Marketing stacks have exploded. Every operator we talk to owns 30–50 SaaS logins, uses maybe 10 of them, and pays for 40. This is our shortlist of the ten tools that consistently earn their keep.
We grouped them by what they actually do, not what the vendor claims.
Measurement & attribution
- Google Analytics 4 — the free baseline you build everything on.
- A UTM builder — free from us: UTM Builder. One shared spreadsheet of conventions saves years of clean-up.
- PostHog — self-hostable product analytics with session replay.
Content & SEO
- Ahrefs or Semrush — pick one and stick with it.
- Screaming Frog — still the most useful $200/year in SEO.
- ToolMint SEO tools (free): Meta Tag Generator, Robots.txt, Sitemap, Canonical URL.
Growth loops
- A referral platform — Rewardful for SaaS, ReferralCandy for e-commerce.
- Loops.so or Customer.io — lifecycle email that doesn't require a full-time engineer.
Creative & landing pages
- Framer — the fastest way to ship marketing pages that look premium.
- Figma + Runway — for hero images, small video loops, brand-consistent assets.
The playbook we run
- Track only 3–5 metrics per channel.
- Weekly review — what moved, what didn't, what we'll change next week.
- Kill a tool if it hasn't been opened in 30 days.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What's the smallest viable stack?
GA4 + a UTM builder + one email tool + one SEO tool. Total cost under $200/month for most teams.
Should I use AI content generation?
As a first-draft assistant, yes. As an autopilot content mill, no. Google's helpful-content updates penalize thin AI output.
Is there a free alternative to Ahrefs?
Google Search Console + our free SEO tools cover 60% of the value at $0. Use paid tools when you outgrow that.