Let me be real with you: most small businesses I talk to are paying for somewhere between 3 and 8 software subscriptions they don't actually need. Not because the tools are bad, but because they signed up for something specific three years ago and never noticed that the tools they already pay for added the same feature six months later.
According to Productiv's 2024 State of SaaS report, the average small business uses 56 different SaaS applications. More than half of those licenses go underutilized. That's money leaving your bank account every month for software that's collecting digital dust.
Let's dig in. I'm going to walk you through the most common overlap I see and the free or already-included alternatives that do the same job.
You're probably already paying for project management
If your business runs on Microsoft 365 (the one that costs you roughly $12-22 per user per month), you already have Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Lists, and Microsoft To Do built into your subscription. All three are included. No extra charge. No add-on.
Planner gives you Kanban boards, basically the same view you'd see in Trello. Drag tasks between columns like "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done." Assign tasks to team members. Set due dates. It lives right inside Microsoft Teams, so you don't need to switch apps.
Microsoft Lists is the one most people don't know about. Think of it as a spreadsheet that acts like a database. You can track inventory, customer requests, content calendars, vendor contacts, anything that lives in a structured list. It has built-in templates, custom views, and conditional formatting. If you're paying for Airtable or Monday.com just to track stuff in rows and columns, Lists does the same thing for free.
And yet a 2023 survey by Gartner found that most organizations are only using about 50% of the features in the tools they've already purchased. So before you sign up for the next project management tool someone recommended on LinkedIn, check what's already in your toolbox.
The meeting scheduling problem that's already solved
Here's one that drives me a little bit crazy. I see small business owners paying $10-16/month for Calendly or similar scheduling tools. If you have Microsoft 365, you have Microsoft Bookings included in your subscription. If you use Google Workspace, you have Google Calendar's appointment scheduling built in.
Both of these do the core thing: let someone pick a time on your calendar without the back-and-forth email chain. Bookings even supports multiple staff members, service types, and automated confirmation emails. Is Calendly more polished in certain ways? Sure. But "more polished" and "worth $192 per year" are two different conversations.
The same logic applies to form builders. If you're paying for Typeform or JotForm, check out Microsoft Forms (included with 365) or Google Forms (free). For basic intake forms, surveys, and client questionnaires, they work great. They're not as pretty as Typeform, but your clients care about convenience, not animation effects.
File storage is another one
This one is straightforward math. Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives you 1TB of OneDrive storage per user. Google Workspace gives you pooled storage starting at 30GB per user on the cheapest plan, going up from there.
If you're also paying for Dropbox, Box, or another cloud storage provider on top of your Microsoft or Google subscription, ask yourself why. I'm not saying Dropbox is bad. I'm saying if you're already paying for OneDrive and also paying for Dropbox, you're paying twice for the same thing.
The Flexera 2024 State of ITAM report estimates that organizations waste about 29% of their software spend on unused, underused, or redundant licenses. For a small business spending $500/month on SaaS, that's $1,740 per year you could put somewhere useful.
How to actually audit this
Here's the part most articles skip. Knowing you might have redundant tools and actually doing something about it are different things. Here's a practical walkthrough:
Step 1: List every subscription. Check your credit card and bank statements for the last three months. Every recurring charge from a software company goes on the list. You'll be surprised what you find. That free trial you forgot to cancel? It's been billing you since October.
Step 2: Categorize by function. Group them: project management, communication, file storage, scheduling, forms, accounting, email marketing. If you have two or more tools in the same category, that's your first target.
Step 3: Check what's included. Whatever your core platform is (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace), go to the admin portal and look at what apps are available. Microsoft has a complete list of what's included in each plan. Google has the same for Workspace. Read them. Actually read them.
Step 4: Migrate one at a time. Don't cancel everything at once. Pick the most obvious overlap, migrate the data, give it two weeks to make sure it works, then cancel the redundant subscription. Repeat.
The tools that are actually worth paying for
I'm not saying every subscription is waste. Some tools genuinely do things your core platform doesn't. Your accounting software (QuickBooks, Xero) is probably necessary. Your industry-specific tools (legal practice management, CRM for sales teams) often don't have a free equivalent. Password managers like Bitwarden (free tier is excellent) or 1Password are genuinely worth every penny for small business cybersecurity.
The point isn't to eliminate all software spending. It's to stop paying for tools you've already got. Most small businesses can cut 20-30% of their SaaS spend in an afternoon just by checking what's already included in the platforms they're using. That's real money, and the only thing it costs you is an hour of reading your own subscription list.
