Why Your Small Business is Probably Paying Too Much for SaaS

The average small business pays for software they barely use. We’re not talking about the occasional unused subscription— we’re talking about entire platforms paying for seats nobody logs into, features nobody clicks, and services that do the same job as free alternatives sitting in a drawer somewhere.

The Hidden Cost of “Good Enough”

When you’re running a small business, every pound counts. But SaaS vendors have gotten very good at one thing: making you feel like you need their product. Spoiler: you probably don’t.

The SaaS Trap

Here’s how it typically happens:

1. You need to solve a specific problem (say, sending invoices)
2. You find a popular SaaS tool that does exactly that
3. They tier their pricing— the “starter” plan is too limited, but the “professional” is only £20/mo more
4. You upgrade, even though you only needed the starter features
5. Two years later, you’re still on the professional plan, paying £240/year for functionality you could get free

The Audit That Pays For Itself

Here’s a simple exercise: log into your bank statement and search for “subscription”, “software”, “service”, “cloud”, “platform”, “app”.

Chances are you’ll find:

• Multiple project management tools (because each one had a free trial)
• Design software you’re paying for but only use 10% of
• Analytics platforms you forgot you signed up for
• Communication tools that duplicate each other

The average small business we audit has 3-5 subscriptions they could eliminate immediately without any operational impact.

Open Source Alternatives That Actually Work

The fear with open source is usually support and reliability. Here’s the reality:

Proprietary SaaS	Open Source Alternative	Annual Savings
Slack (£5/user/mo)	Mattermost or Discord	£60-600+/yr
Dropbox (£10/user/mo)	Nextcloud	£120+/yr
Mailchimp (£13/mo starter)	Listmonk	£156+/yr
Asana (£10/user/mo)	Plane or Taiga	£120-600+/yr
HubSpot CRM (free but takes 20%)	SuiteCRM	Priceless

The Self-Hosting Question

“But I don’t want to run my own servers.” Fair enough. That’s where we come in.

Self-hosted doesn’t mean “you manage everything.” It means the software runs on infrastructure you control. We handle the setup, maintenance, and ongoing support— you just get the cost savings and data ownership.

Ready to See What You’re Overpaying For?

Start with a simple audit. List every software subscription, the annual cost, and ask one question: would we notice if this disappeared tomorrow?

If the answer is no, that’s money you could be putting back into your business.

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ApplyMyTech offers complimentary tech audits for small businesses. We’ll review your SaaS stack and provide a written report of alternatives that could cut your technology costs by 40% or more.

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