Most growing companies quietly bleed $1,000–$5,000 a month on software they barely use. It's subscription bloat — a CRM, a Zapier, a Calendly, a billing tool — each raising prices 10–30% a year, each built so you can't easily leave.
For a lot of SMBs, you can replace most of that stack with tools you already pay for: Google Workspace + Apps Script. Here's what to replace, the highest-ROI patterns, and — honestly — when not to.
Own your ecosystem
Apps Script is a serverless JavaScript runtime with direct API access to Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Docs, Forms, and Sheets. You can build a CRM, inventory system, or billing engine that runs inside your own Google account — at ~$0 marginal cost beyond the Workspace seats you already have.
The replacement index
| SaaS | Typical cost | Google Workspace alternative |
|---|---|---|
| CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot) | $150–600/user/mo | Sheets pipeline + Apps Script |
| Inventory (Cin7, Fishbowl) | $100–300/mo | Event-sourced Sheets ledger |
| Billing (FreshBooks, Bill.com) | $50–150/mo | Calendar → Sheet → Google Doc PDFs |
| Scheduling (Calendly) | $8–16/user/mo | Apps Script booking page |
| Automation (Zapier, Make) | $50–500/mo | Native Apps Script triggers |
| BI (Tableau, Looker) | $70–840/mo | Sheets + BigQuery dashboard |
Highest-ROI patterns
- Headless CRM: lead form → auto sheet entry → lead scoring → personalized Gmail reply → calendar task → commission attribution.
- Billing: calendar time-logging per client → billable-hours math → one-click invoice PDF emailed automatically.
- WhatsApp sales + inventory: customer message → real-time Sheets logging → stock check → auto PDF invoice.
When NOT to do this
Keep your SaaS if your team is over ~100 (Sheets lags, Apps Script quotas bite), you're in a regulated industry (HIPAA/SOX need certified tools), you depend on deep integrations, or you have no Apps Script capacity.
Apps Script limits to know: a 6-minute execution cap, ~20k daily URL-fetch quota (100k on Business/Enterprise), and no WebSockets. SMB CRM/billing/inventory fits comfortably; high-throughput workloads graduate to Cloud Run with Sheets as the persistent data layer.
The number
A typical 10-person SMB saves $1,000–$5,000/month, amortizing the build in 12–18 months — and owns the result. No per-seat trap, no annual hike, and the data stays in your own Drive.
The full guide has the complete replacement index, the ROI patterns, and how to de-risk the "bus factor" with clasp + GitHub. Read the full guide on the MageSheet blog.
Built by the MageSheet team.
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