At Outsourcify, in over 10 years, we’ve tried dozens of SaaS tools—each solving a problem, but together forming a substantial recurring cost. In 2024, our team of 35 spent over 375,000 THB ($10,000+) on SaaS tools—not counting infrastructure. Here’s how it breaks down—and what we’ve learned.
If you’re running a business with more than a couple people, you’ve probably started stacking SaaS tools.
- One day it’s an email software.
- The next, it’s a chat tool.
- Then comes the project management platform, file storage and sharing, repositories, accounting software, browser testing, design tools, monitoring… it never ends.
In 2025, running a small or mid-sized business means relying heavily on SaaS tools. They’re everywhere. And each one seems like a no-brainer… until the end of the year, when the bills stack up.
For a team of 35 to 40 people, that can mean well over 20,000 USD per year in software costs alone.
And the worst part? If you cancel, you often lose everything: your emails, your project history, your conversations, your designs.
10 Years of Trial and Error at a Web Agency
At Outsourcify, we’ve grown from a 2-person team to a team of 35-40. In those 10 years, we’ve used dozens of SaaS tools—for chatting, file sharing, project management, code hosting, design, QA, accounting, and more.
We’ve switched tools multiple times. It’s never easy. Migration always takes time, and there’s always something lost in the transition. But sometimes it’s necessary—either because of better features or, more often, because of cost.
The Stack Evolves with the Team
When you’re just starting, you can get by with free tools. At Outsourcify, we began with Skype back in the day—one of the only decent professional chat tools around. But the interface became clunky, and better options appeared.
We’ve cycled through tools for chat, project management, email, file sharing, design, and monitoring. Changing tools is never easy. It means retraining the team, migrating data, adapting processes. But sometimes it’s necessary—either because a tool becomes too limited or too expensive.
Tools we use
Email & Storage: Why We Still Use Google Workspace
We’ve been using Google Workspace for nearly 15 years—for email and cloud file storage. While it’s stable and reliable, Google’s ecosystem hasn’t evolved much. Gmail and Drive look and behave the same as they did a decade ago.
We recently realized we were still on the Starter plan, which isn’t ideal for a company our size. But upgrading to Business Standard costs significantly more and has to be applied across all users at once—there’s no per-user granularity.
Still, with all our historical data tied to Gmail and Google Drive, switching away would be complicated.
Internal Chat: More Important Than You Think
When you run multiple projects at once, communication is everything. Using WhatsApp, Messenger, or Line (popular in Thailand) isn’t an option—they mix personal and professional conversations.
We need a dedicated internal tool, with clearly separated threads per project, team, and client. I personally juggle dozens of chats per day, so having visual clarity and context is key.
Our first real chat tool was Glip—it was great and free for years. Later, we moved to Lark, which I still think is underrated. You can assign custom images per chat (like a client’s logo), which sounds trivial but is extremely helpful when navigating dozens of conversations.
Lark, developed by Bytedance (the company behind TikTok), started out as a simple chat app. Over time, it grew into a full competitor to Google Workspace, with docs, spreadsheets, email, and calendar. It was free for organizations under 50 users, which suited us perfectly.
But last month, they changed their policy: organizations with more than 20 users must now switch to a paid plan, which would cost us around $5,000 USD/year—and we only use it for chat. Too steep to justify switching our whole workflow away from Gmail and Drive.
We use Slack for a few client projects—undeniably a great product—but it feels redundant to pay for a separate chat tool when you’re already using others.
Project Management: Loyalty with Limits
We’ve tested a lot: Asana, Basecamp, Jira, even Monday and ClickUp (which some clients use).
Ten years ago, we started using TeamWork.com. We got lucky—through a startup program, we only paid $50/month for years. But in 2023, they removed that plan, and we had to switch to per-user pricing of $12/month. That pushed the annual cost to $4,000 USD which seemed like a crazy expense but we didn’t really have the choice, we couldn’t change everything in a few months.
We still prefer TeamWork for its balance between features and simplicity, so we stuck with it. But that price change definitely hurt. The thing is we constantly work on many projects, we have some that are dormant or in maintenance mode, we also need to state and estimate tasks for new projects for proposals, we constantly need a project management tool with task and time tracking management.
We considered moving to ClickUp lately, but their pricing is also $12/user/month so we didn’t feel it was worth it to switch.
Repositories: GitHub Wins by Simplicity
After paying for Bitbucket (from Atlassian) for years, we moved all our repositories to GitHub in 2020, when they changed their pricing model to allow unlimited private repositories for free—even for teams. This was a major shift, as private repos were previously restricted to paid plans. At the time, GitHub also introduced their free tier for teams, allowing up to three collaborators per private repo, which was enough for many internal projects. Eventually, they lifted that limit too, which motivated us to switch.
For us, managing hundreds of repositories across client projects and internal tools, GitHub offered not only a better interface and integration with CI/CD platforms, but also a more scalable and affordable model. It became the obvious choice. It’s one of the rare tools that improved and became cheaper at the same time. For now we don’t use a lot of GitHub Actions and don’t need more than 1 reviewer per Pull Request so we don’t need the paid plan.
We haven’t included infrastructure (like hosting) or CI/CD-related costs in this breakdown. While we do rely on cloud services, these are considered project-specific expenses that are factored into our client pricing. In other words, they’re not part of our internal recurring overhead, but rather direct costs we recover through project budgets.
Design & QA : Where Small Tools Add Up
Some tools operate quietly in the background but are absolutely essential to maintaining quality and delivering polished work.
- For design, Figma has become central to our UI/UX workflow—it’s intuitive, collaborative, and widely adopted by designers and clients alike.
- On the QA side, we rely on Sentry to monitor and catch errors in real-time, ensuring stability across the apps we deliver.
- BrowserStack helps us test websites across a wide range of browsers and devices, especially valuable when working with international clients.
- We also use Marker.io to collect visual feedback and bug reports directly from clients and testers, which simplifies communication and integrates smoothly into our project management flow.
These tools are critical to our day-to-day operations—and their combined impact on productivity is undeniable.
Accounting and CRM: Simple and Free (So Far)
Accounting is one area where we’ve had to adapt to both our internal needs and local requirements. We use Zoho Books for invoicing, expense tracking, and overall financial reporting. It’s a solid, user-friendly platform that works well for managing client billing and gives us a clear overview of our finances.
However, Zoho doesn’t cover all Thai accounting specificities—especially when it comes to local tax documents and compliance. That’s why we also use FlowAccount, a Thai-based accounting tool built to handle local regulations like e-tax invoices, withholding tax certificates, and Thai-language documentation. The combination of the two tools isn’t ideal, but for now, it gives us the flexibility we need to stay organized and compliant.
On the CRM side, we keep things light with HubSpot’s free plan, combined with the Chrome extension. For now, it covers our needs—keeping track of leads and client interactions without adding another paid subscription to the stack. As our sales team expands, we may eventually outgrow it, but the flexibility to start free and scale later is something we really appreciate. For in-house projects we also used and paid for several tools including Pipedrive, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Lemlist.
The Tools We Use (and What We Actually Paid in 2024)
Here’s what we actually spent last year in Thai Baht:
| Tool | Purpose | Approximate 2024 Yearly Cost (THB) |
|---|---|---|
| TeamWork | Project Management | 140,000 THB |
| Google Workspace | Email & File Management | 100,000 THB |
| Figma | UI Design | 35,000 THB |
| Sentry | Error Monitoring | 10,000 THB |
| BrowserStack | Cross-Browser Testing | 18,000 THB |
| OpenAI/ChatGPT | AI Usage | 15,000 THB |
| Atlassian | Jira / Confluence (clients) | 25,000 THB |
| Marker.io | Bug Reporting / QA Feedback | 21,000 THB |
| Zoho Books | Accounting | 9,000 THB |
| FlowAccount | Thai Accounting Compliance | 3,000 THB |
When you look at each tool in isolation, none of them seem particularly expensive. But put them together, and the total tells a different story: in 2024, we spent over 375,000 THB (more than $10,000 USD) just on SaaS subscriptions. These tools are vital to our operations, no doubt. But it’s a reminder that even well-managed stacks can quietly become major budget items if you’re not paying close attention.
What this shows: even when you’re mindful, SaaS costs pile up—fast.
AI Tools: A New Line on the Stack
AI-powered tools are now part of our daily workflow, and they’re quickly becoming another recurring line in the software budget. We use OpenAI/ChatGPT for a variety of tasks—from summarizing content to writing and reviewing code—and it’s proven to be a powerful and versatile assistant. Some developers on the team have adopted Cursor, an AI-first code editor tightly integrated with OpenAI models, which helps accelerate coding and reduce context-switching. Others prefer GitHub Copilot, especially for frontend work with React or backend logic in Laravel. Beyond OpenAI, Claude (by Anthropic) is also used by several team members. These tools aren’t replacements for human work, but when used smartly, they help us move faster and focus on higher-level problem-solving. That said, each comes with its own subscription—monthly or usage-based—and the combined cost across a dev team can grow quickly.
AI Tool Cost Estimate for 20 Developers (2024)
Not all of our developers have been on paid plans for all of 2024, but the AI tooling for 2025 is definitely going to be an additional cost, and a heavy one. Here are conservative estimates assuming not all developers use all tools (some use Cursor, others use Copilot in VS Code, and others Windsurf).
| Tool | Pricing Model | Est. Cost per User/Year | Total for 20 Users/Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI API | Pay-as-you-go (varies by usage, GPT-4-turbo, etc.) | 3,500 THB (moderate use) | 70,000 THB |
| Cursor | $20 USD/month per user (billed annually) | 8,400 THB | 168,000 THB |
| GitHub Copilot | $10 USD/month per user (billed annually) | 4,200 THB | 84,000 THB |
What We’ve Learned
- Choosing the right tool matters: It impacts your team’s productivity. A good fit will save you time and reduce friction.
- Changing tools is painful: Migration takes effort and carries risks. We’ve switched project management and chat tools more than once, and it always eats up time.
- Free tiers are powerful: Lark was completely free for us when we used it just for internal chat (up to 50 users). GitHub is still free for small teams.
- Look beyond popularity: Slack is great—but if you’re already using a platform like Google or Microsoft, maybe you don’t need it. BrowserStack is powerful—but if your clients don’t ask for edge-case testing, it might be overkill.
- Mix and match: You don’t need an all-in-one suite. Use what works for each department, and drop what doesn’t add value.
Our 2025 Philosophy: Fewer Tools, Smarter Usage
We’re not anti-SaaS—far from it. These tools are what make remote, agile, global work possible. But they should serve your business—not become a burden.
We now ask ourselves:
- Can this tool be used by more than one team?
- Does it replace something else we’re paying for?
- Is there a free or regionally-priced alternative?
- If we stopped using it today, would it break our flow?
And most importantly: What’s the actual cost per active user?
Regional Pricing Insights
Most of these SaaS providers use a uniform pricing model worldwide, simply charging in local currency equivalents. This one-size-fits-all approach means companies in Southeast Asia often pay the same list price as North American or European customers, which can represent a higher relative cost given lower average purchasing power. Slack, Monday, ClickUp, GitHub, and HubSpot all fall into this category – they have standard global pricing with no special discounts for countries like Thailand. For example, Slack’s Business+ plan is $12.50 per user/month (annual) globallyand HubSpot’s Professional tier is $100 per seat/month regardless of region. These prices can strain budgets for firms in lower-cost regions, and such companies may opt for free tiers or cheaper local alternatives when available.
However, a few tools do offer regional pricing or discounts to accommodate different markets:
- Google Workspace – Google charges in local currencies and sometimes offers lower rates or promotions in certain countries. In Thailand, for instance, the Business Standard plan costs around ฿370–฿400 per user/month (roughly $10–$11) via local partners, which is notably lower than the standard $14. This indicates Google adapts pricing to local market conditions to some extent (or works with resellers to do so).
- Zoho Books – Zoho adopts significantly localized pricing. Its plan prices vary by country: e.g. the Premium plan is $60/month in the US, but only around $36 in India. This steep discount for India (and possibly other low-PPC markets) shows Zoho’s strategy of adjusting prices for affordability. For Thailand, Zoho doesn’t publicly list a special rate; Thai businesses generally pay the “Global” rate in Thai Baht (plus any taxes), but the presence of country-specific editions (India, UK, etc.) suggests Zoho is willing to localize pricing where market demand dictates.
Overall trend: The majority of major SaaS tools still stick to unified pricing globally (often denominated in USD), which does not adjust for local purchasing power. This can make these services comparatively expensive for businesses in Southeast Asia. A one-size-fits-all model simplifies pricing structure but means companies in Thailand pay the same sticker price as a company in the US, despite economic differences. A few providers, particularly those eager to grow in emerging markets (like Zoho or Lark, and to an extent Google via local partners), are adopting regional pricing strategies or free tiers to be more competitive locally
For a 35-user business in Southeast Asia, this means it’s worth checking if a vendor offers localized pricing or promotions. If not, the firm must budget using the standard global rates above. In absence of regional discounts, Southeast Asian companies often take advantage of free plans (if the team size or feature needs allow), or consider annual subscriptions (which typically save ~15-20% vs monthly rates) to minimize costs. The lack of regional pricing across many SaaS products has also opened opportunities for regional competitors or reseller bundles to provide more affordable solutions in these markets. The general movement is gradually toward more flexible pricing as SaaS matures globally, but as of now, most listed tools follow a globally uniform pricing approach, with only a few adjusting prices to accommodate lower purchasing-power countries.
Conclusion
If you’re scaling a business, managing your SaaS stack is just as important as hiring the right people or finding good clients. The tools you use shape your daily operations—and your bottom line.
So, take inventory. Be intentional. Consolidate where it makes sense. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking more tools = more productivity.
Sometimes, less really is more.
