The best startup tech stack in 2026: a lean default and 37 tools by layer

Cursor is a code editor built around AI agents that work across your whole repository, with cloud agents that run while you do something else and Bugbot for code review.

You bring

Your repository and a task described in plain words

You get

Changes across files that you review, test and commit

Example

Ask the agent to add team invites on top of Supabase auth, read the diff, run the tests and open a pull request.

Shortlist it if

Someone on the team writes or reviews code, and you want the product in a repository you own from the first day.

Choose it over

Lovable or Replit when the product will outgrow a prototype and you want every line in your own repository.

Think twice if

Nobody on the team can read a diff yet: start in Lovable and move to Cursor when an engineer joins.

Price

Pro $20 a month; Teams $40 a user a month

Free plan

Hobby: limited agent requests, no card required

Watch the extra costs

Model use beyond what the plan includes is billed on demand.

Anthropic’s assistant for writing, research and code. Pro includes Claude Code, an agent that works in your terminal and repository, and connectors let Claude read the tools in your stack, Feedbaq among them.

You bring

Your codebase, your documents and the tools you connect

You get

Code changes, specs and research summaries that quote the sources Claude can read

Example

With Feedbaq connected, ask which reasons trial users gave for stalling, with a link to each quote, then ask Claude Code to draft the fix.

Shortlist it if

You want one $20 plan that covers code, writing and research.

Choose it over

ChatGPT when you want Claude Code and Claude’s connector directory; the two are close, so pick the one your team already uses.

Think twice if

You already pay for Cursor and only need help with code: a second $20 seat should earn its place with writing and research.

Price

Pro $20 a month, or $17 billed annually; Team $25 a seat monthly, $20 billed annually

Free plan

Yes, with connectors; Claude Code needs Pro

Watch the extra costs

If your product calls Claude, the API is billed separately by tokens.

OpenAI’s assistant for research, writing, data analysis and files. Every plan includes Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent.

You bring

Files, spreadsheets and documents, a repository for Codex, and the apps you connect

You get

Analyses, drafts, research reports and code changes

Example

Upload a funnel export and ask which signup sources retain best, then ask Codex to add the tracking event you are missing.

Shortlist it if

Your team already works in ChatGPT, or you analyze exported data often.

Choose it over

Claude when your team already shares work in ChatGPT; for a founder the two are close, so the shared workspace decides.

Think twice if

You want a Business workspace for one person: Business needs at least two users.

Price

Plus $20 a month; Business $20 a user a month billed annually, $25 monthly, two-user minimum

Free plan

Yes, and Codex is included

Watch the extra costs

If your product calls OpenAI’s models, the API is billed separately.

Lovable builds a working web app from a conversation. One credit balance pays for building, hosting on Lovable Cloud and the AI features inside your app.

You bring

A description of the app, and changes asked for in plain words

You get

A deployed web app you keep changing in chat

Example

Describe a booking tool for dog groomers, put the working version in front of five groomers, and change it the same afternoon.

Shortlist it if

You are a non-technical founder and need a working product in front of customers before you hire an engineer.

Choose it over

Cursor when nobody on the team writes code yet; Replit when you want the conversation, not the code, to be where you work.

Think twice if

You will change the app all day: every change spends credits, and the same balance pays for hosting and AI in your app.

Price

Pro from $25 a month for 100 credits, or $21 billed annually; Business from $50

Free plan

Yes: 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month, plus monthly grants of 20 Cloud credits and 4 for AI in your app

Watch the extra costs

Pro top-ups cost $15 per 50 credits.

Replit is a browser workspace where an AI agent builds, runs and publishes your app, with the code, database and hosting in one place.

You bring

A description of the app, or an existing project

You get

A running app and its code, published from the same workspace

Example

Build an internal admin tool for support with the agent, publish it, and send the link to the team.

Shortlist it if

You want to build and host in one browser tab and still see every file the agent writes.

Choose it over

Lovable when you want the code open next to the agent and up to 15 collaborators on Pro.

Think twice if

Your engineers already have a repository and pipeline: Replit works best when everything stays inside Replit.

Price

Core $20 a month, or $18 billed annually; Pro $100, or $90 billed annually

Free plan

None on the pricing page; Core includes up to 30 hours of chat in Free Mode

Watch the extra costs

Core includes $20 and Pro $100 toward stronger models; use beyond that is billed.

Figma is the shared canvas for interface design and prototypes. Figma Make turns a prompt or a design into a working prototype.

You bring

Screens, flows and components, or a prompt for Figma Make

You get

Designs, clickable prototypes and specs engineers build from

Example

Prototype a new onboarding flow in Figma Make and show it to five customers before anyone writes the real version.

Shortlist it if

Someone on the team designs screens, or you test flows with customers before you build them.

Choose it over

Designing straight in code when you want to compare several flows before you commit to one.

Think twice if

You are a solo technical founder: Cursor and a component library can carry you until a designer joins.

Price

Professional Full seat $16 a month, Dev seat $12, Collab seat $3, billed annually

Free plan

Starter: unlimited drafts, 150 AI credits a day, up to 500 a month

Watch the extra costs

A Full seat includes 3,000 AI credits a month for Make and other AI features.

Supabase gives you a managed Postgres database with sign-in, file storage and an API in one project and one dashboard.

You bring

Your data model and the sign-in methods you need

You get

A database, user accounts and file storage behind one API

Example

Model teams, members and invites as Postgres tables, turn on Google sign-in, and keep uploads in the same project.

Shortlist it if

You want relational data, sign-in and storage working on day one without stitching three services together.

Choose it over

Neon when you want sign-in with social providers, multi-factor auth and audit logs in the same product as the data; Convex when you want standard Postgres and SQL you can take anywhere.

Think twice if

You launch on the free plan: free projects pause after a week of inactivity, so move to Pro before customers arrive.

Price

Pro from $25 a month, with $10 of compute credit; extra projects from $10 a month

Free plan

Yes: two active projects, a 500 MB database and 50,000 monthly active users; paused after a week of inactivity

Watch the extra costs

Compute above the credit, disk beyond 8 GB, egress beyond 250 GB and users beyond 100,000 are billed by usage.

Neon is serverless Postgres that scales compute with your load and branches the database like code. It now adds managed auth and object storage.

You bring

A Postgres schema and the app that queries it

You get

A database that scales with load, and a branch for each pull request or experiment

Example

Give each pull request its own database branch, test the migration there, and delete the branch when it merges.

Shortlist it if

You want standard Postgres, compute billed by use, and database branches in your workflow.

Choose it over

Supabase when the database is what you need and you will choose sign-in and hosting yourself.

Think twice if

You want a fixed monthly bill: Launch is usage-based, so a busy month costs more.

Price

Launch is usage-based: $0.106 per compute-hour and $0.35 per GB-month; Neon puts typical spend at $15 a month

Free plan

Yes: 100 projects, 100 compute-hours a month and 1 GB of storage per project

Convex is a reactive backend: your queries and server functions are TypeScript in your repository, and every open client updates when the data changes.

You bring

Your data model and server functions, written in TypeScript

You get

A hosted backend whose queries push updates to every client

Example

Build a shared board where one person’s change appears for everyone else without writing any sync code.

Shortlist it if

Your product is collaborative or live, and the whole team writes TypeScript.

Choose it over

Supabase or Neon when live updates are the core of the product, not a feature you add later.

Think twice if

You want SQL and a database other tools can query directly: Convex has its own model, and leaving means rewriting your data layer.

Price

Professional $25 a developer a month plus usage

Free plan

Free & Starter: free, then pay as you go, for 1 to 6 developers

Watch the extra costs

Function calls, compute, storage and bandwidth beyond the included amounts are billed by usage.

Clerk is a sign-in service with ready-made screens for sign-up, user profiles and organizations, which gives a B2B app team accounts without building them.

You bring

Your app, the sign-in methods you want and your organization rules

You get

Prebuilt sign-in, profiles, invites and roles inside your app

Example

Add organizations with invites and admin and member roles to a B2B app, instead of building them on your own tables.

Shortlist it if

Your B2B app needs organizations, invites and roles, and your backend’s auth does not give you the screens.

Choose it over

Supabase Auth when polished account screens and organization management matter more than one vendor fewer.

Think twice if

You already use Supabase or Neon auth: a second sign-in service adds a bill and a sync job for one feature.

Price

Pro $25 a month, or $20 billed annually

Free plan

Yes: 50,000 monthly retained users per app

Watch the extra costs

Retained users beyond 50,000 cost $0.02 each a month; some security features are add-ons.

Vercel deploys your web app from GitHub, with a preview link for every pull request. It is the company behind Next.js.

You bring

A GitHub repository with a Next.js or other frontend app

You get

Production and preview deployments on a global CDN, with logs and traffic insights

Example

Open a pull request, send its preview link to the customer who reported the bug, and merge once they confirm the fix.

Shortlist it if

You build with Next.js and want deploys you never think about.

Choose it over

Cloudflare or Railway when you want the least setup for a Next.js app.

Think twice if

You plan to launch on Hobby: it is for personal, non-commercial use only, so a startup needs Pro.

Price

Pro $20 a month with one deploying seat and $20 of usage credit; extra seats $20 a month each

Free plan

Hobby: free for personal, non-commercial projects only

Watch the extra costs

Usage beyond the $20 credit is billed on demand; add-ons such as password protection cost extra.

Cloudflare Workers runs your app on Cloudflare’s network, next to storage such as KV, D1 and R2, and charges nothing for data transfer.

You bring

An app built for the Workers runtime, or adapted to it

You get

An app served from Cloudflare’s network, billed by requests and CPU time

Example

Run a Next.js app on Workers through the OpenNext adapter.

Shortlist it if

You want low fixed costs and no bandwidth bill, and someone on the team will learn the runtime.

Choose it over

Vercel when bandwidth and request costs matter more than deploys that need no setup.

Think twice if

You want deploys you never think about: Workers is its own runtime, and Next.js runs through an adapter with settings to learn.

Price

Workers Paid from $5 a month per account, with 10 million requests included

Free plan

Yes: 100,000 requests a day

Watch the extra costs

$0.30 per extra million requests and $0.02 per extra million CPU milliseconds; D1, R2 and other products are priced separately.

Railway runs services, background workers, cron jobs and databases from your repository, billed by the resources they use.

You bring

A repository or container image for each service

You get

Running services and databases in one project, billed by the second

Example

Run the API, a queue worker and a Postgres database for a video-processing feature in one project.

Shortlist it if

Your app needs long-running processes, such as workers or websockets, that serverless hosting handles badly.

Choose it over

Render when you want billing by use from a $5 minimum rather than a fixed price per instance.

Think twice if

Your services run around the clock: memory costs about $10 per GB a month while running, so size each service.

Price

Hobby $5 minimum a month, including $5 of usage; Pro $20 minimum, including $20

Free plan

30-day trial with $5 of credit, then $1 a month

Render hosts web services, background workers, cron jobs and managed Postgres at a fixed price per instance.

You bring

A repository and an instance size for each service

You get

Web services, workers and databases with a bill you know in advance

Example

Run a Python API on a $7 instance with a $6 Postgres database, and know the bill before the month starts.

Shortlist it if

You run a conventional server app and want a predictable bill per instance.

Choose it over

Railway when you would rather pay a fixed price per instance than by the second.

Think twice if

You plan to run production on free instances: they come with limits, so put customers on a paid instance.

Price

Workspace $0 (Hobby) or $25 a month (Pro), plus compute: web services from $7 a month, Postgres from $6

Free plan

Yes: free web service and Postgres instances, with limits

Sentry catches errors and slow requests in your app, ties each one to the release and the code behind it, and alerts the owner.

You bring

The Sentry SDK in your frontend and backend

You get

Grouped errors with stack traces, traces and the release that introduced them

Example

A customer’s checkout fails; Sentry shows the stack trace, the request and the release that broke it before the customer writes in.

Shortlist it if

Customers use the app and you want to hear about failures before they tell you.

Choose it over

PostHog’s error tracking when errors and performance traces deserve a tool of their own.

Think twice if

You are a team: the free Developer plan is limited to one user, and Team costs $26 a month.

Price

Team $26 a month and Business $80 a month, billed annually

Free plan

Developer: free for one user

Watch the extra costs

Events beyond the plan’s data allowance are billed; Seer, the AI debugging agent, needs its own subscription.

Made by us

Feedbaq gets you the depth of a customer call without the calendar. Connect it to your AI agent for free and the agent becomes your expert researcher: it plans and builds the study. You share the link, and people answer in their browser by voice, by narrating their screen while they use your product, or by text and choice, while an AI follows up on what each person said.

You bring

A question your analytics raised, the users you can reach, and your agent’s context on the product

You get

Voice and screen recordings with transcripts timed word by word, follow-up answers, topic counts, and quotes linked to the moment they were said

Example

PostHog shows trial users stalling where they connect their data. Ask those users to try the step on screen and talk it through. When someone says “I didn’t know which key to paste”, the AI asks where they looked for it.

Shortlist it if

Your analytics shows where users drop off and you need them to tell you why, without booking calls.

Choose it over

PostHog surveys or Tally, because a typed one-liner tells you what happened and Feedbaq’s spoken answers and follow-ups tell you why; booked calls, because calls go deep only with the customers who accept a slot, and Feedbaq hears from everyone you invite.

Think twice if

You have no users yet and nobody to invite: Feedbaq asks people you can reach, so pair it with a recruitment panel for strangers.

Price

Free in your AI agent; $49 a month to publish and collect responses, with every feature and unlimited studies and team members

Free plan

Yes: connect your AI agent, plan and build studies, and preview them, free

PostHog combines product analytics, session replay, surveys, feature flags, experiments and error tracking, with PostHog AI to answer questions about your data.

You bring

Events from your app, and questions in plain words

You get

Funnels, retention charts and the session replays of the people behind them

Example

Find the step where new trial users stop, then watch five replays of people stalling there.

Shortlist it if

You are setting up analytics for a new product and want behavior, replays and in-app surveys from one install.

Choose it over

Amplitude or Mixpanel when you also want replays, flags, surveys and error tracking from one vendor, free up to the allowances.

Think twice if

Nobody owns instrumentation: every chart is only as good as the events you send.

Price

Usage-based beyond the free allowances, priced per product

Free plan

Every month: 1M events, 5,000 replays, 1,500 survey responses, 100,000 exceptions and 500 AI credits; unlimited team members

Amplitude is product analytics with session replay, experiments, feature flags, surveys, AI agents and an MCP server on every plan.

You bring

Tracked events and the customer feedback you connect

You get

Retention, funnel and cohort analysis, and agent answers about your data

Example

Ask its agent which first-week actions separate accounts still active at day 90.

Shortlist it if

Measurement will drive most of your product decisions, or your team already knows Amplitude.

Choose it over

PostHog when you want analytics-first depth and a free plan with 2M events a month.

Think twice if

You will outgrow Plus: Growth and Enterprise are priced on request.

Price

Plus starts at $0 and scales with event volume beyond 2M; Growth and Enterprise on request

Free plan

Yes: 2M events a month, replay, experiments, AI agents and MCP, unlimited seats; startups under $10M raised and 20 people get a year of Growth free

Mixpanel is event analytics for funnels, retention and cohorts, with session replay, Mixpanel Agent and an MCP server.

You bring

Consistently named product events, and questions asked in Mixpanel or from your own agent

You get

Funnels, retention curves and cohort comparisons, with replays of the sessions

Example

From Claude, ask Mixpanel through its MCP server how week-two retention changed after the new onboarding.

Shortlist it if

You want a focused analytics tool and no wider suite to adopt.

Choose it over

PostHog or Amplitude when focused event analysis is all you need.

Think twice if

Nobody keeps a tracking plan: messy event names make every answer suspect.

Price

Growth starts at $0 and is priced by volume beyond the free events; Enterprise on request

Free plan

Yes: up to 1M events and 10,000 session replays a month

Microsoft Clarity records sessions and draws heatmaps of your website and app for free, with no traffic limits and AI summaries of what people did.

You bring

A tracking script on your site or app

You get

Session recordings, click and scroll heatmaps, and AI insights

Example

See how far visitors scroll on the pricing page and where they click before they leave.

Shortlist it if

You want to see how visitors use your marketing site and pay nothing for it.

Choose it over

PostHog replay on a busy marketing site, so the product’s free allowance goes to the product.

Think twice if

You need funnels and retention for the product itself: Clarity shows behavior on pages, not product analytics.

Price

Free

Free plan

Yes, with no traffic limits

Tally is a form builder with unlimited free forms and submissions, conditional logic, payments and file uploads. Its MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor create forms and read submissions.

You bring

Your questions and the logic between them

You get

Structured submissions in Tally or sent on to Google Sheets, Notion and other tools

Example

Run a waitlist form that asks each person’s role and current tool, and send every submission to a Notion database.

Shortlist it if

A typed or multiple-choice answer is enough: waitlists, intake forms and quick polls.

Choose it over

Paid form builders for waitlists, intake and polls, because its free plan has no submission limit.

Think twice if

You need the reason behind an answer: a form cannot follow up on what someone wrote, and Feedbaq asks by voice and follows up.

Price

Pro $29 a month; Business $89 a month

Free plan

Yes: unlimited forms and submissions within fair use; the MCP server is free on every plan

Stripe processes card and wallet payments, and adds subscriptions with Billing and sales tax calculation with Tax.

You bring

Your products, prices and checkout

You get

Payments, subscriptions, invoices and the webhooks your app uses to grant access

Example

Sell a monthly plan through Checkout, and turn a team’s access on and off from Stripe’s subscription webhooks.

Shortlist it if

You want control over pricing and checkout and the lowest fee per transaction.

Choose it over

Paddle when most of your revenue comes from one country, or you can register for and file sales tax yourself.

Think twice if

You sell in many countries and do not want to register for VAT and sales tax: Paddle takes that on as the seller.

Price

2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction in the US

Free plan

No monthly fee; you pay per transaction

Watch the extra costs

Billing adds 0.7% of billing volume, and Tax adds 0.5% per transaction where you are registered.

Paddle is a merchant of record for software and apps: it sells your product to the customer, takes the payment and handles sales tax and VAT.

You bring

Your software products, prices and checkout

You get

Payments and subscriptions, with Paddle as the seller of record

Example

Sell to customers in the EU, the UK and the US without registering for sales tax in each place.

Shortlist it if

You sell software across borders and want sales tax and VAT off your plate.

Choose it over

Stripe when tax compliance across countries would cost you more than the higher fee.

Think twice if

Most of your revenue is in one country with simple tax: Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ costs less.

Price

5% + 50¢ per transaction; custom pricing on request

Free plan

No monthly fee; subscription analytics are free

Resend is an email API for developers, for the email your app sends: sign-in links, receipts and notifications.

You bring

Your domain and the emails your app triggers

You get

Delivered transactional email, with logs and delivery events

Example

Send magic-link sign-ins and receipts from your app, and see in the logs whether each one arrived.

Shortlist it if

Your app sends email and you want a simple API and a free start.

Choose it over

Brevo or Customer.io for the email your code sends, such as sign-in links and receipts.

Think twice if

You launch to a big list: Free caps at 100 emails a day, so a launch day needs Pro.

Price

Pro $20 a month for 50,000 emails; Scale $90 for 100,000

Free plan

Yes: 3,000 emails a month, 100 a day

Watch the extra costs

Extra emails cost $0.90 per 1,000; dedicated IPs $30 a month.

Brevo sends marketing email and SMS, with transactional email, automation and an MCP server for ChatGPT and Claude.

You bring

Your contact list and the campaigns you send

You get

Newsletters, campaigns and automated sequences, with open and click reports

Example

Send a monthly product update to everyone on the waitlist, and a welcome sequence to each new signup.

Shortlist it if

You want newsletters and simple automation at a small-team price.

Choose it over

Customer.io when you send to a list on a schedule, not from product events, and want to pay $9, not $100.

Think twice if

Your emails should react to what people do in the product: Customer.io is built for that.

Price

Starter from $9 a month, from 5,000 emails; Standard from $18, with marketing automation

Free plan

Yes: up to 300 emails a day

Customer.io sends email, push and in-app messages triggered by what people do in your product, built from your events and customer data.

You bring

Product events and customer attributes from your app

You get

Multi-step journeys that react to behavior, such as onboarding nudges

Example

Email a trial user who has not invited a teammate by day three, and stop the sequence the moment they do.

Shortlist it if

You have reliable product events and several journeys worth automating.

Choose it over

Brevo when messages should follow product behavior rather than a send schedule.

Think twice if

Your events are not in place yet: journeys depend on them, so start with Resend and add this later.

Price

Essentials from $100 a month billed monthly, with 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails; Premium from $1,000 a month billed yearly

Free plan

No; companies that raised under $10M can apply for a free year

Crisp puts a chat widget on your site and gathers chat, email and other channels into one shared inbox, with AI on the paid plans.

You bring

Customer questions from chat, email and other channels

You get

One shared inbox with each customer’s conversation history

Example

Answer chats from your site or your phone, and read a customer’s past conversations before you reply.

Shortlist it if

Support has outgrown a shared email address.

Choose it over

Help desks priced per agent when you want one price for the workspace.

Think twice if

You want AI answers from the start: Free includes two seats and no AI credits.

Price

Mini $45 a workspace a month; Essentials $95; Plus $295

Free plan

Yes: two seats, the chat widget and a shared inbox, no AI credits

HubSpot is a CRM for contacts, companies and deals, with sales, marketing and service tools and Breeze AI on top.

You bring

Contacts, companies and the deals you are working on

You get

A pipeline with every email, call and meeting logged against the deal

Example

Track twenty design-partner conversations from first call to paid pilot, each with a next step and an owner.

Shortlist it if

You sell to businesses and the pipeline no longer fits in a spreadsheet.

Choose it over

A spreadsheet once more than one person follows up with prospects.

Think twice if

You sell self-serve with no sales calls: you do not need a CRM yet.

Price

Starter from $20 a seat a month; a limited-time offer cut it to $7 to $10 a seat on 7 October 2026

Free plan

Yes: free CRM tools for up to two users

Watch the extra costs

Professional and Enterprise charge onboarding fees of $3,000 and $7,000; contacts and Breeze credits add cost.

GitHub hosts your repositories, pull requests and code review, and runs your tests and deploys with GitHub Actions.

You bring

Your code and the checks it must pass

You get

A reviewed history of every change, with tests on each pull request

Example

Require passing tests before anything merges to main, and let Vercel build a preview for each pull request.

Shortlist it if

You are starting a code project: every other developer tool in this list connects to it.

Choose it over

Keeping the code only inside Lovable or Replit, because the company should own the code from the first commit.

Think twice if

Your test runs grow long: Free includes 2,000 Actions minutes a month for private repositories.

Price

Team $4 a user a month for the first 12 months

Free plan

Yes: unlimited public and private repositories and 2,000 Actions minutes a month

Linear tracks issues, projects and cycles for software teams, with Linear Agent on every plan.

You bring

Bugs, feature requests and the decisions behind them

You get

A prioritized backlog, cycles and projects linked to the code that closed them

Example

Turn a customer’s quote into an issue with the recording linked, put it in this cycle, and let the merged pull request close it.

Shortlist it if

You want one place where the team’s commitments live, apart from chat.

Choose it over

Notion or GitHub Issues when you want triage, cycles and a backlog built for software.

Think twice if

Your backlog will pass 250 issues soon: Free stops there, and Basic costs $10 a user a month.

Price

Basic $10 a user a month billed annually; Business $16

Free plan

Yes: unlimited members, two teams, 250 issues and Linear Agent

Notion holds documents, wikis and databases in one workspace, with AI search, writing help and custom agents.

You bring

Specs, decisions, research notes and how-we-work pages

You get

A searchable company memory that outlasts chat threads

Example

Keep a decision log where each entry links the customer evidence and the Linear project it led to.

Shortlist it if

Decisions keep getting lost in chat and you need one place to write them down.

Choose it over

Google Docs when you want documents and simple databases in one place.

Think twice if

You want custom agents to do recurring work: after a free trial they run on credits.

Price

Plus $10 a member a month billed annually, $12 monthly; Business $20 billed annually, $24 monthly

Free plan

Yes, with a block limit once you collaborate and 5 MB uploads

Watch the extra costs

Custom agents run on Notion credits: $10 per 1,000 after a free trial.

Slack is team chat with channels, huddles and notifications from the other tools in your stack.

You bring

Team conversations and alerts from GitHub, Sentry, Linear and the rest

You get

Quick coordination, and one place where alerts reach the person who acts on them

Example

Send new Sentry errors to an #alerts channel, and move every decision out of chat into Linear.

Shortlist it if

You have more than two people and alerts from several tools.

Choose it over

Group email or a messaging app once alerts, integrations and searchable history matter.

Think twice if

You rely on old threads: the free plan deletes messages and files after a year.

Price

Pro €8.25 a user a month, or €6.75 billed annually

Free plan

Yes; data older than a year is deleted

Google Workspace gives the company its own email addresses, calendars, Drive, Docs and Meet, run from one admin console.

You bring

Your domain and the people who need company accounts

You get

Company-owned email, files and calendars that stay with the business when people leave

Example

Create founder@ and support@ addresses on your domain, and sign up for every tool in this list with a company address.

Shortlist it if

You are about to sign up for the tools on this list: register them to company accounts from day one.

Choose it over

Personal Gmail accounts, because the company should own the logins for billing, domains and code.

Think twice if

Your team already works in Microsoft 365: keep it and skip this line.

Price

Business Starter €6.80 a user a month

Free plan

No; a 14-day trial

Framer is a website builder for marketing sites, with a visual editor, CMS, hosting and AI credits.

You bring

Your brand, copy and page designs

You get

A hosted marketing site that a non-engineer can change without a deploy

Example

Ship a launch landing page the same day, without touching the app’s repository.

Shortlist it if

Someone other than the engineers will change the marketing site every week.

Choose it over

Building the marketing site inside your app when design changes should not wait for an engineer.

Think twice if

Your engineers own the site and like it in the repository: keep it in Next.js and skip this cost.

Price

Basic $10 a month, Pro $30 a month, billed yearly; extra editors $20 a month

Free plan

Yes: a Framer domain, 1 GB of bandwidth and 500 AI credits

Watch the extra costs

Localization and A/B testing are paid add-ons.

Buffer schedules and publishes posts across social channels, with an AI assistant and analytics, priced per channel.

You bring

Posts and the channels you publish to

You get

A publishing calendar and results for each channel

Example

Turn one launch announcement into posts for LinkedIn, X and Bluesky and schedule them across the week.

Shortlist it if

Posting on social is a weekly habit for the founder.

Choose it over

HubSpot’s social tools when scheduling posts is all you need and you want to pay per channel.

Think twice if

You post a few times a month: the free plan covers three channels.

Price

Essentials $5 a channel a month billed yearly; Team $10

Free plan

Yes: three channels, 10 scheduled posts per channel, one user

n8n builds workflows and AI agents from connected nodes, hosted by n8n or on your own server, and bills per workflow run however many steps it has.

You bring

The apps to connect and the logic between them

You get

Automations and agents that run on a schedule, on a webhook or on demand

Example

Every Monday, pull last week’s Stripe cancellations, have a model group the reasons, and post the summary to Slack.

Shortlist it if

A developer will own the automations, or your workflows have many steps.

Choose it over

Zapier when workflows have many steps: n8n counts one execution per run.

Think twice if

Nobody technical will maintain it: Zapier is easier for the rest of the team.

Price

Cloud Starter €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions; Pro €50 for 10,000

Free plan

Free self-hosted Community Edition; cloud trial without a card

Watch the extra costs

Self-hosting costs servers and upkeep; AI steps can bill through your model provider.

Zapier connects thousands of apps with automated workflows, plus Tables, Forms and AI steps, without code.

You bring

A trigger in one app and the actions it should cause in others

You get

Automations anyone on the team can build and change

Example

When a Tally form arrives, create a HubSpot contact and post the details to Slack.

Shortlist it if

Non-technical teammates will build the automations.

Choose it over

n8n when the person building the workflow does not write code.

Think twice if

A workflow runs thousands of times with many steps: Zapier bills by task, so each step adds to the bill.

Price

Professional from $19.99 a month billed annually, $29.99 monthly; Team from $69 billed annually

Free plan

Yes: 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps