Every year we publish our internal stack, the tools we actually use across commercial and financial services clients, not the stock photography of SaaS logos you get elsewhere. Three things changed since the last refresh: AI consolidation killed some categories, server-side tracking stopped being optional, and 'all-in-one' platforms got good enough to replace 4–5 point solutions at the low end.
Nine tools that earn their seat
1. GA4 + Google Tag Manager server-side
Free + hosting cost. Server-side tagging is the non-negotiable upgrade of 2026, iOS privacy, ad blockers, and cookie deprecation have eaten 20–40% of client-side events on every site we audit. If your GA4 still runs client-only, you're making decisions on broken data.
2. PostHog (self-hosted or cloud)
For anything product-led. Replaces Hotjar + Mixpanel + a feature-flag tool. Generous free tier. Stop paying three vendors for what PostHog does natively.
3. Claude / ChatGPT Enterprise
One of these, not both. We use Claude because the long-context window handles our 50-page client briefs. Pick one, commit, and build workflows on it. Bouncing between them loses you the 30% productivity from prompt libraries.
4. Ahrefs (or Semrush)
Still worth it for SEO ops. Skip the lite plans, the value is the backlink index and competitor gap analysis, both of which require the higher-tier data.
5. Figma
Design system of record. If your creative lives in separate PSDs, Illustrator files, and Canva exports, your velocity is capped by file-hunting.
6. Webflow or Framer
For marketing sites. We moved from WordPress in 2023 and never looked back, the maintenance overhead on WordPress eats 8–12 hours a month you don't get back.
7. HubSpot Starter (or GHL for founder-led sales)
CRM + lifecycle emails. HubSpot if you need polish and integrations. GoHighLevel if you're a founder doing most of the sales yourself, cheaper, more flexible, uglier.
8. Descript
For video and podcast content. Text-based editing + AI cleanup turns a 4-hour edit into 45 minutes. The single biggest content-velocity unlock of the last two years.
9. Stripe + basic ops stack
Not a marketing tool per se, but every growth test that doesn't run through a reliable billing layer is unfinishable. Stripe + basic accounting is the floor.
Three that used to earn seats but no longer do
• Hootsuite / Buffer at the low end, native schedulers on LinkedIn, Meta, and X are fine below $3M spend.
• Dedicated email platforms under 5,000 subscribers, the HubSpot Starter and GHL stacks include enough. Don't run a separate Mailchimp.
• Standalone copywriting tools, Jasper, Copy.ai, and friends got eaten by Claude and ChatGPT. If you're still paying for one, cancel.
One thing to stop paying for immediately
Any SEO content tool that promises to auto-generate 100 articles from a seed list. Google's March 2024 update (and every update since) has specifically targeted that output. You're paying to hurt your rankings. Kill it today.
Questions we get on this topic.
What's the minimum this stack costs per month?
Under $300/month at the starter tier, Claude + GA4/GTM (free) + Webflow starter + HubSpot Starter + Ahrefs Lite + Figma covers it. That's the floor for a $1M business.
Do I really need server-side tagging?
Yes, if you spend more than $10K/month on paid. Under that, client-side with a good privacy-respecting analytics tool (Plausible, Fathom) is defensible.
Keep going.
10 growth tests worth running this quarter (and 3 that aren't)
A curated list of experiments we're running across commercial services and financial services clients right now, with predicted impact and effort ratings.
Read →
Email isn't dead, you're just writing it like it's 2019
Open rates lie, inbox placement matters more than list size, and the four-line email crushes the template. A short take on what changed and what to do about it.
Read →