I Built a SaaS Alternatives Directory After Getting Tired of Paying for Tools I Didn't Need

Demon Cricket — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:34:00 +0000

A few months ago, I was looking through my bank statement and realized I was paying for seven different SaaS subscriptions. Notion, a design tool, an SEO tool... the usual suspects.

The funny part? I hadn't even opened some of them in weeks.

So I started searching for "free alternative to X."

Almost every result was the same: outdated listicles from 2021, broken links, and recommendations that felt like they were written by someone who had never actually used the tools.

I figured there had to be a better way, so I built the tool I wanted to use.

What It Does

ShrinkBox helps you find free or more affordable alternatives to popular software, along with practical reasons why each alternative might be a better fit for your workflow.

Some examples:

Notion → Obsidian or Anytype
Figma → Penpot
Ahrefs → Google Search Console + Ubersuggest
Slack → Discord
Hotjar → Microsoft Clarity

Right now, the directory covers around 20 popular tools, and I'm adding more regularly.

How I Built It

I used Claude Code for most of the development.

The stack is simple:

Next.js 15
Tailwind CSS
Vercel for deployment

I have some programming experience, but I hadn't built anything serious with React before this.

What surprised me wasn't how quickly the code came together. It was how many decisions AI couldn't make for me.

Questions like:

How should the data be structured?
Which tools are actually worth including?
Should the site feel like a SaaS product or more like Wikipedia?

Those decisions were still entirely mine.

The actual coding was the easy part. A homepage with live search, individual tool pages, category pages, and static generation all came together over a single weekend.

The Pivot

This wasn't actually the first version of the project.

Originally, ShrinkBox was an image and PDF compression tool. I spent nearly two months building it.

It barely got any traction because that space is incredibly competitive, with huge companies dominating search results.

Eventually, I made the difficult decision to scrap almost everything and pivot.

I kept the design system, reused a few components, and rebuilt the product as a SaaS alternatives directory.

It was painful to throw away two months of work, but it turned out to be the right decision.

The new idea has a much clearer audience, and keywords like "Notion alternatives" and "free Figma alternative" have solid search volume without impossible competition.

Where Things Are Now

It's still early.

The domain is only a few months old, which seems to matter a lot for Google rankings regardless of content quality.

Most pages are currently sitting around position 70 in search results, so they're basically invisible for now. However, rankings have been slowly improving as I continue publishing content and building backlinks.

The monetization plan is straightforward:

Affiliate links for the tools I recommend
Display ads once traffic is high enough for AdSense

If you've gone through the "new domain" phase with SEO before, I'd love to hear your experience.

How long did it take before Google started rewarding your content?

Also, if there's a paid tool you wish had a great free alternative, let me know. I'd love to add it to the directory.

You can check it out at shrinkbox.com if you're curious. Feedback is always appreciated.

DEV Community: Demon Cricket

I Built a SaaS Alternatives Directory After Getting Tired of Paying for Tools I Didn't Need

How I Built It

The Pivot

Where Things Are Now