Your SaaS bill is killing your margin.
We will tell you exactly which tools to kill.
The SaaS Replacement Audit. 30 days. $25,000 flat. We map every tool you pay for, calculate the true cost (license + integration tax + lock-in + bad-data drag), and ship a 12-month roadmap to replace the ones that cost more than they save.
Most owner-operators are paying for SaaS like it is free. The math says otherwise.
License fees are the small number. The real cost is the integration tax (every tool needs another tool to talk to it), the lock-in tax (you cannot leave without losing your data), and the bad-data tax (the same customer record exists in 5 places and reconciles in none of them). We calculate all four. Then we tell you what to do about it.
A document you can act on. Not a deck.
The deliverable is a 30–40 page report your team can read without us in the room. It is the artifact that justifies replacing a tool to your CFO and tells your engineer where to start.
Full SaaS inventory
Every tool you pay for, with annual cost, contract end date, the people who use it, and the workflows that depend on it. Pulled from your billing, expense reports, and password manager — no surprises.
True-cost accounting
Per tool: license + admin overhead + integration cost + data fragmentation drag. Most audits surface costs that are 2–4× the line-item license fee. That is where the case for replacement gets built.
Build / buy / keep / kill matrix
Every tool gets one of four recommendations, with rationale. Most stacks have 3–5 obvious replacement candidates, a handful that are worth keeping forever, and one or two that should have been killed last year.
12-month replacement roadmap
Sequenced by ROI and dependency, with effort estimates in weeks (not "phases"). Each move has a rollback path. Your team can take this and execute, or hire us to execute, or hire someone else. The roadmap is yours either way.
30 days. Four phases. Two checkpoints.
Discovery
- Stakeholder interviews (you, ops lead, finance, anyone living in the tools)
- Full SaaS inventory pulled from your billing, expense reports, and password manager
- Data-flow walkthrough: what lives where, what crosses boundaries, what gets re-entered
- Access to read-only credentials where useful — never write access
Analysis
- True-cost calculation per tool: license + admin overhead + integration tax + data fragmentation
- Build / buy / keep / kill recommendation per tool, with rationale
- ROI projection per opportunity, ranked
- Mid-engagement checkpoint to validate findings before the roadmap is locked
Roadmap
- 12-month replacement roadmap, sequenced by ROI and dependency
- Build-vs-buy decisions for each replacement (some you should keep buying)
- Effort estimates: weeks of work, not months of "transformation"
- Risk register and rollback paths for each move
Delivery
- Written report — 30–40 pages, your team can read it without us in the room
- 90-minute strategy session walking through findings and roadmap
- Optional kickoff session if you want us to execute the first replacement
Typical year-one savings: $200k–$500k.
On a $25k audit. Numbers below are the median range across the kind of $5M–$50M businesses we work with. Your mileage will vary; we will tell you up front if we think the math will not work for you.
Direct subscription savings from replaced tools. The smallest line item, often the only one boards see.
Zapier seats, integration consultants, custom middleware, the engineer keeping it all glued together.
Hours your ops team spends reconciling the same customer record across 5 systems. Hardest to see, often the largest.
If most of these are true, the audit pays for itself.
- $5M+ in annual revenue
- 8 or more SaaS tools on the books
- Owner-operator decision-making — you can sign a $25k engagement
- A nagging sense that the stack is more expensive than it should be
- At least one workflow that lives across 3+ tools and a spreadsheet
We will save us both time if any of these is true.
- Pre-revenue or sub-$3M — the math does not work yet
- You already know exactly what you want built and just need a developer
- Heavily regulated industries where every replacement is a compliance project
- Looking for a CTO to write production code, not give strategic guidance
The questions we get most often.
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. We will answer it directly, not in a follow-up.
What if we already know what to replace?
Then you do not need this audit. We are happy to skip straight to a build engagement. The audit exists for the case where you suspect waste but cannot prove it. If you can prove it, the work is execution, not analysis.
Do you implement what you recommend?
Sometimes. The audit is independent of the implementation. About half of audit clients hire us for the implementation; the other half take the roadmap to their existing team or to another shop. We will not pad the report to drive an upsell.
What if your recommendation is "keep buying that one"?
Then the recommendation is keep buying. Not every SaaS is wasteful. The audit names the ones worth replacing and the ones worth keeping — both are useful answers. The CWS replacement story is seven tools, not seventy.
How much of our team's time does this take?
About 8–12 hours over 30 days. Two interviews up front (1 hour each), a 30-minute mid-engagement check-in, and the final 90-minute strategy session. The rest is read-only data access and short follow-up questions over Slack or email.
How do you protect our data?
Read-only access where it is useful, never write. We do not store credentials. Engagement-specific shared drive for documents. Mutual NDA on the engagement letter. We can sign yours or use ours.
What is the typical engagement that follows?
Most audits convert into either a $50–100k implementation project to replace one or two tools, or a $10k/month fractional CTO retainer where we execute the roadmap over 6–12 months. Some clients do both.
Can we pay over time?
50% on signing, 50% on delivery is the default. ACH or check preferred; credit card available with a 2.9% surcharge.
How much your stack is really costing you.
Let's run the numbers.
20-minute scope call. No deck, no pitch. We will tell you on the call whether the audit is a fit, and what we expect it to find.