SaaS subscriptions can kill your brand before it even has legs...
Over the past 2.5 years I've paid for an ungodly amount of SaaS tools.
If I had to start from zero, here are the ONLY SaaS subscriptions I would pay for in no particular order:
1.
@FinaloopTeam - non-negotiable. If your financials aren't automated and accurate, you cannot make real decisions. 3 accountants. All failed. Finaloop fixed it in one click. If you think you're saving money with QuickBooks and a VA, you're not — you're just deferring pain. Trust me on this one.
2.
@triplewhale - becoming less important with AI, but I still think it's necessary. I've looked at my TW dashboard every single day for the last 2.5 years.
3. Kintsugi - not necessary in the beginning, but once you're at decent scale you absolutely need to automate your sales tax. Not worth the manual headache.
4. G Suite - if you seriously think you can "save money" by using personal Gmails or some other janky hack, you're just not that serious. I'm sorry.
5.
@SlackHQ - another non-negotiable. Every single partner/agency/contractor you interact with will be on Slack. Teams run on Slack, it's that simple.
6.
@clickup - probably not necessary until you have more complicated workflows and a few team members, but it's seriously a game changer. When we switched to ClickUp, speed and efficiency went way up. Huge fan.
7.
@figma - design runs on Figma in this industry, it's that simple. Just get the subscription, it's not that expensive.
8. Replo - also not necessary until you're at decent scale but I highly recommend it. You can ship new pages so much faster and cheaper, and your PDPs won't look like every other generic dropshipper out there. Seriously a game changer and I'm a huge fan of Yuxin Zhu and the whole Replo team.
9.
@frame.io - also not necessary in the beginning but once you're shipping a significant volume of ads per week it becomes a game changer. I personally hate storing content in Google Drive, it becomes an absolute mess and just slows everything down. Frame is a game changer, it's the cleanest media asset storage tool I've ever used.
10.
@klaviyo - getting ridiculously expensive, but unfortunately a non negotiable. No other esp can do what klaviyo can.
11. Shopify - is this even a SaaS tool? This shouldn't even be a question, but for some reason I still see randoms claiming you can save money by using Wix or some other website builder. The entire DTC/ecom ecosystem runs through Shopify... Shopify literally owns ecom. Use your brain.
Also not a SaaS tool but if you're not using Claude/Claude Cowork/Claude Code - you're falling behind.
I'm not affiliated with any of these companies, but if you want a discount code for Replo and Finaloop, DM me. I got you.