For two years my business ran on four tools. Notion for notes and docs. Airtable for the client database. Zapier to move data between them. Typeform for the intake form on my site. Each one was the best at its job. Together they cost about $90 a month, and I'd have told you, proudly, that I'd built a "stack."

Last month I replaced all four with a single app I described in one sentence. I lost a few things I genuinely miss. But I gained the one thing none of those four tools could give me, and I didn't understand what it was until it was gone.

The subscriptions were never the real cost

When people complain about SaaS, they complain about the bill. That was never my problem — $90 a month is cheap for software that runs a business. The real cost was somewhere I never looked: the glue.

Notion didn't talk to Airtable. Airtable didn't talk to the form. So between every pair of tools sat a Zap — a little automation I'd wired up at some point, that moved a row here when a thing happened there.…