All guides

61 guides, grouped by the question you are trying to answer. Every one states the date pricing was verified, and every one lists what we could not verify.

Pricing deep-dives

What each plan actually includes, what the limits cost you at 3, 8 and 20 seats, and which tier a small team should stop at.

• ClickUp pricing explained (2026) — Free, Core, Business — and why the free plan is better than its reputation. Verified October 22, 2026.
• monday.com pricing explained (2026) — The 3-seat minimum and the 250 → 25,000 automation cliff. Verified October 23, 2026.
• Pipedrive pricing explained (2026) — New plan names, no free tier, and five add-ons that double the bill. Verified October 23, 2026.
• Streak pricing explained (2026) — The free plan has no pipelines, and the whole team must share one tier. Verified October 23, 2026.
• Kit pricing explained (2026) — 10,000 subscribers free, and the 3.5% line most reviews skip. Verified October 23, 2026.
• beehiiv pricing explained (2026) — Subscriber caps, seat limits, and the 0% take rate. Verified October 23, 2026.
• systeme.io pricing explained (2026) — 2,000 contacts free, 0% fees, and the unlimited sub-account detail. Verified October 23, 2026.
• Podia pricing explained — Three plans, one 5% fee, and the $840-a-month sales figure where the cheapest Podia plan stops being the cheapest.
• Calendly pricing explained — Free is complete for exactly one meeting format — and why a six-person firm may need two seats, not six.
• Mailchimp pricing explained — Free now stops at 250 contacts, and hitting a limit on a paid plan bills you instead of pausing your sending.

Head-to-head comparisons

Two tools, one decision, priced at the tier you would actually run.

• ClickUp vs monday.com — Configuration burden against time-to-first-useful-board, at 3, 8 and 20 seats.
• Notion vs ClickUp — Documents that became databases against a workspace that became everything.
• Pipedrive vs Streak — A standalone CRM, or a CRM inside your Gmail inbox.
• HubSpot vs Pipedrive — Including why HubSpot no longer publishes a Professional-tier price.
• Kit vs MailerLite — Free automations or free subscriber headroom — they give away opposite things.
• beehiiv vs Kit — The 0% take rate against the better free plan, and where each one gets cheaper.
• systeme.io vs Kit — One flat price for five jobs, or the better newsletter tool — and why the fee line decides it more often than the subscription.
• Notion vs monday.com — A database you design, or a board you adopt. The prices are close; the usable products are not.
• Streak vs HubSpot — The inbox layer against the free platform — and why the expensive-looking one can be the cheap one.
• Notion vs Google Docs — When a document should be a database — and why the hybrid usually beats migrating everything.
• Wave vs FreshBooks — One publishes its card fee, the other publishes nothing. At normal invoice sizes the fee is several times the subscription.
• Podia vs systeme.io — A fivefold price gap for the same three jobs — and the sub-account structure that decides who should buy which.

Alternatives

What to switch to, and exactly which capability you give up when you do.

• Free CRM alternatives to HubSpot — Five that are actually free, and the four ways a free CRM limits you.
• Pipedrive alternatives — Five options priced at 5 and 20 seats, and the migration cost nobody budgets for.
• ClickUp alternatives — What to use when ClickUp is too much, and how to diagnose before migrating.
• monday.com alternatives — The 3-seat minimum, the automation cap, and who should stay put.
• Kit alternatives — Four platforms and the specific advantage each has over Kit, priced at 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers.
• beehiiv alternatives — What to use if the take rate is not the point — four platforms and the case each one handles better.
• Notion alternatives — When a workspace stops being the right shape, and how to tell a limit problem from a structure problem.

Buyer's guides

Start from your situation rather than from a product list.

• The CRM a solo consultant actually needs — Including the honest case for using none, and why Streak costs three times Pipedrive at one seat.
• Project management for a small agency — Guest access, billable time and client-legible status, priced at 5 and 15 seats.
• Choosing an email platform for a newsletter — Four platforms, four different bets on how you earn.
• Running a consulting business on free software — Five free plans that hold up, and the exact number where each one ends.
• The best free project management tool for a small team — Four free plans compared on what they permit on day one — and why unlimited members decides it.
• The best CRM for a small business (2–20 people) — A five-step framework, five candidates, and the column that eliminates three of them.
• How to choose a CRM without a sales call — What a demo can answer, what only a trial answers, and the five things to verify before you talk to anyone.
• CRM features you will never use — Eight capabilities in every comparison table and almost no working small team — and what to buy instead.
• When to cancel a tool — Four signals, the one that overrides them, and why cancelling before exporting is how businesses lose records.

Cost breakdowns

The full bill, including the line items that budgets forget.

• What a CRM actually costs a 5-person team — Streak vs Pipedrive at 3, 8 and 20 seats, including the free-tier trap.
• What an agency tech stack really costs — Three budgets itemised, including seat minimums, currency exposure and forgotten add-ons.
• Free vs paid: when an upgrade pays for itself — Five triggers that pass the arithmetic, four that do not, and a break-even table.
• Can Gmail work as a CRM? — Where labels and search hold up, and the exact point they break.
• The cheapest way to run a paid newsletter — How much of $5,000/month survives platform fees on four platforms, with the arithmetic shown.
• What a CRM costs per year — Six options, one table, five headcounts — with currency and seat minimums stated rather than smoothed over.
• The hidden costs of cheap software — Five bills that arrive later: the workaround tax, the gap-filling tool, the migration, the ceiling, the attention.
• A software budget for a brand-new agency — Month one, month six, year two — what to buy first and what to postpone until a client pays for it.
• What switching tools actually costs — 72 hours for a five-person team, and the rule that decides whether a switch is worth it.
• The cheapest way to invoice clients — Three options priced, with the card-fee arithmetic that makes the subscription look like a rounding error.

How pricing actually works

Seat minimums, per-seat versus flat, annual discounts and the traps inside a pricing page.

• How to read a SaaS pricing page — Seven things the headline price hides — seat minimums, geo-pricing, unpublished tiers, fee lines — with the ninety-second method.
• Per-seat vs flat pricing — Two tools can both cost $200 a month and be completely different purchases. Six products at 3 to 20 seats.
• Is annual billing worth it? — The discount, the lock-in, the promotions that are not discounts, and the three times monthly wins.
• What happens when you hit a free plan's limit — Hard block, soft block, silent degradation, overage — and the two limits that cost real money.
• How to audit your software spend in one hour — Build the list from the card statement, not from memory — and three decisions to make in the last ten minutes.
• The SaaS renewal checklist — Eight questions before auto-renew, and the two clauses that decide whether you can leave.
• Why we do not publish unverified prices — Our pricing rule, three cases where it mattered, and what every label in our tables means.

Migration and setup

Getting from a spreadsheet, an inbox or another tool without losing what matters.

• Moving from a spreadsheet to a CRM — The order of operations, and why the import is the easy part.
• Graduating from Gmail and Sheets — A staged path, one function at a time, and what to leave where it is.
• Setting up a Pipedrive pipeline people actually use — Stage count, the three fields worth having, and the settings that decide whether the team keeps it updated.
• A ClickUp workspace that is not a second job — One space, three lists, two views — and the configuration you should refuse to do.
• A monday.com board without an unneeded tier — Keeping inside 250 automation actions, and the three features that force an upgrade.
• Using Notion to track clients — A three-database design with the one view that acts as a follow-up forcing function.