What should a startup actually spend on software in year one?

Under $100 a month until you have paying customers, and somewhere between $1,500 and $5,000 a month by the time you are fifteen people with a board. The jump happens at payroll and books, not at tooling.

What is the first paid tool worth buying?

A business bank account and a real ledger, from your first invoice rather than at tax time. Reconstructing a year of books backwards costs more than a year of the software would have.

Is the free tier ever enough?

Often, for longer than vendors imply. The thing to check is not the feature list but the limit you will hit first, which is usually seats, records, or automation runs rather than features.

When does per-seat pricing start to hurt?

Around eight to ten people on any one tool. Below that it is cheap and switching is easy. Above that the annual number gets large enough to be worth an afternoon of migration.

The Lean Startup Stack

A guide to startup software from day 0.

Most startup tool lists are written by people selling one of the tools, and they all recommend buying everything on day one. This one is ordered by when you actually need something, and it says out loud where you should not spend yet. I track 89 tools across 7 categories, and I re-check the prices on a 90 day loop so the numbers here are not two years stale.

Browse all 89 tools

What to buy, in order

The mistake I see most is buying the seed-stage stack at day 0. It is not that the tools are bad, it is that you pay for a year of a thing that solves a problem you do not have yet, and then you are locked into it when your needs change.

Day 0

Just you, nothing incorporated yet

$0 to $50/mo

Buy A domain, email, and somewhere to write things down. Nothing else.

Skip CRM, analytics, project management. You have no customers, no traffic, and no team to manage.

First customers

You plus maybe one other person, money coming in

$100 to $400/mo

Buy A bank account that is not your personal one, payments, and a real ledger from the first invoice.

Skip Anything sold to you per seat. At two people the per-seat math never bites yet, and switching later is cheap.

Seed

Five to fifteen people, a board, investors who ask questions

$1,500 to $5,000/mo

Buy Payroll, a password manager, and books someone qualified signs off on.

Skip The enterprise tier of anything. You are being sold SSO you can live without for another year.

Where I would start

These are the ones I reach for first. Some are affiliate partners, which is disclosed on the card and does not change the order.

Gusto

Full-service payroll, benefits, and HR administration platform for small businesses.

Pricing Plans start at $40/mo+

Visit Gusto (affiliate)

MarketerHire

A platform that connects companies with vetted, fractional marketing experts for on-demand, month-to-month engagements.

Pricing Typically $5k–$20k+/mo

Visit MarketerHire (affiliate)

Median

Financial autopilot for startups & SMBs.

Pricing $49/mo+ for cash-basis accounting, $299/mo+ for accrual

Visit Median

Mercury

Online banking platform for startups and small businesses that includes checking, savings, corporate cards, invoicing, and expense management.

Pricing Free; paid plans from $29.90/mo

Visit Mercury

Apollo.io

B2B sales engagement platform offering a contact database, automated outreach sequences, and CRM integrations.

Pricing Free tier available; paid plans from $49/user/mo

Visit Apollo.io (affiliate)

Cal.com

Open-source scheduling platform that automates meeting bookings for individuals and teams with customizable workflows and integrations.

Pricing Free tier available; paid plans from $15/user/month.

Visit Cal.com

Google Analytics

Web analytics platform for measuring website and app traffic and user behavior.

Pricing Free tier available

Visit Google Analytics

Google Workspace

Integrated suite of productivity and collaboration tools including Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Meet for business teams.

Pricing $6/user/mo+

Visit Google Workspace (affiliate)

Lovable

Chat-based AI platform that lets users build and deploy web apps, internal tools, and websites without writing code.

Pricing Free tier available; $25/mo+

Visit Lovable

n8n

Workflow automation platform for technical teams, featuring low-code and code workflows, AI integrations, and self-hosted or cloud deployment.

Pricing Free community edition; cloud plans from €20/mo

Visit n8n

Slack

Team communication and collaboration platform with channels, direct messages, and integrations.

Pricing Free tier available

Visit Slack

Softr

No-code platform that turns Airtable or Google Sheets into web apps, websites, and internal portals.

Pricing Free tier available

Visit Softr (affiliate)

Stripe

Payment processing and financial infrastructure platform for internet businesses.

Pricing Usage-based

Visit Stripe

The real stack, by job

Grouped by the job to be done rather than by vendor category, because that is how the decision actually presents itself.

Marketing26 tools Tech19 tools Operations18 tools Finance14 tools Design7 tools Payroll3 tools Legal2 tools

Common questions

What should a startup actually spend on software in year one?: Under $100 a month until you have paying customers, and somewhere between $1,500 and $5,000 a month by the time you are fifteen people with a board. The jump happens at payroll and books, not at tooling.
What is the first paid tool worth buying?: A business bank account and a real ledger, from your first invoice rather than at tax time. Reconstructing a year of books backwards costs more than a year of the software would have.
Is the free tier ever enough?: Often, for longer than vendors imply. The thing to check is not the feature list but the limit you will hit first, which is usually seats, records, or automation runs rather than features.
When does per-seat pricing start to hurt?: Around eight to ten people on any one tool. Below that it is cheap and switching is easy. Above that the annual number gets large enough to be worth an afternoon of migration.