The $0 Ops Stack for Bootstrapped Teams
You don't need a $500/month SaaS pile to run operations. Here's the stack we run real workloads on, at zero license cost:
Core stack
- Docs & wiki: self-hosted outline, or plain markdown in git. Versioned, searchable, free.
- Task tracking: git issues + labels. No project-management theatre needed.
- Alerting: cron + a 30-line webhook script into your chat of choice.
- Email outreach at scale: SMTP relay free tiers (200-300/day/day per provider), templated, throttled, deduped.
- Incident response: a 1-page runbook beats a $10k/month observability bill for teams under 10 people.
The rule that matters
Automate the top 5 manual loops first: lead follow-up, invoice chasing, status reports, incident triage, onboarding. Everything else can stay manual until revenue says otherwise.
What breaks first
Nearly every bootstrap dies from follow-up debt — leads contacted once and never again. One throttled sender script (10 → 40/day ramp, dedupe, bounce marking) fixes it without spending a dollar.
Want the whole playbook ready-made? The Hive80 Ops Kit ships the templates, runbooks, and the sender engine. Get it here: https://hive80lab.gumroad.com
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