The raw information: reviewing 30 SaaS tools 2024

3 weeks and 21+ hours of research & trials later.

The article with my learnings is linked here.

1) HEY

Ok, there’s a catch here and a reason for this service being the first in my review list. I’m gonna use a new Hey e-mail address to register accounts for all the tools that follow.

Headline: “We finally fixed your e-mail + calendar”.

What’s the tool about: HEY brings a new approach to the traditional way of working with e-mails and calendars. You get a new account with them and access into their tailored application that promises to change the way you write, read and browse e-mails + organize your day.

Getting access: From the hey.com landing page you can create a personal account directly and activate a 14-days trial, no credit card required. Pretty straight-forward self-serve.

Total time to goal: It took me 2 minutes to setup a new account and 7 minutes to read their activation flow and get comfortable with the Screener, the Imbox, the Feed & Acting on e-mails.

Pricing & usage model: $99 / year for personal accounts and $12 / month / user for the business accounts.

Communication: No span whatsoever. Just a friendly reminder before the trial expires, giving you the possibility to purchase a license. Your data is frozen for you for 30 days after expiration, in case you wish to reactivate the service, after which they release the e-mail address back into the public pool to choose from.

Support: Humanly warm and blazing fast. It took Chase from 37Signals, who was on duty at that time, 10 minutes on the clock to get back to me.

What’s cool: HEY’s onboarding flow is a living essence part of the core service itself. The steps you have to go through after setting up your account are delivered straight to your Imbox, similar to e-mails, which is brilliant.

2) Figma

Headline: “How you design, align, and build matters. Do it together with Figma.”

What’s the tool about: Figma is an online design tool made for teams and individuals, allowing you to build, prototype or convert to code modern wireframes & mockups faster. It can be used through both standalone apps (mobile, desktops) as well as via the browser.

Getting access: The figma.com page gives you the change to “Get Started for Free” directly. The only information you need at first to setup your account is your e-mail and a new password. After you confirm your e-mail, you get asked more information. Choosing a billing plan is among the last questions part of the activation flow: it first makes sure you’re in and then it ask you to choose how you’ll use it.

Total time to goal: It took me 5 minutes to create my account and go through the onboarding survey Figma offers. An experienced designer, new in Figma, may need a couple of hours after this moment to discover & get comfortable with every function the tool offers, prior to becoming productive.

Pricing & usage model: You get a free forever limited plan as a standalone user. If you’d like to get more features or work with your team, the prices start at $15 / month / seat.

Communication: The only e-mail I’ve received so far is the one confirming my e-mail address, otherwise they do not push hard to convert, but rather the tool wants you to work more and more with it, become dependant and then make the choice to stick around.

Support: Somehow I have mixed feelings here. I’ve opened an in-app ticket and was expecting to hear news from Figma’s CS team via e-mail, but they never wrote back.

What’s cool: the adoption of Figma in the digital market is astonishing. You can find a lot of mockups, design systems or resources out in the wild, both free & paid, that you can use to get a head start in your work.

3) Freshchat

Headline: “Engage your customers with smarter conversations on any channel.”

What’s the tool about: Freshchat is a live chat system you can integrate into your service to provide customer support, built for small & large support teams alike. It also gives you the possibility to setup a knowledge base for self-serving customers, automations & integrations with other tools, especially with the ones part of Freshworks’ portfolio (the parent company).

Getting access: One can sign up for a 14-days free trial directly from Freshchat’s landing page. What I’ve found strange is that they make it mandatory for you subscribe to the newsletter in this process, even with the data center in Europe (GDPR & optional consent, Freshworks?). After getting access, you’re presented with a 5-step onboarding flow showcasing the main functionalities and then you’re redirected to the final activation screen: setting up the chat widget on your platform through a JS script.

Total time to goal: Approximately 15 minutes to customize the CI of the chat widget and deploy it live on your platform. This is for a very basic setup, but one you can actually work with. For a more complex setup & a larger team, you would need at least a couple of hours to go through setting up groups, users, roles, additional channels, FAQs, the chatbot or contextual data fields.

Pricing & usage model: The trial you get access to for 14 days is the highest plan Freshchat offers, so you can test all features. It is valued at $95 / user / month for monthly billing. The cheapest plan goes to €23 / user / month.

Communication: I have received several e-mails part of the onboarding & activation flow at first. From time to time, you may receive several other notifications via e-mail, from either a marketing perspective (to drive actions & growth) or a technical one (e.g. if an automation you’ve configured fails to run).

Support: Not surprisingly, the CS team doing support for a CS tool is pretty fast & good. Took close to 2 minutes to get a reply from one of their agents for my test ticket.

4) TinyKiwi

Headline: “Amazing designs in a matter of seconds”

What’s the tool about: TinyKiwi is an image editor for creative entrepreneurs. It allows you to create fast digital marketing materials like OG images, mockups, thumbnails or ad creatives.

Getting access: Just click “Open Editor” from the landing page and you’re in. That’s a pretty cool way to allow users to test your tool, even without accounts. It brings back memories from TinyPNG, SmallPDF or WeTransfer. With TinyKiwi, you have access to a light Illustrator directly in your browser. Only if you want to pay for the tool and get more feature vs. what they offer in the free plan you need to create an account.

Total time to goal: It took me about 7 minutes to get myself familiar with the tool and export my first asset (an OG image for this article).

Pricing & usage model: The tool is free to use, but comes with some limitations. The pain is in the watermark they tool adds on top of your design. Pay for for a lifetime deal ($67) and get rid of it + access to many more features. The one-time payment is a radical shift from the classic cloud solutions where the timely / pay-per-use model is the most frequent.

Communication: You’re not getting spammed via e-mail at all, as you don’t even need an account to use the tool.

Support: Not applicable, the tool is completely self-serve and there is no CS team behind. I couldn’t say its needed either.

5) Trello

Headline: “Trello brings all your tasks, teammates, and tools together”

What’s the tool about: Trello is a task & project management tool; a to-do list on steroids, similar to Asana, Todoist or Monday.

Getting access: Click “Get Trello for free” from the landing page. Sign up just with e-mail and you’re in. The password gets set later, via e-mail, to minimise first time access friction. A 4-step activation flow is there to help you define the board you need, the statuses and to invite any potential team members you may be collaborating with. Then, you get 2 choices: opt for the Free plan or choose Premium and get a 30-days trial. Interestingly enough, the price is not listed here, only the advantages compared to the Free plan. If you choose the latter, the next screen brings up a paywall: add your card details to continue. You can skip for the Free plan though.

Total time to goal: 5 minutes, from the account setup to adding a couple of to-dos for the Free plan.

Pricing & usage model: One Free forever plan, with certain limitations, and three paid plans, with more and more features: Standard ($5), Premium ($10) and Enterprise ($17.50) per user per month.

Communication: Pretty quiet from Trello, I haven’t been pushed to convert via e-mails. However, their “Try Premium free” CTA is constantly in sight in the app.

Support: There is quite some friction in place to contact customer support and for pretty much any topic other than “billing”, “sales” or “report abuse”, you are redirected to the documentation. If you do want to contact customer support, it’s gonna be through an e-mail ticket.

6) Zoom

Headline: “AI that makes you more productive / collaborative”

What’s the tool about: An all-in-one tool for online communications: chat, group meetings, 1-1 calls. Feels so strange to write down what Zoom is.

Getting access: Click “Sign Up Free” on the landing page and follow a multi-step flow. I felt a slight friction here, or just a different approach, compared to the other tools tested so far, as, before effectively accessing my account, I had to (1) verify my age, (2) add my e-mail address, (3) confirm my e-mail via OTP, (4) set my name & password and only after see “Welcome to Zoom”. There are then 6 further steps available in the onboarding flow, the last one being a prompt to upgrade to Zoom One Pro and get rid of the 40 minutes limit for online meetings.

Total time to goal: 7 minutes, from the landing page, going through the onboarding and then creating my first Zoom meeting.

Pricing & usage model: The service is free forever, with certain limits applied, the hardest being the time limit imposed over the calls you can have. The Pro plan is $15.99 and the Business one $21.99, with Enterprise options available.

Communication: The “Upgrade now” button is visible through the majority of the screens you’re browsing. In certain cases, it completely blocks the access to features you should know about, but you don’t have access to yet. Other than this, in terms of e-mail marketing it was pretty quiet.

Support: There’s no access to a live chat for free plans, only to the knowledge base and to a chat bot. Like with many other bot-powered support channels, you cannot do much with it, other than to find the shortest path to an FAQ article. However,

7) Notion

Headline: “Write, plan, share. With AI at your side.”

What’s the tool about: Notion is a repository of information, a space for documentation, project management and team collaboration.

Getting access: Click “Get Notion free”, add your e-mail address and confirm it via a one-time e-mail code. Before getting access to your workspace, you’re required to complete an onboarding flow and every step is mandatory, unlike in other tools. Similar to Trello, you’re then asked if you want to try the Plus version for free for 14 days and that comes with a paywall. Notion has a beautiful way to get you up to speed with what you can do, as a new user, directly integrated into the core tool as well.

Total time to goal: It took me roughly 10 minutes to get through the presentation, onboarding, browse my workspace and setup my first to-do board. I feel that, as a new user, I could become productive in up to 60 minutes, as the tool populates your workspace with a lot of templates for the most generic activities: it’s pretty easy to just modify in those templates what I don’t need, rather than creating everything from scratch.

Pricing & usage model: There is a personal version of the tool Free forever. However, as soon as you invite team members, thus transitioning from a personal to a business account, a limit is imposed over the amount of content blocks you can work with. Paid plans are quite competitive, the Pro starting at $8 / user / month and the Business at $15. Notion AI comes on top, with an additional $10 / user / month.

Communication: If you don’t subscribe for marketing communication, Notion respects your privacy and keeps the e-mail messages at a minimum. Even working with the Free plan, the amount of prompts to upgrade are almost inexistent. They play another move here though (see What’s Cool below).

Support: The documentation available and the curated tutorials packed through the Notion Academy available for any user are outstanding. Just in case you ever need help, they have almost every question you may think of covered by default. One can also reach the customer support team via e-mail and the response time is almost instant, but they have a Bot actually replying. To my surprise, the response is pretty tailored to your needs and Notion seems to be using AI / ML in the e-mail ticketing: definitely on top of any automated response I have seen before. You also have the option further to choose to talk to an agent.

What’s cool: Notion has a way of slowly creating addiction without you even noticing. It’s such a powerful tool, and in the same time one so robust, that it swiftly becomes part of your life and a central repository for your personal or business information. Then, it’s only a matter of time until you hit “pay” and adopt it in your team. I believe the future of Notion is in a workspace that touches every single core activity of managing or growing a business: documentation, project management, async communication, calendars, websites (all which are already there), plus areas like online meetings, chat, e-mails, document storage & sync, IAM and more.

8) Typeform

Headline: “Forms that break the norm”

What’s the tool about: Typeform is an online form builder with a different kind of flair, one that lets you break the norm in forms. It makes providing data natural and pleasant.

Getting access: They have 2 different copy versions of the same CTA, “Sign up” and “Get started - it’s free”. You have to provide your e-mail and password in one go and then confirm the address. Typeform uses the “click to activate” approach via e-mail, rather than asking you to copy & paste a one-time code. Once you’re in, you have to go through 5 onboarding steps meant to personalize your workspace. Just like Notion, rather than starting from scratch, you begin from a basic form that you can edit & expand, saving some time at first.

Total time to goal: It took me roughly 30 minutes to sign up, create and publish a simple form online, all with custom styles. For more complex forms, setting up integrations or collecting payments, it can take a couple of hours, depending on the content.

Pricing & usage model: There is a Free unlimited plan available, although one which I find very limiting. One can collect only 10 responses per month with it and for anything more than this the prices start at €25 / month for the Basic plan and go up to €55 / month for Plus or €89 / month for Business. Unlike Notion before, that becomes part of your life and convinces you of it’s capabilities from the Free plan, Typeform takes another approach: it gives you an amazing glimpse into what it can do, but limits you out from any real benefit until you convert to a customer (which is, in the end, the hard objective of product-led customer aquisition). Depending on the number of responses you plan to get per month, there will also be additional fees on top of the baseline price that every plan comes with.

Communication: In the first 20 minutes after activating my account, I received 2 messages, one to help me get started, another to introduce me the paid features already. The latter was sent in the same time as I was done with preparing my first form and I guess this notification was triggered either by the moment when I finished the form or when I needed to use the first paid feature.

Support: A “quick help” option is available first, which provides you with FAQs based on a query. For further needs, Typeform offers a knowledge base / help center and e-mail support. I have not heard back from them on my ticket though.

9) Grammarly

Headline: “You can win at work. Take our word for it.” / “Find the words to reach your goals” / “Responsible AI that ensures your writing and reputation shine”. This is quite cool to discover, and it’s a practice I’ve used personally before: Grammarly alternates its main headline between sessions to ensure you don't always encounter the same prompt if you're considering signing up.

What’s the tool about: Grammarly is a writing assistance tool that uses AI and natural language processing to check for various types of errors in texts, while offering suggestions to improve the clarity of your message.

Getting access: Clicking “Get Grammarly - It’s Free” from the landing page will get you to the registration form, which requires the e-mail, password and your name. You then have to confirm your e-mail address via a one-time code (but here copy-paste does not work, aaargh) and you’re in. The onboarding flow is structured in 5 steps, some of which actually take you away from the app (e.g. the quick tour) and then you’re able to install the browser extension required for Grammarly to help you in different places on the web.

Total time to goal: Up 5 minutes to set up the account and 10-15 more to install the extension and get comfortable with it. I pasted the contents of this article in a Google Doc for Grammarly do review and it’s pretty neat. Once it’s in your browser, Grammarly gets activated whenever you write something, regardless of where you’re doing it. I think I’m gonna use it massively when I’d be adding this article in my blog.

Pricing & usage model: The solutions comes with an unlimited-time Free plan that’s amazing for individuals and basic tasks. The product wants you to get so attached to it, and by all means, you have all the reasons to when you’re writing periodically, to the level where you won’t want to live without it anymore. Then, for more features & value, you can start paying for a Premium plan (starting at $12 / month) or a Business one (from $15 / user / month). And you may be able to use ChatGPT to achieve similar results, but similar to Copilot for coding, Grammarly just saves an incredible amount of time while writing as it blends in very nicely with any workflow you may have.

Communication: During my tests, there were no marketing materials or hard pushes to convert to a paying customers, but the way the solution works make me consider what else is out there in a paid plan, if it’s so good in a free one.

Support: There’s almost no real need to contact support, as everything works so good. I did write though the customer support via e-mail, as part of the review, and the response time was < 12 hours.

10) Calendly

Headline: “Easy scheduling ahead”

What’s the tool about: Calendly is a scheduling tool designed to simplify the process of setting up meetings. It allows users to create availability preferences, share their available calendar slots with others, and let invitees choose a meeting time that works for both parties without the back-and-forth of traditional scheduling methods.

Getting access: “Get started” right from the homepage. The sign up flow requires your e-mail, name and password in one go and, after confirming the e-mail address, you’re in. The onboarding flow does not only have the purpose of introducing you to the tool, but to also customize your workspace to your needs (e.g. setting up your own link, choosing a timezone or integrating your own calendar).

Total time to goal: 10 minutes to setup my account, get comfortable with the tool and customize my first event type, ready to accept appointments. Once again I’m seeing here the approach of having your workspace pre-populated with basic content that you can just edit instead of starting from scratch.

Pricing & usage model: The basic plan, mostly suitable for 1-1 meetings, is Free forever. Features that allow you to have group meetings or support more than 1 even type start with the Standard plan at $10 / seat / month and go up to $16 / seat / month for the Teams plan if you need advanced integrations with CRMs or opt for Round Robin events.

Communication: I’ve received one e-mail from them for every of the first 3 days, mostly with informative content of how I can use the tool the most efficiently. Converting to a customer feels more as a decision driven by an organic need for more features rather than constant reminders or feature locks.

Support: Calendly offers a live chat for support and the team is pretty responsive, with the reply time being under 3 minutes for my query.

11) Miro

Headline: “Enter with a dream. Exit with the next big thing.”

What’s the tool about: Miro is a collaborative whiteboarding platform that enables teams to work together on a shared digital canvas. It offers tools for brainstorming, diagramming or project planning, making it suitable for a wide range of use cases: from design and development to education and business strategy.

Getting access: One can sign up directly from the landing page. After confirming the OTP code via e-mail, you get access to the workspace and the onboarding flow, based on 3 steps meant to 1) learn more about you and 2) customize the space. Miro does a pretty good job at adapting the first board you see to the role you’re going for in the onboarding step.

Total time to goal: I was able to use the tool in less than 5 minutes from signing up. While mastering it may require a couple of hours, the whole experience is pretty intuitive and doesn’t require a lot of time invested to work on basic use cases.

Pricing & usage model: A free plan is available with up to 3 boards. The Starter plan begins at $10 / user / month and the Business one at $16 / user / month. Custom enterprise plans are also available.

Communication: This was the first tool I tested so far where I was simply not able to find an “Upgrade” or related CTA. To see the plans I have available on top of the Free one, I effectively had to go to the dashboard, then team profile and then click “change plan”. You do see a feature lock though when you are trying to create the 4th board in your workspace, but even then the functionality is pretty flexible: just archive one of your past boards and you can then jump into a new one. Converting prospects to customers seems to be done, yet again, through an organic need: Miro gives you everything you need to work with it and, once you discover the benefits, you’re hooked & dependant, which is quite cool in my opinion. There was no spam or follow-up via e-mail.

Support: They offer a vast online knowledge base and Academy, which is the most prominent direction promoted when searching for a support channel. E-mail ticketing for core account management issues has a response time of < 24 hours.

What’s cool: during onboarding, Miro asks you what type of input device you’re using between a mouse and a trackpad. The entire onboarding experience and tutorials are then tailored to your own device, which is the first time I’m seeing this. It makes so much sense.

12) WeTransfer

Headline: “Transfer ideas. Transform the world.”

What’s the tool about: WeTransfer is a cloud-based file transfer service that allows users to send large files easily over the internet. It is designed to be simple and user-friendly, enabling users to upload files and share them with others through a link, without the need for an account for basic service.

Getting access: There is no landing page to present the tool and convert you. Once you navigate to wetransfer.com you directly reach the product. The only friction before using it is the fact that you need to click 2x times to accept the cookie and privacy policies. If you want to learn more about the features, that’s when you have to click away when browsing different options in the navigation.

Total time to goal: < 2 minutes to send a file to anyone I need. Add 1 minute if you’re also creating an account with them.

Pricing & usage model: If I had to choose one modern tool that resembles the old WinRar, I would choose WeTransfer. You can pretty much use it for free forever. Converting you to a paid customer is an option promoted quite subtle to you if you want to send files larger than 2GB or to if you wish to work with a team & track the files sent. Then, the Pro plan is €12 / user / month and the Premium one €23 / user / month.

Communication: As the tool can be used without an account, there is no e-mail communication involved.

Support: This is definitely one of the tools where I was ashamed of even taking 2 minutes from a support team with my standard test ticket. As I haven’t converted my test account to a paid one, I chose to skip this and only browsed through the online documentation they offer, which seems pretty reliable.

13) ClickUp

Headline: “One app to replace them all”

What’s the tool about: ClickUp is a cloud-based project management and productivity software designed to cater to the needs of various teams and projects. It’s tailored, but flexible enough, for task management, document collaboration, goal setting, time tracking, and more, making it versatile for managing work across different industries.

Getting access: Clicking “Get Started. It’s FREE” on the landing page brings you to the account setup. I counted 9 steps I had to go through before being able to access the workspace, definitely the longest account activation flow I tested so far. Once you’re in, ClickUp uses a combination of video tutorials, guided tours and tooltips to show you how to use its features. One concept I’ve found useful is that you have a direct & visibly promoted option to automatically import your content from competitor tools, that is if you wish to move.

Total time to goal: < 10 minutes from the landing page to create a simple to-do list, which can extend to a couple of hours if you’re moving in with an entire team.

Pricing & usage model: A Free forever plan is available and is the one that you are first assigned to when registering. The first paid plan, Unlimited, starts at $10 / user / month, Business is $19 / user / month and Business Plus is $29 / user / month. I kinda feel pushed to choose the “Unlimited” plan, but the Business one is promoted as “the most Popular”. Kind of mixed feelings about the copy here.

Communication: As a new user, I only received guides on how to make the best use of ClickUp’s features via e-mail. However, their “Upgrade” option is pretty visible in-app from the free plan.

Support: ClickUp offers a live chat support option, which, like many other tools out there, uses a Bot at first to triage requests. My experience with it was… questionable and after 5x “I want to speak with an agent” I finally was able to connect in no time to the support team, which then was quite fast and reliable.

14) Ahrefs

Headline: “Everything you need to rank higher & get more traffic”

What’s the tool about: Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool that provides a wide range of features to help businesses improve their online visibility and ranking on search engines. It offers keyword research, competitor analysis, backlink tracking, content exploration, and site audit functionalities.

Getting access: Ahrefs is a product-led solution, but one that, as opposed to so many out there, does not offer any possibility to try it out before paying. And it’s not like you have a paywall to access a 30-days trial, nope, there is no trial or free version you can test. So no access for me in the scope of this review. I have actually considered whether I should keep it in the list or not, but ended up going with it to show another way of doing business. They play hard and leverage their experience to convert customers before giving access to their platform. Here’s the copy visible above the plans: “We’ve been crawling the entire web 24/7 since 2010, indexing and structuring petabytes of information. Get access to these insights with an Ahrefs subscription and use them to improve your business.”

Total time to goal: Not applicable, as there is no trial or free account option.

Pricing & usage model: The cheapest plan, Lite, starts at €89 / month and prices go up to €899 / month for the Enterprise plan. If you’d like to have more than 1 user, regardless of the plan, that will bump up the price with €45 / month / user.

Communication: Not applicable to this review.

Support: Not applicable to this review.

15) SmallPDF

Headline: “We make PDF easy.”

What’s the tool about: SmallPDF is an online solution that offers a suite of tools for converting, editing, compressing, merging, and splitting PDF files in a (very) user-friendly interface.

Getting access: You have 2 options available to use the tool: one is the classic ‘create an account’ approach, which allows you to store your documents and subscribe for one of the paid plans, and another is an option similar to WeTransfer or TinyKiwi, where you can simply work with the PDFs you need in-browser, session based, with no need for an account (but with limited high-level functionalities).

Total time to goal: It took me < 2 minutes to split or compress a PDF. Add 1-2 minutes if you’re signing up for an account as well.

Pricing & usage model: There is a free forever plan that seems most suitable to light users. Or, let me put it the other way, actually the paid plans seem to be fit for power users much more. As a standalone user, the Pro plan is €7,5 / month, while the Team plan for 2+ members is €6 / user / month. Custom Business plans are also available, for organisations with more specific needs. The solution offers the possibility to trial any of the paid plans.

Communication: I’ve been a user of SmallPDF (a free one) for over 7 years now and it’s a tool that I view very close, yet again, to WinRar, WeTransfer, TinyKiwi or TinyPNG. It’s definitely good, it does exactly what you need in a reliable way and a smooth interface, but it also makes me ask myself: “do I really need the paid features?”. It’s definitely a tool that creates organic need for its features and not one that pushes a sell on you before anything else.

Support: SmallPDF offers an FAQ center with basic tips and customer support via e-mail. In my use of the tool so far though, there was never the need to actually reach customer support and it’s the 2nd time in this review where I would not block the time of the customer support teams just to test their responsiveness. The tool is flawless and I wouldn’t expect less from their team either.

16) Airtable

Headline: “The fastest way to build apps”

What’s the tool about: Airtable is a cloud-based platform that combines the simplicity of a spreadsheet with the complexity of a database. It enables users to organize work, manage projects, and collaborate with team members in a flexible and customizable environment. The unique selling point is the tool’s ability to create and link databases with ease.

Getting access: “Sign up for free” from the landing page will allow you to create an account pretty straightforward. There’s an activation flow of 6-8 steps you need to go through, which doesn’t only collect data about you, but actually helps personalize the workspace and first project to your needs. I find the value in building up interfaces based on the data you push to the tool, in order to assess dashboards, metrics or KPIs: it feels like an Excel for data assessment, in cloud, with more powerful collaboration features.

Total time to goal: For a simple use case light setting up a to-do list in a kanban board (same example I used in other tools) I needed < 10 minutes. It will require more time to actually build an complex database and/or to invite a team into the tool.

Pricing & usage model: A free forever plan allows you to work with unlimited databases and up to 1.000 records on each. The Team plan starts at $24 / user / month and the Business one at $54 / user / month.

Communication: The app gives you enough flexibility to try or even work in production with the free forever plan. There’s no hard push to convert as a customer and, once you see the need or decide to upgrade, you can do this from the profile settings. There are no “Upgrade” buttons prominently trying to convert you into a paying customer. Once again, an example of a tool that gives you enough flexibility to discover the real benefits for you.

Support: Airtable offers a comprehensive knowledge base and the possibility to contact customer support through a live chat with a bot. That bot itself creates a ticket for the CS team, which will get back to you via e-mail.

17) Monday

Headline: “A platform built for a new way of working”

What’s the tool about: Monday.com is somewhat of a work operating system, a tool that packs in one place 3 main areas of activities: work & project management, sales & CRM, and development & product lifecycle. It is designed to improve team collaboration and productivity by allowing users to customize workflows, automate routine tasks, and visualize project progress.

Getting access: clicking the “Get started” CTA on their landing page would start the account creation process. You can choose which of the 3 areas (work, sales, software) you are most interested in prior to registering your account and the entire experience that follows gets tailored to that (as opposed to the rest of the tools I’ve tested, which do it the opposite way). 6 steps collecting your preferences & data later, I’m in.

Total time to goal: The product I chose initially for my tests was the software one and I was able to get in and set up a rough sprint backlog in < 10 minutes. However, adding real content, setting up custom fields, inviting the team and making other changes for a production-ready team collaboration tool would’ve required a couple of hours. To test this tool in a more uniform way, similar to the others, I went back, started the project management plan and defined a to-do list. It took < 5 minutes.

Pricing & usage model: The current model that Monday uses makes me think a lot about Freshworks, with a more narrow gap between their products. Even if the experience is unified and one can easily transition, with the same account, between all 3 products Monday offers, they are all priced differently. Once you create an account, you get access automatically to a 14-day free trial, after which you’re going to have to choose a plan. There are 4x plans for each of the 3 tools, the software one being the cheapest and the sales the most exensive. Plans vary between €14 - €33 / user / month for the non-enterprise plans. Running a small company of, let’s say 50 employees & an overlap of 2/3 tools, in Monday, would cost around €1.400 / month. I’d find it quite useful, in this position, to offer an omnilicense and save companies that want to be all in on your product some $$$.

Communication: While on trial, all tools show a nice & smooth banner with “See plans”, which feels like a nicer idea compared to the classic “Upgrade”. The trial is for the Pro plan by default, the one which offers the most features, so you can experience the tool without any troubles.

Support: Monday offers e-mail, phone and live chat support. The chat took 2 minutes to connect to an agent and bypassing the bot was so easy, definitely something to appreciate in this time.

What’s nice: Monday.com manages to differentiate itself quite nicely in a domain that nowadays is pretty crowded, the one of project management solutions. I’d assume that the clear focus on specialized areas (work, sales, software) allows the company to better target prospect customers and stand out in the same time. It’s expensive to run all tools though, and pricing is probably the single point from my short review that I’d reconsider.

18) Webflow

Headline: “Build with the power of code — without writing any”

What’s the tool about: Webflow is a web design and development platform that enables users to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually, without writing code. It combines design, animation, content management, and hosting capabilities. Like a Shopify-inspired Wordpress, with Elementor on top.

Getting access: “Start building” from the landing page and get access in no-time to your own workspace. You’re directly assigned a free trial to start working on your own website.

Total time to goal: 2 minutes for account registration and 5 minutes to explore the onboarding tutorial. This must’ve been the longest tutorial I had so far. During the account creation step, you get asked a series of questions that are not only product research, but which adapt the workspace to your needs as well. Going live with a full company website will take hours of work, but Webflow offers at least 2 approaches to speed up this process: use a ready-made template that only requires your content or get in touch with an expert (freelancers) who will prepare everything on your behalf.

Pricing & usage model: Webflow offers a free forever plan, one that would allow you to host a one-page website on their own domain. Connecting your own domain, basically the minimum any business would need, is available through the Basic plan for $18 / month. From here onwards, three more plans are available: CMS for $29 / month, Business for $49 / month and a custom Enteprise. The difference between them are mainly in the number of pages, users and visitors you can have. E-commerce sites start at $29 / month and to up to $212 / month.

Communication: Webflow is yet another business that is driven by user needs. You can explore everything for free and ultimately decide to convert to a customer when you discover all the possibilities it offers and the amount of time & money which can be saved in development & hosting. Other than that, there is no hard push from the service for you to convert before you are ready and no marketing communication via e-mail.

Support: Webflow offers an extensive online documentation and, when that’s not enough, one can reach the customer support teams via e-mail. The response time is < 24 hours.

19) Lucidchart

Headline: “Where seeing becomes doing.”

What’s the tool about: Lucidchart is a cloud-based diagramming application that enables users to create, collaborate on, and share professional diagrams and flowcharts. It supports a wide range of diagram types, including flowcharts, organizational charts, UML diagrams, wireframes, and network diagrams.

Getting access: Clicking “Sign up free” from the landing page will get you to the plan selection page and you have to decide before creating an account. You can start with the free forever plan (limited in the number of documents you can have) or begin a 7-day trial for one of the paid plans available. The account registration step looks different between the free & the paid plans. The onboarding flow that asked me several questions was most probably only research data, as it didn’t really adapt my workspace to any tailored needs, other than providing certain recommendations for the diagram templates I could start with.

Total time to goal: It took me 1 minute to get in the app and about 5 minutes to draw a diagram of Lucidchart’s account registration & onboarding flows. Using the tool felt pretty natural to me, probably because I had used the similar draw.ioquite frequently before.

Pricing & usage model: One, limited, free forever plan is available for light use cases. Paid plans start at $9.95 for 1 Individual user and go up to $27 / month / 3 users for the Team plan and $36.50 / month / 2 users for the Enterprise plan.

Communication: The solution tries to push you towards converting with an always-on “Try paid features with a free trial” banner and starting such a paid trial requires you to add the credit card first. When it comes to e-mail communication, it felt pretty quiet.

Support: You have available an online documentation that seems to cover a multitude of cases and, if no article is suitable, the customer support team can be reached via e-mail. This option is somewhat hidden though and required a little bit of time to be discovered.

20) Taplio

Headline: “Leverage AI to grow on LinkedIn”

What’s the tool about: Taplio is a LinkedIn automation and management tool designed to help users grow their LinkedIn presence. It offers features such as content creation assistance, profile analytics, engagement insights, and automation capabilities for actions like posting and messaging.

Getting access: “Start for Free” from the landing page. First, you need to create an account (just the e-mail and password are requested) and then, before getting access to the tool and an automatic 7-day trial, you need to select one of the 3 paid plans available. As soon as the credit card is in, the 3rd step part of the registration is to connect your LinkedIn account. Finally, you have to define several parameters, that are needed in customizing the AI assistant, and you’re in. Getting to know the tool is done quite differently than in other solutions and there’s no visual onboarding flow showing you where or why to click different actions. Instead, you get a video tutorial, presented by one of Taplio’s cofounders, and a headline of “Don’t start yet”. There’s a story behind, providing quite a different onboarding approach vs. the industry default practice.

Total time to goal: It takes about 5 minutes to register your account, understand & activate a paid plan and to connect LinkedIn. Then, 9 more minutes to go through the intro video and about 5-10 more minutes to go through the tool and explore every option available.

Pricing & usage model: The Starter plan is $65 / month, Standard $99 / month and Pro is $199 / month. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not happy with the product.

Communication: Taplio sends you several marketing & content e-mails in the first days after signing up. Unlike other tools and as you supposedly are already a customer, having added the credit card at the start, there are no visible “upgrade” or similar banners in the app. After you delete your account though, you continue receiving e-mail communication from Taplio as you’re not automatically removed from their mailing lists.

Support: You have a live chat option available that can be accessed quite straightforwardly and the response time is < 15 minutes.

What’s cool: In an attempt to reduce churn, when you try to cancel your subscription Taplio gives you a 99% discount for 1 month. It’s an interesting approach to prolong the time you can call a user customer and I’d be curious to learn how effective this is in the long run: if the extra month that one gets for a very low price turns the table around and makes the person decide to stick for more.

21) Basecamp

Headline: “Where it all comes together.”

What’s the tool about: Basecamp is a web-based project management and team collaboration tool. It helps teams manage projects and communicate more effectively within a centralized platform. Basecamp offers features such as to-do lists, milestone management, forum-like messaging, file sharing, and time tracking.

Getting access: “Try it for free, enjoy work more” straight from the landing page. There are 2 steps to fill in your e-mail, name, and password, after which you’re in, welcomed by a nice message from Jason Fried, one of the two co-founders of Basecamp. The solution is quite different from other project management tools and it reshapes several concepts you’d have to get used to, like automatic check-ins, move the needle, to-dos, card table, chat, message board, and more. The onboarding experience feels completely integrated into the service (similar to HEY) and you get to explore a sample project about “Making the REWORK podcast”, which shows exactly how the 37Signals team is using Basecamp.

Total time to goal: 2 minutes to get in the tool and about 30 minutes to get used to everything around. I expect launching the first project with a team and getting everyone onboard, technically & strategically, may take a maximum of a couple of hours.

Pricing & usage model: The Standard version of Basecamp comes for $15 / month / user and is ideal for very small teams or individuals. For mid-large teams, the Pro Unlimited version brings more storage space, priority support and allows you to have unlimited users. For a 100-people company, this would be $3.49 / month / user. As opposed to many other tools that you end up paying more when growing, with Basecamp your cost per person actually goes down and the total license cost remains fixed.

Communication: Self-serve all the way. The trial deadline and possibility of acquiring a license are promoted only through a banner on the dashboard of the tool. As soon as you get into a project to handle work and effectively use the tool, the banner is gone. On top, you get a welcome e-mail and one that announces your trial expiration.

Support: check out my thoughts on the support from HEY. As Basecamp is created by the same company, the support experience is seamlessly the same.

What’s nice: you can see that this tool is made by people who use & grow along with it. There are so many subtle features inside that would be difficult to plan without actually going through the challenges of managing a team, shipping projects, and using the exact tool yourself.

22) Shopify

Headline: “Making Commerce Better for Everyone”

What’s the tool about: Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows individuals and businesses to create their own online stores. It offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping.

Getting access: Clicking “Start free trial” from the landing page will start first a 5-step customer survey that’s supposed to tailor your workspace later. You can then signup with several OAuth providers or directly with an e-mail & password. As the tenant gets initialized, you start seeing information about the features or benefits of Shopify. Finally, you get access to your account and see a further 9-step setup guide, meant to walk you through adding products, setting up the store, and kicking off sales. A short term trial (3 days) starts once your account is created.

Total time to goal: Even if the account setup takes around 5 minutes for account setup, launching an entire store will take much, much more. You will need at least 5-10 hours invested in the theme, content, products, payment or plugins before being able to launch a basic store.

Pricing & usage model: The Basic plan is €24 / month, the Shopify one is €69 / month and the Advanced is €289 / month. The main difference between these plans is the number of staff accounts available in your store and the transaction fees Shopify charges for every order.

Communication: At the time of writing, Shopify uses a 3-day trial approach, combined with a $1 / month fee for any of the three plans available and the first 3 months. The low amount charged seems to be a symbolic one, meant to support new e-commerce journeys, and at the same time directly convert prospects to customers ahead of time. During the trial, you see a constant popup with a CTA to the Shopify plans. E-mail marketing communication is pretty quiet.

Support: You have available a comprehensive self-serve help center and live chat support, with a 5-minute response time from a real agent.

23) Zapier

Headline: “Meet Zapier: Your new home to automate anything”

What’s the tool about: Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your favorite apps, such as Gmail, Slack, Mailchimp, and more than 6.000+ others. It allows you to automate repetitive tasks with workflows known as Zaps.

Getting access: Clicking ****“Start free with email” on the landing page will require your basic account information and start an 8-step customer survey, that’s actually promoted as 3 steps, not to discourage users. At the end of the survey, the tool does recommend a Zap to begin with. Once you’re in, a 14-day trial for the Professional plan is started.

Total time to goal: You need about 30 minutes to get the hang of the tool, connect the 3rd party tools you may need to access and integrate and launch your first basic Zap.

Pricing & usage model: A free forever plan, capped at 100 tasks / month, is available to begin with. Then, the Starter plan (750 tasks / month) costs $29,99 / month, the Professional plan (2.000 tasks / month) costs $73,50 and the Team plan (2.000 tasks / month) costs $103,50. Add-ons for Chatbots, Interfaces, and Tables are available for a higher usage tier.

Communication: Throughout the trial, you get to see a banner on the Dashboard prompting you to upgrade to the Professional plan. The message goes away in the core areas of the app, when building Zaps for example. E-mail communication is limited to educational content about the tool, tailored to your onboarding.

Support: An online help center is available for self-serving users, which is promoted quite hard even if you attempt to contact support. After clicking away from Zapier’s recommendations for multiple times, you finally get a form to raise a ticket with the customer support team. The response time is < 6 hours.

What’s cool: Zapier offers an AI assistant to streamline the creation of Zaps for you and it works very well. It’s aware of all the possibilities in the app and makes, from my tests, the right recommendations.

24) Deepl

Headline: “The world’s most accurate translator”

What’s the tool about: DeepL is an online translation service known for its high-quality and contextually accurate translations. It leverages advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to translate text and documents across multiple languages.

Getting access: There’s no account registration needed to try out Deepl. You don’t even have to visit a landing page, as you automatically get redirected to the translator tool when visiting their website. If the limits of the free solution are not enough for personal use, you can create an account and activate a subscription in 3 simple steps. While the tool can be tested directly, creating an account comes with a mandatory credit card request. Deepl offers access to plenty of features to get you hooked and make it as smooth as possible to get into a position where you use it daily. It plans to convert you to a paid customer once you realise you need access to more features or higher usage limits.

Total time to goal: This must be the fastest product-led solution I was able to use. It literally takes in seconds to access Deepl, type in the text you need translated and select the target language.

Pricing & usage model: A Free forever plan offers access to translations up to 5.000 characters. The Starter plan is €8,99 / user / month, the Advanced plan €29,99 / user / month and the Ultimate plan €59,99 / user / month. The main differences between all plans are focused on the number of files one can translate and the number of glossaries in the workspace.

Communication: Deepl shows a permanent “Start free trial” CTA in their header, but thats about everything they do when it comes to pushing paid plans to you. It’s pretty much non-intrusive to your workflow otherwise and even the limit of characters you can translate at a time is quite generous. It’s one of the tools that leverages less marketing and sales talk, but more organic needs, to convert prospects to customers.

Support: One can access an online knowledge base and multiple articles with a Free plan. Customer support options are available only with the paid plans.

25) Semrush

Headline: “Get measurable results from online marketing”

What’s the tool about: Semrush is a comprehensive digital marketing tool that provides insights and data to help businesses improve their online visibility and marketing efforts. It offers a wide range of features across SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising), keyword research, competitive analysis, social media, content marketing, and more.

Getting access: From the landing page, there are 5 steps you have to go through to access your own workspace, from adding a link to the website you need to audit, choosing your credentials and filling in a discovery survey that I feel is mostly product research, as the workspace doesn’t seem to be adapted in line with my answers. Due to so many options available in the app, there’s no setup guide or classic onboarding flow you see like in other services. Instead, there are short form static tutorials tailored to every area you choose to explore by yourself, which persist until you start adding data.

Total time to goal: Getting comfortable with the tool and making use of all its features is definitely a ride. I expect anywhere between 3-5 hours invested to define your websites, projects, keywords, or competition and start going through all the reports the tool offers.

Pricing & usage model: The Pro plan is $129,95, the Guru plan $249,95 and the Business plan $499,95. The main differences between these options are shaped around the number of projects and keywords you can track.

Communication: E-mail communication is pretty quiet, however Semrush uses one persistent “Upgrade” CTA in the header of the app and another, scoped, customer banner to inform you about the limits to your plan when browsing certain reports & areas. As an example, you get to see: “Data for URL, subdomains and subfolders is only available for paid users.”

Support: Semrush offers a comprehensive online knowledge base detailing a majority of the actions you can interact with, together with a bot-based live chat. Reaching the customer support teams is done via e-mail tickets.

26) Vercel

Headline: “Vercel is the Frontend Cloud. Build, scale, and secure a faster, personalized web.”

What’s the tool about: Vercel is a cloud platform for static sites and serverless functions that fits perfectly with modern web frameworks, enabling developers to deploy sites and applications with ease. It offers features like automatic scaling, global deployment, and built-in CI/CD.

Getting access: Choosing “Start deploying" from the landing page will take you through the account registration steps. You can start from your own repository, or from a template that Vercel provides for the most popular frameworks. Choosing a business account directly sets you up for a 14-day trial of the Pro plan, while going for the personal use will give you access to the free forever plan.

Total time to goal: It took me 5 minutes to create the account, connect Github and deploy a boilerplate Nuxt.js website. Supa’ fast. And it worked seamlessly. Migrating a live project and connecting a custom domain would require a little bit more work, but the time to get everything up and running is substantially lower than what you’d need to setup your own web hosting.

Pricing & usage model: There are 3 plans available: Hobby (free forever, with certain limits), Pro, that costs $20 / user / month, and a custom Enterprise plan.

Communication: The product-led experience on Vercel is flawless. On the trial plan, there were no blockers from using any of the features, nor a strong push on e-mail marketing to convert. A reminder banner to upgrade did pop up on the Dashboard, but not in any explicit project, while effectively using the tool.

Support: You’ve got available a public help center and the possibility to reach customer support via e-mail. Before sending the ticket, Vercel uses gen. AI to provide a tailored recommendation to you, but it doesn’t block in any way the option to write to support. The response time is < 3 hours for the Pro plan and faster for Enterprise licenses that come with guaranteed SLAs.

What’s cool: Vercel empowers you to swiftly reach the goal you chose it for, which effectively makes you spend less time actively using their solution. Crazy.

27) Sentry

Headline: “Code breaks, fix it faster”

What’s the tool about: Sentry is a cross-platform application monitoring and error tracking software that helps developers identify, diagnose, and fix crashes and errors in real-time. It supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, including JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, .NET, and mobile platforms like iOS and Android.

Getting access: One can create a new account directly from Sentry’s homepage, through the “TRY SENTRY FOR FREE” CTA. You have to fill in your account details in 1 step and then you’re in, welcomed by the activation flow. This has the purpose of showing you how to connect Sentry to your app and it can be easily skipped if its a step you’ve done before. Once the workspace is created, you get access to a 14-day trial of the highest plan, Business, and the option to follow the 10-step guide Sentry offers to fully configure & learn the platform.

Total time to goal: 1 minute for the account setup and 2 more to configure a Laravel app with everything needed to submit issues and transactions to Sentry. I had used the tool before, but as a new user, I’d expect about 30 minutes to get comfortable with everything it offers.

Pricing & usage model: There’s a Free forever plan for individual developers that comes with certain limits, but is sufficient to track one small-mid project in production with no time restrictions, to discover all the benefits. The Team plan then costs $29 / month and the Business one $89 / month. Each of the paid plans comes with certain limits for the monthly errors & transactions that Sentry captures, which can be easily tailored to your own needs with granular control over the additional costs.

Communication: The e-mail communication is minimal, packing onboarding information. A very subtle “My Sentry Trial” action is available in the side menu, offering you the option to subscribe before the trial expires.

Support: You get access to an online help center, a Discord channel, and customer support via a ticketing system. The response time is covered in the publicly announced working hours, 09:00 - 17:00 CET and Pacific time.

What’s cool: Sentry offers a sandbox environment, which can be accessed without an account, that contains realistic projects and data you may be interested in. It’s the fastest way to explore the tool with production-grade lookalike data.

28) Hotjar

Headline: “Everything you ever wanted to know about your website... but your analytics never told you.”

What’s the tool about: Hotjar is a powerful tool designed for improving website usability and user experience (UX) through feedback and analytics. It offers a suite of features including heatmaps, visitor recordings, surveys & polls, and form analysis.

Getting access: Clicking “Start free with email” from the landing page will take you through a 10+ account creation process, part of it meant to collect data about you and another part to tailor your workspace to your needs. As soon as you’re in the workspace, you’re informed of a 14-day trial assigned to you for the Business plan. Once it expires, unless you add your credit card and confirm the subscription, you’re going to be downgraded to a Basic, free forever plan.

Total time to goal: 5 minutes for the account creation and another 5 minutes to setup & deploy the script that will collect the data. You need another 10 - 15 minutes to customize the heatmaps, feedback, surveys, and recordings. The sweet spot in Hotjar comes 1-2 days after the setup though, once you have collected enough data to actually review and draw conclusions on.

Pricing & usage model: There’s a Basic, free forever, plan available, capturing up to 35 daily sessions. Paid plans start at €39 / month for Plus, €99 for Business and go up to €213 for Scale, with the main difference being in both features and the number of daily recorded sessions.

Communication: E-mail communication is pretty quiet from Hotjar and so is the experience while using the app on trial. There’s only one subtle “Upgrade your plans” call to action in the header.

Support: Hotjar offers a virtual assistant, an online help center and the option to reach the customer support team via e-mail tickets. The response time is 1 - 2 days.

29) Insomnia

Headline: “Design, debug, and test APIs locally or in the cloud”

What’s the tool about: Insomnia is a desktop application designed for developers to easily design, debug, and test APIs. It supports REST, GraphQL, and gRPC protocols, making it versatile for a wide range of API development and testing needs. Key features include easy creation & sending of requests, managing environment variables, or documenting entire sets of API endpoints.

Getting access: “Get started for free” from the landing page opens the possibility to, first, choose a plan, and second, register an account. Once you’re in, the single purpose of the web platform is to guide you into downloading the Insomnia app on your computer.

Total time to goal: < 5 minutes to register an account, activate a plan and launch the desktop app. Firing the first API request can take anywhere between 3 - 15 minutes more, depending on the complexity you are involved in. Moving an existing OpenAPI .yml documentation is done very fast, but writing one from scratch will take a couple of hours at least, depending on the project.

Pricing & usage model: There’s a basic Free plan available that offers access to basic functionalities. The Individual plan is $5 / user / month, the Team plan is $12 / user / month and Enterprise is $45 / user / month. The main difference between these plans is the number of projects and organizations one can have, as well as access to SSO and customer support.

Communication: There’s no e-mail marketing coming in from the team behind Insomnia and the app informs you either when you reach a limit or when browsing the web version through a persistent “Upgrade” button that you can change your plan. There’s nothing about it in the app where you do all the work though.

Support: Insomnia offers 3 support channels: Slack group, Github repository, and e-mail support, with a response time of 1 - 2 days.

30) Loom

Headline: “One video is worth a thousand words”

What’s the tool about: Loom is a video messaging tool designed to help people communicate more effectively through instantly shareable videos. Users can record their screen, voice, and face to create an engaging video message that can be sent to colleagues, clients, or friends. It's particularly useful for workplace communication, education, or customer support.

Getting access: Heading to ****“Get Loom for Free” on the landing page will open a 5-step account creation step, that includes also a standard product survey. You’re then prompted to install Loom, either via a Chrome extension or a standalone desktop app, and later redirected to the workspace. A “Get started checklist” is there to assist you while finishing the onboarding. Once registered, you’re enrolled into a 14-day trial of the Business plan, the highest available without having to contact sales. Loom is driven by the “walk the talk” principle and offers plenty of tutorials on how to use the solution through their own tool (loomception), so that you can both learn and get inspired at the same time.

Total time to goal: 5 minutes to set up your account and download the app, 3 hours to get comfortable with your first video. Kidding 🙂. It’s a pretty straightforward process and you can directly nail your first recording.

Pricing & usage model: A Starter plan (free forever) is available, covering up to 25 videos (of 5 minutes each) per person. The Business plan is $15 / user / month and a custom Enterprise plan is available as well. The AI addon comes extra, for $4 / user / month, regardless of the main plan.

Communication: lorem

Support: There’s an entire help center available for self-serving customers and separate channels to contact sales and support. The response time is < 12 hours.

What’s cool: Loom does not only support your day-to-day work through recording videos. It changes the way you work and allows you to discover habits you never thought of before.

…and it’s a wrap.