Ever feel like you are drowning in SaaS subscriptions? You enjoy useful tools, but when you add up the costs of them all, you break into a sweat and wonder what if I invested that money instead?

Costs add up

Every cost I incur in my business, I then have to make in client revenue. So if I can reduce expenses, I can bring in less client revenue and still make the same profit. Simple economics really.

The problem with SaaS products is that often they are not so expensive that it feels like we are spending that much. We can easily justify each subscription: I just need to work an hour, or a day, to pay for this for the year.

But they add up quickly, and before you know it, you have to work a week or two just to pay for the SaaS subscriptions. And then they inevitably start to put up prices and the issue gets worse.

I’ve reached this point, and simply can’t carry on with the cost of the SaaS subscriptions I have, let alone add more. So I’ve set an annual budget on how much I’m willing to spend on SaaS subscriptions, and going through the process of getting rid of the ones that don’t make the cut.

Minimum Viable Subscriptions

I’d like to get to the point where I am at Minimum Viable Subscriptions. This is the state when I just have the essential software I need to run by business and not any more.

What about apps that increase revenue or make you more efficient?

These SaaS apps fall into the category of justifying their cost. I happily pay for Make and Zapier because they make me more efficient, save time and give me more time to focus on billable work. So they are worth it.

I happily pay for ActiveCampaign because it helps me grow my business by building a database of subscribers that I’m always nurturing, and it runs the comms for active clients. It’s an essential part of my business.

And same with Airtable. It’s a foundation app that forms the operating system for my business.

But even within this camp, there are products that might promise to increase revenue or cut costs, but for whatever reason, they don’t for you. Just today, I cancelled my subscription to an onsite personalisation tool that I had subscribed to for years. It’s a great product, and seems to be profitable for the right kind of customer. But I realised I’m no longer the right kind of customer for it, and therefore don’t have the budget for it. It’s better to deploy that budget to other tools.

When I reach Minimum Viable Subscriptions, I’ll then be able to judge any new SaaS products with the following criteria:

• Will it make more efficient, or increase revenue? By how much?
• Is the figure from the above question significant enough to take on yet another tool?
• Can I cut another subscription to maintain the overall budget?
• Does this tool play nice (integrate) with other tools in my stack?

If a new SaaS product makes it past these criteria, and I decided to sign up, then it’s time to put it on trial. And I don’t mean just the trial period for the software. Even if I go past that and pay for the app, it’s on trial for a longer period until it proves its worth. If it doesn’t, it’s out. It needs to be that ruthless.

Managing subscriptions

I’ve set up a simple Airtable base to manage all of my ongoing subscriptions. I’m going to write an article on this specially, but there is a snapshot of what it looks like.

Wrapping up

I’m not saying to cut all SaaS products and that SaaS subscriptions are a bad idea. I’m saying I’m thinking long and hard about every one that I have subscribed to and asking critical questions about whether it’s still serving me and my business. And where it’s not, I’m being ruthless in letting them go.