[Kit] A lightweight marketing stack for under $25/ month

[Data current as of Sep. 8, 2025. Prices are for annual subscriptions]

TL; DR

If you are choosing tools for a small or mid-sized companies and your needs match mine, pick Canva (content creation), Buffer (social scheduling), and MailerLite (email, automation, landing pages), plus free tiers of Google Analytics (link tracking), Rebrandly (link shortener), and Google Sheets (campaign planning).

The problem

Marketing with zero tools is rough

At some point, you outgrow generic tools. Posting natively and tracking in Google Sheets (if at all) no longer covers the work.

Wait, but why? For example:

• LinkedIn’s native analytics make trend analysis hard.
• You can’t judge campaign performance without knowing what drove traffic.
• Assets sprawl across multiple drives.
• You try to cram too much onto the website when you need a focused landing page.
• Every contractor engagement restarts the style-guide conversation.

And that's just simple stuff, before events, out-of-home, video, or paid partnerships.

Time for dedicated marketing tools.

But steep pricing and de-facto lock-in can put major Marketing platforms out of reach!

You check pricing. You expect it to hurt. But the reality still stings.

Let's choose a few platforms to pick on, though it's not really about them. Just well-known examples. And hey, they may well offer good value for money. But their price points are out of reach for constrained budgets.

Compare these figures to what you might spend:

• You've heard of Hubspot? That'll be $800/ month for a core plan! Sure, it comes with 3 seats and some credits. But yikes!
• Hmm, Hootsuite? Still $99/ month.
• Salesforce tempts with a $25/month starter suite—surprisingly fair—until needed features push you toward ~$100/month tiers. Browse further and you’ll find a marketing “Growth” plan around $1,500/ month Where did that come from? I thought we were talking $25 - $100?

And that's just the obvious part. There are also two types of lock-in to consider that reduce your flexibility.

The big issue: Contract lock-in. (Thanks to Bojana M. for pointing this out. 🙏 I had sure missed this.)

If you pick Hubspot or some of Salesforce's contracts, then annual contracts are your only option. (Hubspot offers monthly billing but not monthly contract lengths.) If you have to cancel early, there's presumably no proration/ repayment. So you had better be ready to commit and not have your plans go south mid-year!

More subtly, there's also data lock-in. This gets a bit more nerdy and nuanced. So let's keep things brief here. Overall, if you want to switch to another tool, you may have a hard time getting your info out of the old one and into your new solution. Your actual data may be possible to export. But you may need to recreate automations, templates, reports, and the like in your new environment.

To be fair, this is an issue for many other tools too, not just for the big platforms. And there are third-party solutions to some of these issues. But it doesn't change the main point: These platforms are made for big corporations. Smaller businesses often have different priorities.

Time to look elsewhere for something simple, small-business-friendly, and non-budget-busting.

The takeaway

As always, there are too many options. But I was able to choose. My current, decent picks are:

Together they put me back about $24/month, assuming annual subscriptions.

Free utilities fill the gaps:

This stack covers most of the marketing basics for a small company without drifting into corporate-size software.

I still have one open question that may just have to play out in practice: Drop Buffer (and rely on Canva for "good-enough" social media scheduling), so I can get MailerLite's workflow for email automation.

Search criteria

My situation and needs

I'm looking to create a professional digital marketing appearance for a B2B company.

They are looking for a combination of "legit" appearance and contained manual workload, by implementing a website with blog/thought leadership, LinkedIn and light search feeding site traffic, click tracking for attribution, scheduled posts; simple social analytics, and automated email sequences for subscribers and prospects.

Specifics

• Budget: ≤$25/month
• Main needs:
  • Social post creation and scheduling (LinkedIn first)
  • Click tracking (UTM) and URL shortener
  • Campaign-specific landing pages
  • Email marketing, analytics, A/B testing
  • Light drip workflows (automated email sequences)
  • Campaign planning
• Other criteria:
  • Vendors headquartered in U.S., Europe, or Australia/ NZ only

State of the state for Marketing apps

This SaaS category is crowded, fragmented, and full of overlapping promises. Everyone and their mom is trying to help you market better. (Funny how it's still hard, but I digress.)

Many “all-in-one” tools still leave gaps (no UTMs, no true campaign manager). And they bundle in features that may just be overkill for you.

And, as you might already expect, “AI-driven” often means content suggestions or dashboards. Buzzwords abound; impact varies.

So if you have a constrained budget and limited needs, you may be better off to combine two or three apps, to get focused tools without locking into a corporate platform.

Specialty apps vs. generalist platforms vs. office tools vs. AI

Speaking of corporate platforms, a ton of tools include "Marketing" features in their offering or capabilities. And depending on your needs, they may all make sense.

You might consider:

• Office tools (Google Docs, Sheets): fine for manual campaigns, but don’t scale for automation
• Specialty SaaS (like Canva, MailerLite): good mix of features and usability for small teams
• Generalist ERP and Marketing suites (Odoo, Zoho, HubSpot): powerful, but can get complex and pricey
• AI-centric newcomers: useful for drafting content, not usually for infrastructure. AI doesn’t replace scheduling, UTMs, or analytics so far
• Automation platforms (n8n, Make, Zapier): help to reduce copy/ pasting and other manual work steps. But in the end, they typically still plug into dedicated marketing tools. So they don't stand on their own.

Verdict for my needs

A few specialty SaaS apps are worth it. This company has outgrown office tools. Beyond that, the rest is overkill. And for some AI-centric tools, I'm not even sure if they offer more than hot air and SaaS bloat.

The only other tool that I expect to add later is an automation platform. But that's after we create good processes.

You may have heard me say elsewhere: "If you scale a crap process, you just get crap at scale."

Tools considered

As mentioned, there are gobs of marketing, go-to-market, sales, and business development apps, often with overlapping features.

I asked my trusty research AI to focus on tools with some history and then supplemented its recommendations with some old-style manual web searches. I may miss the latest AI breakout, but reduce churn risk if young companies go out of business.

My list below includes generally established companies. Newer entrants may be great, too. But the goal here is to avoid option overload.

(Note: Pricing assumes annual subscriptions. As usual month-to-month is pricier.)

Post creation and scheduling: Adobe Express and Canva

Your choice depends on whether you already have an Adobe subscription and what workflows you prefer. The two tools "feel" somewhat different from each other, and you may find that you have a preference for one or the other.

I went with Canva. But Adobe Express is just as solid.

Adobe Express – $8.33/month

• Strength: design + scheduler, good if already in Adobe ecosystem
• Weakness: fewer templates, thinner analytics
• HQ: San Jose, U.S.

Canva Pro – $10/month

• Strength: best-in-class templates, simple social scheduler
• Weakness: no UTMs, no link shortener, no email, idiosyncratic file handling system (not standard cloud storage)
• HQ: Sydney, Australia

Post scheduling and analytics: Buffer, Metricool, Publer, and SocialBee

I chose Buffer. That was a toss-up. I also liked Publer. But I had heard of Buffer and found their website a bit simpler, which suited my needs. Perfect analysis? Hardly. But good-enough to move on. You may choose differently.

Buffer – $5/month (1 channel)

• Strength: clean scheduling, light analytics
• Weakness: per-channel pricing climbs fast
• HQ: San Francisco, U.S.

Metricool – $18/month

• Strength: analytics + ad reporting + scheduling
• Weakness: UI appears more complex than others, puts me over budget
• HQ: Madrid, Spain

Publer – $4/month (1 channel)

• Strength: flexible, à-la-carte pricing, evergreen posts
• Weakness: analytics appear thin
• HQ: Tirana, Albania

SocialBee – $24/month

• Strength: promises complete social media solution, category queues, content recycling
• Weakness: heavier than needed for single-channel use, budget-buster for me
• HQ: Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Email marketing and automations: Brevo and MailerLite

Email marketing is about volume. I had to make a tradeoff here. Brevo's entry tier includes 10x the mail volume that MailerLite offers (5,000 vs. 500 messages/ month), at similar costs.

But MailerLite includes campaign landing pages in the cheaper tier, while you need to upgrade to Brevo's ~$16/ month Business plan to get that.

For me, volume isn't a big deal yet. Landing pages are. And even Brevo Business only includes one of them. So I went with MailerLite for now. (I also like MailerLite's simpler pricing with less nickle-and-diming.)

That said, I may want to switch later and will work to avoid lock-in. That's because costs drift apart at higher volumes. For example:

At some point, MailerLite's extra cost may get to me. But then again, Brevo charges an extra ~$22 for every five more landing pages. So who knows how it all will shake out in practice.

Anyway, at long last, here are each tool's specifics:

Brevo (previously Sendinblue) – $8.08/month (≤5,000 subscribers, no landing pages)

• Strength: email + SMS + light CRM, GDPR-native
• Weakness: pricing varies for multiple features, UI heavier (aka feels made for bigger companies) than MailerLite
• HQ: Paris, France

MailerLite – $9/month (≤500 subscribers, unlimited landing pages)

• Strength: email marketing, landing pages, drip automation, A/B testing, simpler pricing
• Weakness: UTMs may only be on emails (not social)
• HQ: San Francisco, USA/ Dublin, Ireland/ Vilnius, Lithuania

The free tools

Ok, they are not all "free-free." But I can get by with free tiers for now and don't stress switching to paid later.

Link shorteners

I've used Bitly before. They are the default choice, and I've liked them. But Rebrandly's custom domain and higher free limit made me switch to them.

Bitly – Free (5 links, 2 QRs, and 2 landing pages/ month); Paid from $10/ month

• Strength: simple link shortening, clean interface, basic click analytics
• Weakness: quota is tight, branded domains only on paid plans
• HQ: New York, U.S.

Rebrandly – Free (10 links, 10 QRs, 1 custom domain/ month); Paid from $13/ month

• Strength: supports custom branded domains even on free tier, solid link management
• Weakness: monthly quota low, advanced analytics/features require upgrade
• HQ: Dublin, Ireland

Campaign planners

Let's not kid ourselves. When I say "campaign planners", I mean glorified spreadsheets or databases. The act of planning helps small businesses, not tools themselves.

You have bunches of options, even before yspecialized tools. So consider these as an illustrative list, nothing even close to comprehensive.

Each options has a different feel: Airtable as a database, GSheets as a spreadsheet, Miro as a flexible and visual whiteboard, and Notion as a database in a wiki-like tool. So your choice comes down to preference, your existing paid accounts, and other uses, as much as anything.

I'll go with GSheets. I already pay for the Google Suite, like the tool's easy integration with AI agent and other automation platforms, don't expect to create heavy tables, and prefer to use Notion for more text-based use cases, not databases.

Airtable – Free (1,000 records per base); Paid from $20/month

• Strength: spreadsheet/database hybrid, great for structured campaign planning and different views (calendar, kanban).
• Weakness: usage caps (# rows) on free plan, automations and integrations limited, price step-up to paid is significant ($20/ mo.)
• HQ: San Francisco, U.S.

Google Sheets – Free (with Google account); Paid = included in Google Workspace from $7/month

• Strength: familiar spreadsheet, flexible, real-time collaboration.
• Weakness: no native campaign templates, manual structure and setup required.
• HQ: Mountain View, U.S.

Miro – Free tier; Paid from ~$8/user/month

• Strength: infinite whiteboard for flows, sticky notes, templates; excellent for campaign brainstorming and visual mapping.
• Weakness: not built for structured data or execution tracking; automations limited.
• HQ: San Francisco, U.S.

Notion – Free personal plan; Paid from $10/ month

• Strength: flexible workspace with pages, boards, and timelines; strong collaboration
• Weakness: exports and reporting can be a struggle, not built for marketing by default
• HQ: San Francisco, U.S.

The cutting room floor

The tools I've listed so far are the ones I seriously considered. That doesn't mean that I didn't consider others.

The apps listed below just didn't meet one or more of my "must-have" criteria.

Here are some of those tools I didn't choose and why I didn't pursue them further:

• ActiveCampaign (all-in-one, from $15/ mo.) – Focus on automation and advanced analytics seemed overkill for a smaller business's needs
• Drip (email automation, from $39/ mo.) - Too specialized and pricey for me
• GetResponse (email, automation, and landing pages, from $19/ mo. after intro) – Not price-competitive for my needs
• Later (social media scheduling, from $17/ mo.) – Main focus on influencer marketing, making my core not their core
• Mailchimp (all-in-one, from $13/ mo. after intro) – May have nice cross-channel (email + sms) automations. But I got a bit of feature-overload. Plus, complicated pricing and my poor prior experience with their parent company made them not for me

There were also another kind of tools, namely all-in-one and CRM solutions. In their case, it's not that they missed anything. They usually offered more than I needed. In some cases, I found myself downright overwhelmed by all the features. For a small business, they seemed a bit much.

Always an option for later, when we (hopefully) outgrow the current solution set.

• BigContacts (CRM, from $20/ mo. after intro) – Claimed to be for small biz but felt big-business-y for me. Focus on CRM also not my priority
• Cloze Marketing (Email automation and CRM, from $42) – A tool I have used before for its core CRM features. Didn't realize they had extended into Marketing. But automation isn't my main need, and Marketing Mail is only available on their priciest plan
• EngageBay (all-in-one, CRM, from $13/ mo.) – Focus on CRM, incl. sales, help desk, and chatbot not my main need
• Insightly (Automation, planning, and CRM, from $24/ mo.) – Not really my main need, and some features only possible at pricier plans
• Ontraport (small-biz CRM, from $24/ mo.) – Focus on CRM wasn't my main need
• Uspacy (communication, collaboration, and CRM, from $8/ mo.) – Combined too many topics that I consider separately

Quick comparison

Is your head spinning yet? 😄 Let's look at the tools I considered seriously side-by-side.

First the dedicated marketing tools:

Then the link managers:

And finally, the campaign planners:

Why I chose what I chose

Canva + MailerLite + Buffer

They cover creation, scheduling, email, automation, and landing pages under budget. That's job one covered.

As a bonus, they are also based in countries where I feel decent about data privacy (generally speaking), and they all appear to have decent user interfaces, by which I mean simple and modern ones.

A tool stack built from them or other candidates I mentioned will take many small and mid-size businesses a long way.

The only compromise I see so far is no integrated social A/B testing and no built-in campaign manager. For LinkedIn-only social, that’s fine for me for now.

Rebrandly + Google Sheets

The missing pieces—UTM builder, short links, campaign calendar—are handled by free tools.

I was torn between Bitly and Rebrandly. Might even do a side-by-side comparison. I mean, that is the point of a free tierl. But I'm leaning toward Rebrandly, thanks to their inclusion of a custom domain in the free tier.

And then, Google Sheets will be a trusty campaign planner.

Nuances and limits with these tools

Every budget comes with tradeoffs. Same thing here. Standing before the tools before having used them in depth, I can see these downsides:

• Integrations: MailerLite doesn’t have direct Vimeo integration, which matters some to me. But Vimeo events can still be tracked in Google Analytics with UTMs.
• Analytics: These tools offer lightweight reporting only, not deep attribution. I'll need to use Google Analytics as glue.
• Scalability: As channels or list size grow, costs rise, as shown in a few cases. It'll definitely matter to monitor tier limits and to reevaluate as we approach limits.

Close

Marketing is a crowded and fast-changing category for apps. But you aren’t locked in. Every new competitor will be glad to help you switch to them.

So don’t over-stress your choice!

Pick tools that cover 80% of what you need, watch the budget at purchases and as your usage increases, focus more on building good habits than finding pretty tools, and you’ll be fine with many of these tools.

Best of luck! May you be the next great marketing breakout!

T.I.S.C.

What this is

Why you should trust me

I’m a fractional COO with 20+ years (yikes!) across startups, corporates, and private equity. I choose tools the same way I run companies: The apps I use must prove value, beat alternatives, and survive tight budgets. SaaS bloat is real. And I can't afford give passes, even to great tools.

Disclaimer

I’ve only tried some of these tools. Most evaluations rely on public info and AI assistance. You’re seeing my live decision process. Use this to kickstart research, not replace your own diligence.

Speaking of which, this is general advice, folks: Yes, these are my own, true opinions based on personal research. No, I can't guarantee that what works for me will work for you, too. No, I don't take money (e.g, referral fees) or anything else of value. No, these companies don't endorse me. No, I can't guarantee the work of these companies. Yes, anything here is subject to change without notice and could change my recommendations. 😄