥ MIXPANEL

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $779/year
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Google Analytics

Free plan: yes

Entry level pricing: free
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Design

♥ FIGMA

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $12/editor/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

INVISION STUDIO

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Landing page
Third party reviews

WAKE

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: enterprise, custom price
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Engineering

CLOUD SERVICES

♥ AMAZON WEB SERVICES

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: custom
Page about free tier

CLOUDFLARE

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $20/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: custom
Page about free tier
Third party reviews

CODE EDITING

♥ ATOM

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Pricing page
Third party reviews

SUBLIME TEXT

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $80
Purchase page
Third party reviews

VISUAL STUDIO CODE

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: free
Pricing page
Third party reviews

CODE REPOSITORY

♥ GITHUB

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $9/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

GITLAB

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $4/user/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

ERROR REPORTING

♥ SENTRY

Free plan: yes
Entry level pricing: $26/month
Pricing page
Third party reviews

Happy budgeting! 

Hopefully you found some new, cool, and wallet-friendly SaaS tools to check out for your team.

Have anything awesome to add to the list? Let us know!

Don’t forget to check out that budgeting spreadsheet.

Elen Veenpere

Marketer at Canny. Elen enjoys drinking unnecessary amounts of coffee, typing words, and filling out marketing spreadsheets.

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Canny is a user feedback tool. We help software companies track feedback to build better products.
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Alex Bugeja
Alex Bugeja
July 24, 2019 2:07 pm

For affiliate marketing, ReferDigital.com could be added to this list – it doesn’t have any sign up or monthly fees. It charges only a fraction of actual commissions earned on sales from affiliates (no sales, nothing due).

I.O.
I.O.
July 24, 2019 3:09 pm

Great list, thank you I actually didn’t know about some of these!
All the best with Canny!

Pier-Luc Gendreau
Pier-Luc Gendreau
July 24, 2019 4:05 pm

I like Rollbar as well for error reporting. It’s not quite as fancy as Sentry but it gets the job done!

Anon
Anon
July 24, 2019 4:45 pm

Discord definitely deserves a place in the Internal communication section

Droffats
Droffats
July 24, 2019 4:53 pm

So Azure does not qualify as a valid cloud service option?

Biji
Biji
July 25, 2019 7:20 am

Actually, Zoho has integrated suite with 1 dollar per month per user for all tools including CRM, Helpdesk, Docs, HRM, Finance, Marketing, Mail, Analytics, Business process and lot more as an integrated tool. Also, they provide free tools in some applications up to 5 users.

https://www.zoho.com/one/

Maartin
Maartin
August 12, 2019 2:57 am

For virtual bug testing you can add https://w3dart.com/ to your list.
It has free plan and starting price of $19/Month for unlimited users.

Call Center Software
Call Center Software
February 28, 2020 12:53 am

Very interesting , good job and thanks for sharing such a good blog. Thanks

Thug Life
Thug Life
January 1, 2021 1:23 am

I was looking for this article and now i found it thanks for the interesting information. You really saved my day.

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