My Tool Criteria: What I'm Willing to Pay For
I'm cheap. Not because I don't have money, but because most tools are noise. I use a tool if:
- It saves me hours per month (not minutes)
- It's hard to replace (proprietary or custom logic)
- The cost is less than what I'd earn back
- It doesn't add complexity (simple to use)
I've dropped tools that looked cool but didn't meet these criteria. Notion (pretty but slow), Webflow (overkill for static pages), Zapier at scale (too expensive). But I keep tools that genuinely save me.
Make.com: $16-29/month — Yes, Worth It
This is my core automation platform. Where I build everything: Shadow Hound, Social Spark, Blog Post Generator, Voice ToDo, KPI Dashboard, Tailored Social Post. Seven production tools all built here.
What I pay: Core plan, $25/month. Includes 10,000 operations/month. Sometimes I bump up when projects scale.
Why it's worth it:
- I make infinitely more than $25/month from tools I've built on Make
- No maintenance overhead (Make handles infrastructure)
- Faster iteration (weeks not months to build new tools)
- Integrations are prebuilt (OpenAI, Airtable, Gmail, Slack, etc.)
- Free tier is generous for testing ($0 if you're under 1,000 ops/month)
The pricing scales fairly. If you're doing 50,000 operations/month and making serious money, the platform cost is trivial. If you're doing 500 operations, free tier covers it.
Airtable: Free Tier — Yes, Free Is Enough
What I pay: Nothing. I use the free tier exclusively.
I store everything here: execution logs for all my scenarios, customer data, project tracking, KPI data. The free tier gives me unlimited records, two weeks of history, and basic automation.
Why free tier is enough:
- Unlimited records (I have thousands)
- All integrations work (API, webhooks, etc.)
- Good enough views and filters for debugging
- Paid plans are expensive ($10-30/workspace) and I don't need them
If Airtable charged for what I use, I'd consider Google Sheets or a database. But free + reliable is hard to beat.
Honest note: I know Airtable could change pricing. That's why I also know how to export to SQL if needed. But today, free tier is my stack.
OpenAI: Pay-as-You-Go, ~$10-20/month — Yes, Worth It
What I pay: No subscription. Pay per API call. Usually $15/month on average. Can be $5-30 depending on usage.
I call GPT-4 from Make.com for all content generation (Blog Post Generator, Social Spark, Kid-Friendly Story Book, Tailored Social Post).
Why it's worth it:
- Way cheaper than hiring a writer
- Instant (users get results in 10 seconds, not days)
- Scalable (one prompt handles 1,000 uses)
- I control the cost (can switch to GPT-3.5 if needed to save money)
Honest note: If you're processing millions of tokens, Claude or open-source models might be cheaper. But at my scale, OpenAI is fine.
Google Workspace: $12/month — Yes, Worth It
What I pay: Business Standard plan, $12/month. Covers email, Drive, Sheets, Docs.
I use it for:
- Professional email (not Gmail's free tier)
- Google Sheets integrations (Social Spark delivers results here)
- Google Docs for templates (some tools output to Docs)
Why it's worth it:
- Professional email is important (looks better than @gmail)
- Google Sheets API integration is solid and cheap
- Everything works together seamlessly
Could I use Zoho or Outlook instead? Sure. But I'm already in Google's ecosystem and it just works.
Tools I Dropped and Why
Notion ($0 but dropped anyway) — I used it for knowledge management. It's pretty and powerful. But it's also slow and I stopped opening it. Information just got lost inside it. Now I use a simple markdown folder in GitHub. Faster, searchable, less cognitive load.
Zapier ($19-50/month when I scaled) — I started with Zapier. It's good for simple stuff. But once you build complex workflows, Make.com is more powerful and (at scale) cheaper. I switched and never looked back.
Webflow (was paying $12/month) — Built my site here thinking I needed fancy animations. Then I realized I just needed a fast, boring, static site. Now I use Hugo + GitHub Pages ($0). Faster, simpler, better for SEO.
Slack ($7/month) — I was paying for Slack to integrate with my automations. But I don't collaborate with anyone and I barely use it. Switched to email notifications. Saves $7/month, same result.
Total Monthly Spend: $40-60
Let's do the actual math:
- Make.com: $25
- OpenAI: $15 (average)
- Google Workspace: $12
- Airtable: $0
- Total: $52/month
Some months I spend less if I'm not pushing a new tool. Some months I might upgrade Make to a higher tier temporarily. But ballpark: $50/month for my entire automation stack.
Is It Worth It?
Absolutely. Here's why:
- Time saved: At least 10 hours/month (conservatively). My time is worth more than $5/hour.
- Revenue enabled: I earn more than $500/month from tools I've built on this stack. Even if I only kept 10% of that ($50), I break even. The actual return is much higher.
- Peace of mind: I'm not managing servers or dealing with infrastructure. Make.com handles that. That's worth something.
The real answer: don't ask if tools are worth it in a vacuum. Ask if they enable something you couldn't do otherwise. Make.com enables me to build and deploy automation in weeks. OpenAI enables me to generate content at scale. Google Workspace enables professional presence. Airtable enables debugging. Each one does something I can't easily replace.
If I had to choose one to keep? Make.com. It's the foundation. Everything else is optional.
Building Cheap Doesn't Mean Building Weak
I could spend $200/month on tools. Fancy CMS, premium analytics, multiple databases, etc. But I'd get diminishing returns after the core four. The secret to staying cheap is saying no more than saying yes.
Every tool you add is:
- Another monthly bill
- Another integration to maintain
- Another thing that can break
- Another vendor to worry about
I use four paid tools because they solve problems I can't solve better elsewhere. That's the bar. Not "is it cool?" or "do others use it?" Just "does it solve a real problem?"
Start free. Only add paid tools when free tiers aren't enough. And even then, ask if you're paying for features you actually use or just features you might use someday.