Introduction
You don’t need a $2,000/month retainer for “Automation.” And you definitely don’t need Salesforce yet. Most startups burn 20% of their seed money on software subscriptions they don’t use. If you are generating less than $50k/year, your tech stack should cost $0.
Here is the “Indie Stack” we recommend to clients who need to validate an offer fast.
1. The Landing Page: Carrd (Free)
Stop trying to build a massive WordPress site for a product that hasn’t sold yet. Carrd is free, fast, and comes with SSL. It forces you to be concise.
- The Limit: It’s not great for SEO.
- The Upgrade: Once you have cash flow, hire us to build a Custom React Site for perfect speed and SEO.
2. The Form: Tally.so (Free)
99% of agencies use Typeform. But Typeform charges you the moment you want “Hidden Fields” or “Payments.” Tally.so offers 90% of its professional features for free. It’s the cleanest form builder on the market.
3. The CRM: Notion (Free)
Don’t pay for Pipedrive or HubSpot yet. They are too complex for a solo founder. You need a simple “Kanban Board” to track who to call next.
4. The Email Engine: Brevo (Free)
Mailchimp killed its free tier. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) still gives you 300 emails/day for free. That is enough for your first 1,000 leads.
5. The Automation: Make.com (Free)
Zapier is great, but expensive. Make.com (formerly Integromat) offers a more generous free tier and supports complex logic branches.
The Conclusion
Start with the $0 Stack. Get 10 clients. Earn your expensive website. Once you are ready to scale,
We will help you migrate to the Pro Stack.