Tools We Actually Use
Disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. We also publish The Stack Insiders, an independent software review site.
There is no thirty-tool list here. These are the things we pay for, what each one is genuinely for, and the free alternative if you are not at that stage yet.
Prices verified August 2026. We re-check them quarterly.
Kit -- free Newsletter plan, paid from $33/month at 1,000 subscribers. Start free. There is no reason to pay for email until the contact limit is actively blocking a send you want to make. *Free alternative:* Mailchimp's free tier covers 250 contacts.
Pages and funnels
Systeme.io -- free plan that never expires, covers 2,000 contacts, funnels and email. Paid Startup tier $27/month. The most generous free tier in this category. Genuinely enough for a beginner's first year. *Step up:* ClickFunnels from $97/month, once you are running paid traffic and need split testing.
Payments
Stripe -- free to set up, roughly 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. You can take money with a payment link and no website. Do this before you build anything.
Design
Canva -- free plan covers what almost anyone needs. Pro is around $15/month. You will know when you need Pro. It takes most people months.
Scheduling
Calendly -- free plan, paid from $10/seat/month billed annually. Add it when arranging calls by hand has cost you an hour in a single week.
Automation
Zapier -- free tier covers 100 tasks/month, Professional from $19.99/month. Skip until you have copied the same data between two tools more than twenty times.
All-in-one (later)
GoHighLevel -- from $97/month (Starter), $297 (Unlimited), $497 (top tier). This is a consolidation play, not a starting point. It makes sense once you are paying for four or more overlapping subscriptions -- at which point replacing them usually costs meaningfully less than running them.
For a genuinely detailed breakdown of what it does and where it falls short, The Stack Insiders publish hands-on testing and comparisons across this category, including their full GoHighLevel review with the limitations listed alongside the strengths.
How to use this list
Buy nothing until a specific task is costing you real time or real money. Every tool here has a free tier or a free alternative, and the free versions will carry you further than most people expect.
If you want the fuller reasoning, we wrote it up in what it really costs to start an online business and the beginner's tool stack.
Disclosure: Some links on this page are affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you sign up -- at no extra cost to you. We also publish The Stack Insiders, an independent software review site. We only list tools we use or have tested.
