SaaS Sucks (Sometimes): Fatigue, Feature Bloat & Fixing Your Tech Stack

SaaS Sucks (Sometimes): Fatigue, Feature Bloat & Fixing Your Tech Stack

Ever feel like your tech stack is running your business instead of helping it? In this episode of The Spark, we call out the bloat—those overpriced, underused platforms draining your budget and sanity. We dive into SaaS fatigue, why some tools that once served SMBs now chase Fortune 500s, and how to spot when your stack is more fluff than function.

We also (lightly) introduce Lead Igniter—our homegrown solution to bloated software. Built for small teams that need real results, not more noise.

• Real talk about AI hype
• Strategy-first advice for marketers
• A final gut-check: is your stack serving you—or the other way around?

Ready to rethink your tools? Let’s spark that fire.

Visit us at [frontburnermarketing.com](https://www.frontburnermarketing.com)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Are you paying a thousand dollars a month for a platform you're barely using? Are you paying for so many platforms you're not sure what you're paying anymore? SAS can suck. Today we're going to talk about how you can show your SAS who's bossed. Welcome to the Spark. And today we're talking about how SAS can suck. What? You know it can.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Yeah, yes, yes. It's a hell of a topic, I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

That's good. Then I'm glad we're covering it.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

All right. So as you were.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

We are living in a very sassy world. Right now, we've got a lot of different sass going on with our clients. So what is it that you're seeing when people come into us?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Tools. So many tools. It is insane. Um, tools, tools, more tools. How many times are we gonna put a dinger out there? Okay. Now that we've touched on all the tools, clients come in with different platforms um that overlap. And they overlap. And they don't scratch the surface with any of them. So they they they purchased, they you know, they uh subscribed to a platform that was gonna do email marketing for them. Two years later, now it you know, now we're a CRM company. You can do email marketing. A year later, guess what? We're a social media aggregator. But at one point in time, they bought all three of these.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

And and for a year-long contract because it was a good discount. Don't worry about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

That's right. You pay up front, you're gonna get 30% off. Such a deal. Who doesn't love that? You know who loves a good deal? Jan. Yep, Jan loves a good idea. Yep, it's true. So we understand like how companies get themselves into this situation. They had a specific goal, something that they needed to get done. And then as the platform grew and their needs grew, um, there wasn't always alignment.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

No, and I think I think that we also kind of built that Frankenstein monster, right? So we've got so many apps that are doing different things, and then all the apps started to do all the things. And so so then you've got overlap, like you're saying, you've got unused resources. Yep. You're paying for all of them. There's major overlap, but also maybe your data's not all talking to each other either.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Silos of data everywhere. We've I I jump on this all the time. But yeah, you've created, in your words, a Frankenstein. Nothing's talking, right? To the other one. Your CFO is wondering, what are all these costs? Like, how do you even use these things? Right? Explain it to me. Show me an ROI. What are we getting for our money? It all comes from a good place. People were all trying to do the right thing. Uh, even the SaaS providers years ago, um, when they were coming to market, they had great plans. And then they were really successful. So I am not throwing shade at the hub spots, the sales forces of the world, any of them. I can't blame them. They all have mouths to feed, you know, with their shareholders. They're going upstream, though. So they started more on the SMB, right? Small, medium-sized businesses, and then they grew and they're growing enterprise level. They're going up markets for many reasons, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

And some people are locked in, right? They're still, they started when it was small, and then it's grown. They've all grown to like these major. We're really talking about the big, the big ones now. Yeah, right. Like the sales forces and the HubSpots.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

But we can pick on them.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

That's fine. They can take it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Or they can sponsor this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

It's a great opportunity for them. Yeah. Any interest.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

We are a HubSpot uh platinum agency.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Next.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Uh, so we know that that's been changing. So now all of all of their all these platforms are trying to grow. They're trying to do all the things. And so that leads to the price price tag going up.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yeah, the prices go up, but it's it's not in your traditional way. So let's say, I don't know, let's call it a marketing hub pro. Yep. We're gonna pick on HubSpot. Sorry, I know HubSpot. Um I love HubSpot. We have plenty of friends over there, colleagues, uh, who we you know celebrate victories with. But I will pick on them and I have told them. And if Darmesh was here right now, I would let him know that, hey, you went from $400 a month, and then all of a sudden you're $800, $850 a month. Okay, I understand that. But now you're gonna charge me for amount of seats. Okay, how many people in my organization need this? Let's count the seats. Let's let's let's make a cash register noise this time. Cha-ching. Every time we can we can put that in post, right? Then it's like now we have AI. We have AI breeze. And every time you put a query in, right? Anytime you want something, we're gonna ding you for that too. And it's not just HubSpot.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

No, it's definitely not.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

No, no, it's everyone. So now you're gonna pay for seats, you're gonna pay a standard license, you're gonna pay every time you use the thing that you already bought a subscription to, you're gonna need to have support for said thing, right? So it just keeps growing. And again, I'm gonna go back to this is companies barely scratch the surface with their technology, with their marketing platforms. So you're paying for all this stuff. How much of it are you using? 25%? Maybe? That's pretty sophisticated. That's a pretty mature company is using, you know, 25-30% of what it offers.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Or you're using three smaller ones and you're using 25% of each of those. And so that kind of leads us to how we make SaaS not suck.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Well, okay, here's like a telltale sign. And, you know, we're we we partner with other SaaS providers, like BigCommerce, one of my favorite people, uh, Fedonomics, um, HubSpot. Every one of them has a Gardner report, and every one of them blasted across their social and kills my inbox with it. And I'm always like, oh no, they're trying to sell to Google. They're trying to sell to somebody much larger because they're putting out forester reports, gardener reports, talking about where are they positioned in the marketplace and why this is such a great thing. And I'm sitting there, right, helping lead this agency that focuses mostly on, you know, small, medium-sized business up to 100, 200, 250,000 million in revenue, going, wow, they're really going for it. They're going so far upstream that they're gonna price this thing out of the out of the ballpark. And now we're not playing the same game anymore.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

So But do you think that so so what's the solution then? So simplify. You don't think we should just stack them all?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

No, no, we're not gonna stack as high as we can. Right, yeah. One year at a time. No, we want to simplify. We truly want to, you want to, whoever's watching this should want to, understand their data, right? You can have the fanciest version of Salesforce, and you could spend a million dollars if you want to stand it up. But if you put crap in it, you're gonna get crap out. So we see that a ton. Start with cleaning your data, simplify it, understand your data, clean it, and then start working and vetting, you know, new partners to see if you need to be, is there a solution for you that's an all-in-one solution? Or, you know, is there something you have a special use case where you do need to integrate another platform? That's fine and all for it, but clean your data, simplify.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

I'm gonna make a I'm gonna make a pitch here though, because not only is you're selling now. I love this. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

I'll be quiet now.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah, right. Um, I don't think that I think cleaning the data is obviously great, but also understanding where your data is supposed to go, that whole process. And so one of the things that we've started doing, we've talked about it before, is our workflow audit, right? Where we help people look at their SaaS ecosystem and figure out how those things are connected and if it makes sense the way it's flowing. And I think it I compare it to business therapy because people start to like unearth the bodies like, why are you doing this? Like, I don't know, I've just always done that's what we're supposed to do, and we like this report, but maybe it's not valuable or you know, is the is the input matching the output at the end, that sort of thing. And so I think that that's a super helpful thing to go through at at this kind of point in time because we have so many apps and so many platforms that are all just spewing data.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Spewing data. So if we're gonna go back to simplify, and say of that data, which of that data is truly important? What's what's affecting our bottom line, right? What is you know I love analysis paralysis? You're killing me. Slowly. Give me all the numbers. Slowly, yeah. But I mean, in all seriousness, it's like if there's 10 numbers that matter, report on those 10 numbers. I don't need 30 numbers, right? You're just gonna make yourself miserable and drive yourself crazy and not sleep.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

I agree with that, but I disagree overall with you on this.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Well, the one thing that I'll agree with is I'm SaaS therapy, I agree. Yeah, um, the other part that I like about the whole uh workflow mapping audits and documentation is the process side. It forces people to really look internally, look in their heart side, you're coming over. Uh yeah, operations, my favorite. Um, but it really does force people to document their process, understand how the rest of the people and their organization are working, uh, and how if I push this lever, what does it do? Right? So you have to have the hard conversations. Uh, but that is how companies grow. You if you're at a point in your growth where you're evaluating, and we we have talked about this before, but maybe you've never seen it before. So I'll say it again. If you're starting to look at ERP systems and you're starting to look at all-in-one platforms, then this is a good time to like look in inward and figure out what is your processes, what are those top data points that you need to report on that are gonna have an impact on your business so you can become scalable and grow.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

It's also kind of low-fi for such like a high-fi result, which is pretty cool. It's it's very manual. Like, let's talk it out and write it down.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Well, I mean, that that kind of takes me to my my next point. When we're talking about all these different platforms, you know, everybody has AI. And hey, we are all in on AI. Everybody who wants to be alive in this space in another year, two years needs to be in all six months. Six months. Um there's so much AI. And when you are looking at different platforms to move forward with, ask yourself, you know, tool around with it. Take it for a test drive. Because is the data it's providing you is it helpful or is it noise, right? So there's some out there that'll say, Hey, uh, we can help you update your content. So you have an email written, okay, show me. And then it gives me 10 versions of the same shitty email that I had already created, but just 10 shittier ways. And I'm like, well, okay, this isn't useful. There's other platforms that'll say, hey, you have this email, let's hit the AI button and see what it says. And it's like, well, you should have a workflow mapped out and uh uh something gated so that they can come and grab this. And then now we're gonna enroll them here, right? So it's gonna give you a whole process and a whole campaign of how to interact better, create smart content. So so really look, because everybody does have AI and they should be. If if they if they aren't utilizing AI, that's not gonna be the platform that you're gonna grow with.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Red flag.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Big red flag. Red flag.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

If they don't have it on their plan or in their tool already, right. Red flag.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Totally agree.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

You can't ignore it. All right. So what do you think businesses should be asking themselves to figure out their platform roadmap?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Well, I mean, again, okay. So I if I'm looking at this, if I'm walking into a situation, a client comes to us and they're like, hey, Jay, we have all of these things. What what do I do with it? We have all of the things. We have all the things, all the tools. We don't know what the hell we're doing with them. We know so-and-so creates some social media, so-and-so sends emails from here. So I would look at it holistically. First understand when is your contract? What are you paying? And then you can pull utilization reports to see like how much time is your team actually spending in it. And then start to look hey, can I consolidate? Why am I paying three different folks for this? Three different SLAs, three different contracts. I would try to bring it all under one roof if possible.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

And what about the cost?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Well, I mean, depends on where you are, right? The cost is the cost is going to do nothing but grow. We know that, right? So are there options out there that are gonna be a little lower? Uh, but they do the things that you truly need them to do. It's even for me, right? It's really easy to say, ooh, that thing is bright and shiny. And I we we we will totally use that. We're gonna use that. So I need that tool. And then we don't touch it. We use this part that that's getting.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Sometimes you find something, but you're right.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

You're right. But it's like 70% is it's nice to have, it's not a must-have. So I will look at your growth, you know, what are you looking to accomplish, and then what platforms out there uh will suit you for the next two to three years, realistically. Be realistic about it.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

And we also see a need for this, for like that right sizing. And so we even have our own version of it now.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

We do. Oh my gosh, I wasn't gonna bring it up today. But since you did, I couldn't resist. I'll kick down the door now. So no, we did. We we partnered with the company and created uh our own SaaS platform, right? So much, I want to say much lower, but it's a lower price point to get in. We don't charge by seats. You know, there's a lot of different things, but it's your CRM reporting, workflow.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Workflow automation.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah. Uh CMS, you name it, it pretty much does it. SMS. Oh, AI employee. There we go. I mean, we want to talk about AI agents. Yeah. Um, there's a lot of different use cases that it fits, but I don't want to turn this into a sales call, but uh get a hold of us. You know how to get a hold of us if you need to. Let's connect.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

All right. Um I think we probably covered what we wanted to cover today. So ultimately, I think your tool should work for you and not the other way around. Um, if you're not sure where to go, we'd love to talk about it. We have a couple different ways that we can manage a complicated stack. Um, our workflow audit is like business therapy. We do recommend it. Love it. Love it. Uh, thanks for sharing your time. Uh follow, like, subscribe, comment. In that order? Share an emoji.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

I don't know. Whatever you want. Share. Let's get into your networks. Let's grow this thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

All right. That's it.