The 15 SaaS Marketing Tools I Actually Use (And 10 I Wasted Money On)
✓ Fact-checked • Based on real Reddit marketing experience • Updated for 2026
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Key Takeaways
- •Tools I Actually Use Daily
- •Tools Worth Paying For
- •Tools I Wasted Money On
- •The Lean Stack (Under $100/mo)
- •What to Buy vs. What to Skip
I've spent over $15K on marketing tools in 3 years. Some were game-changers. Others were expensive mistakes. Here's the honest breakdown.
Tools I Actually Use Daily
- MediaFast: Shows you which subreddits to target, best posting times, and what content works in each community. $49/mo.
- Notion: Content calendar, swipe files, planning. Free tier is enough.
- Plausible: Privacy-friendly analytics. $9/mo. Simple but tells you what matters.
- Ahrefs: SEO research. $99/mo. Expensive but necessary for serious SEO.
- Cal.com: Scheduling. Free. Replaced Calendly, saves $10/mo.
Tools Worth Paying For
- Mailerlite: Email marketing. Free up to 1K subscribers. Clean, simple.
- Loom: Quick videos for support and outreach. Free tier covers most needs.
- Carrd: Landing pages. $19/year. Criminally underpriced.
- Descript: Video/podcast editing. $15/mo. AI transcription is magic.
- Typefully: Twitter scheduling. $15/mo. Good thread formatting.
Tools I Wasted Money On
- Hootsuite: $99/mo for features I never used. Overkill for solo founders.
- HubSpot: Free tier is fine, paid tier is enterprise overkill.
- Sprout Social: $250/mo. What was I thinking?
- Most SEO tools: Ahrefs does everything. Don't need 3 different ones.
- Webinar platforms: Nobody came anyway. Save your money.
The Lean Stack (Under $100/mo)
If I were starting over with $100/mo budget:
- MediaFast for Reddit/LinkedIn ($49)
- Plausible for analytics ($9)
- Notion for everything else (free)
- Mailerlite for email (free under 1K)
- Carrd for landing pages ($2/mo)
Total: $60/mo. Covers 90% of marketing needs.
What to Buy vs. What to Skip
Buy: Tools that save time on repetitive tasks (scheduling, analytics, templates).
Skip: Tools that promise 'automation' of things that should be human (outreach, relationships, content creation).
More on the strategy: SaaS marketing overview
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