New research: The State of SaaS: Build vs. Buy, October 2026.The State of SaaS, October 2026. Read the report
Leave old software behind.
Anonymous reviews and real bills from teams fed up with SaaS, plus what they switched to.
What Buyers Are Saying
“Renting our core infrastructure. Moving off Heroku to AWS alone was like adding $300 a month in MRR.”
“We discontinued Zapier when they sent us a 600% price increase (not even joking).”
“"A gorgeous situation": ServiceNow's CEO celebrates a shrinking workforce.”
Newest alternatives and builders
Avrea
AI-native alternative
AI-native CI/CD platform built for high volumes of AI-written code, with caching and one-line migration.
AutomateNexus CRM
AI-native alternative
AI-native CRM for agencies with agents for qualification, follow-ups, scoring and client portals.
Bold Security
AI-native alternative
Runs AI models on-device to monitor activity, detect suspicious behavior and block attacks on endpoints.
MapleConnect
AI-native alternative
AI-native all-in-one CRM with voice agents, pipeline, email, SMS and booking.
Most activity this month
HubSpot
#1+32 this month
$20 – $150 /user/mo
List price · teams pay $30,000/yr (9 teams)
Salesforce
#2+32 this month
From $25 /user/mo
List price · teams pay $40,000/yr (8 teams)
Adobe
#3+32 this month
From $19.99 /mo
List price · teams pay $840/yr (10 teams)
Microsoft
#4+22 this month
$3,600 /yr
Median of 7 teams
Webflow
#5+18 this month
From $15 /mo
List price · teams pay $752/yr (9 teams)
AWS
#6+18 this month
$6,500 /yr
Median of 7 teams
Evernote
#7+17 this month
$199 /yr
Median of 6 teams
QuickBooks
#8+17 this month
From $38 /mo
List price · teams pay $1,200/yr (11 teams)
From teams who pay for it
Evernote
Started out great years ago, went downhill, doubling price, not worth it now.
Shopify
“One of our 8-figure clients literally replaced Shopify + Skio and built their own platform in just 2 weeks.”
Idris · @IdrisEcom_email
Adobe
Do not standardize on Adobe. There are better alternatives for everything they offer.
QuickBooks
Monthly subscription is growing and Intuit is stealing accountants clients.
QuickBooks
“I replaced the DMS that we had used for 20 years as well as QuickBooks, and website with a vibe-coded replacement that adds a ton of functionality for my small independent store.”
Peter Benson · @pbensonsea
Freshdesk
“@FreshworksInc You guys are beyond dissapointing. We pay over $10,000 annually to Freshdesk yet a single seat payment was pending and you switched off my entire company. Its been 3 hours with no resolution we have 60 seats and 100s of emails pending.”
Varun Sarda · @TheSarda
Teams that built their own
Most Microsoft 365 plans went up $1 to $3 per user a month on July 1, 2026. See every plan's old and new price and what to do before renewal.
Webflow raised its Basic plan, merged CMS and Business into one Premium plan and added AI credit limits. Here is what changes and when.
Monthly research
October 2026· Final edition
268
AI-native alternatives and builders listed, replacing 203 tools
Most new alternatives
Read the October 2026 report
