How a Solo Founder Replaced 3 SaaS Subscriptions with One Script
The SaaS Stack Problem
If you’re a solo founder or small business, you know the feeling. You signed up for one tool. Then another to fill a gap the first one left. Then a third to connect the first two. Each one seemed essential at the time. Each one costs £30-80/month.
Before you know it, your “tech stack” is costing you more per month than your phone bill, and half of it overlaps with Google Workspace tools you’re already paying for.
This is the story of one client who was paying £180/month for three SaaS tools that Google Apps Script replaced entirely.
The Three Subscriptions
Tool 1: Email Automation Platform; £65/month
The client used a dedicated email automation tool to send personalised follow-up sequences to leads. When someone filled out the contact form, the tool sent a welcome email, then a follow-up 3 days later, then another at 7 days, with personalisation based on the lead’s industry and service interest.
The problem: the client’s leads were already captured in Google Sheets, and the emails were sent from Gmail. The automation tool was essentially a middleman; reading data from Google’s ecosystem and sending emails through Google’s ecosystem, charging £65/month for the privilege.
Tool 2: Form-to-CRM Connector; £35/month
Google Forms captured leads, but getting that data into a structured CRM format required a connector tool. The SaaS pulled form responses, enriched them with basic data (timestamp, source), applied formatting rules, and wrote them to a “CRM” spreadsheet.
The problem: Google Forms already writes responses to Google Sheets natively. The tool was adding formatting and a few calculated columns; work that a spreadsheet formula or a 20-line Apps Script could do.
Tool 3: Reporting Dashboard; £80/month
The client used a dashboard tool to visualise their sales pipeline, client status, and revenue metrics. The data source was; you guessed it; Google Sheets. The tool pulled data from the sheets, generated charts and KPI cards, and presented them in a web dashboard.
The problem: Google Sheets has built-in charts. Google Looker Studio is free. And Apps Script can generate HTML dashboards served directly from Google’s infrastructure.
Total monthly cost: £180 Total annual cost: £2,160
What We Built Instead
Email Sequences in Apps Script
A script that manages the entire follow-up sequence natively:
- Triggers on new form submission
- Reads the lead’s details from the sheet
- Checks which stage of the sequence they’re at (stored in a status column)
- Sends the appropriate email from Gmail using HTML templates
- Schedules the next email by updating the sheet with the next send date
- A daily trigger checks for any emails due that day and sends them
The templates are stored in a Google Doc; easy to edit without touching code. Personalisation tags ({{name}}, {{industry}}, {{service}}) are replaced from the spreadsheet data.
Total emails in the sequence: 4. Logic to manage timing, personalisation, and status tracking: ~80 lines of code.
Smart CRM Intake
The form-to-CRM flow was replaced with an onFormSubmit trigger that:
- Captures the form response
- Adds a timestamp, source attribution (from hidden form fields), and unique ID
- Checks for duplicate leads (fuzzy match on email + company name)
- Applies business rules (auto-assigns a priority based on service interest and company size)
- Formats the row with conditional highlighting
- Sends a notification email to the founder with the lead summary
This fires within 2 seconds of form submission. The old SaaS tool had a 5-15 minute delay.
Custom Dashboard
Instead of an external dashboard tool, we built a dashboard directly in Google Sheets:
- A dedicated “Dashboard” tab with Apps Script-generated charts and metrics
- KPIs calculated in real time from the CRM data: pipeline value, conversion rate, average response time, leads by source
- A refresh button in a custom menu that recalculates everything on demand
- A weekly email digest with the key metrics, auto-generated and sent every Monday
For more visual reporting, we connected the same sheets to Google Looker Studio (free); giving the client an interactive web dashboard with filters, date ranges, and drill-downs. No monthly fee.
The Migration
The entire migration took about 15 hours of development spread over 2 weeks:
- Week 1: Built and tested the email sequence and CRM intake scripts. Ran them in parallel with the existing tools to verify accuracy.
- Week 2: Built the dashboard, ran final comparisons, and switched off the SaaS tools.
The client cancelled all three subscriptions at the end of month one.
The Numbers
| Before (SaaS) | After (Apps Script) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | £180 | £0 |
| Annual cost | £2,160 | £0 |
| Email send delay | 5-15 minutes | Instant |
| CRM update delay | 5-15 minutes | 2 seconds |
| Dashboard | External web app | Native Sheets + Looker Studio |
| Data ownership | Split across 3 platforms | All in Google Workspace |
| Maintenance | Dependent on 3 vendors | One codebase, full control |
Development cost: ~15 hours Break-even point: Less than 1 month Annual saving: £2,160; every year, indefinitely
How to Know If Your SaaS Is Replaceable
Not every SaaS tool should be replaced. Some provide genuine value that would be expensive or complex to rebuild. But many tools used by small businesses fall into the “Google Workspace middleman” category.
Your SaaS might be replaceable if:
- Its primary data source is Google Sheets, Forms, or Gmail
- Its primary output goes to Google Sheets, Gmail, or Drive
- The logic between input and output is straightforward (routing, formatting, scheduling)
- You’re paying monthly for something that hasn’t changed in months
- The tool’s documentation describes connecting to Google Workspace as a “key feature”
Your SaaS probably isn’t replaceable if:
- It provides proprietary functionality (advanced analytics, machine learning, industry-specific features)
- It connects to platforms outside Google’s ecosystem that you genuinely need
- The complexity of rebuilding would exceed 2-3 years of subscription costs
- It’s a regulated system requiring certified compliance
Ready to Audit Your SaaS Stack?
At Empower Automation, we help solo founders and small businesses identify which SaaS tools are costing money that Apps Script could save. We don’t replace everything; just the tools that are essentially charging you rent on features Google gives you for free.
Book a free 15-minute automation audit →
List your current subscriptions. We’ll tell you which ones are earning their keep and which ones are costing you for things you already have.
Nicola Berry is the founder of Empower Automation, based in Falkirk, Scotland. Helping businesses stop paying for automation they already own.
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