The 20 Best Free SaaS Tools (That Real Founders Actually Use)

✨Hey there, tech stackers! 🚀

🧠 Special Feature: The 20 Best Free SaaS Tools (and the Founders Who Use Them)

You don’t need a fat budget to build a powerful stack. Some of the best tools in SaaS come with generous free tiers—and we’ve seen them used by solo founders, indie hackers, and content creators scaling to 6- and 7-figure businesses.

This special edition is your ultimate guide to the top 20 free SaaS products across categories like automation, analytics, design, and CRM.

Let’s break it down 👇

💬 Communication & Collaboration

Slack – Internal messaging with searchable history and integrations.

Trello – Visual task management. Unlimited personal boards/cards for solo ops.

Notion – Docs, tasks, CRM, and more in one place. Extremely popular free tier.

Missive – Shared inbox and chat. Ideal for small remote teams.

⚙️ Productivity & Automation

Zapier – The glue of the internet. Automate anything.

Airtable – A CRM and spreadsheet hybrid. Great free tier for custom tracking.

Make.com – Zapier alternative with solid free tier.

Google Analytics – Industry standard for website performance tracking.

💌 Marketing & Growth

Mailchimp – Classic email marketing starter.

Typeform – Clean, intuitive form and survey builder.

Hootsuite – Manage social accounts with a basic free tier.

SendGrid – Email delivery service with strong dev tooling.

🎨 Design & Creative

Figma – Collaborative design platform with real-time editing.

Freepik – Free icons, illustrations, and AI tools for creative work.

Pexels – High-quality stock photo library.

👩‍💼 CRM, Support, & Ops

Hubspot – All-in-one CRM with tracking, scheduling, and form capture.

Freshdesk – Basic customer support and helpdesk ticketing.

ZipBooks – Lightweight accounting for SMBs.

🧑‍💻 Developer & Technical

Cloudflare – Free CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, and firewall.

Tailscale – P2P VPN for small, secure remote teams.

Grafana Cloud – Monitor servers and apps with beautiful dashboards.

🧪 Special Mentions

Convas – Product feedback and prioritization tool for small startups.

LogRocket – Session replay + frontend error tracking.

🤖 AI Prompt Tip

Perfect for building MVPs or testing stacks without financial commitment.

📣 Want to be featured?
If you're a builder or solopreneur using a lean stack to grow something cool, reply to this email—we might spotlight your stack next.

Always remember,

Explore broadly

Not just SaaS or tech, but multiple disciplines.

Share ideas selflessly

Be willing to share your knowledge. Keep giving and it will come back to you.

Your stack is not going to save you

You are. So just build.

Go crush it,

Mark

Tech Stacks is human-compiled, edited, and designed.