Anton•Warsaw•When you start working on a new product or a company and have several people working with you there is this tendency to setup many online tools.
Obviously you will start with the domain name. You will buy it and there is no way to escape this expense.
Then you will need email and by default you will go and setup account on Google Workspace that would cost you 6USD per user.
After that you would decide to start messaging software. You might start with a free plan but then it might cost 7.25USD per user.
Then maybe you will need some internal knowledge base like Notion. This one will cost you 8USD per user for setup.
And then it gets more and more complex. Maybe you will need Intercom and Loom, Airtable and some tool to track analytics.
Those are just meta tools to get you started. We are not talking here about your product yet!
Is there an alternative?
I think so!
You can simplify many of those things and save a lot of money.
Eg for email you can use Zoho, or even better if you have less than 6 people in your team start with Apple iCloud Mail for your own domain.
For messaging don't signup for anything. Start with iMessage. It's free and it can support group chats for up to 25 people. That would be enough for a while.
Instead of Notion use Apple Notes. Create a separate folder dedicated to your project/company and share it with other people. That is it. It can have nested folders. You can track your tasks, marketing campaigns, documentation - all there. You can even publish your blog directly from Apple Notes using Montaigne.
Same with Loom, Dropbox and so on. On Mac you have iCloud. Just record a video and share it with everyone and then ping a person on iMessage.
Start simple, save money and make a progress on your product.