The short answer: most coaches and experts pay for five to ten separate tools, often $200 to $500 or more a month combined, plus the hours spent keeping them connected. The only way to know your real number is to add it up, and that number is usually higher than people expect.
A few years ago I was proud of my tech stack. Then I added it up: more than $4,000 a year, for tools that were never designed to work together. And I was the one holding them all together, copying contacts between systems and fixing whatever broke between them. That moment is a big part of why Firestarter Funnels exists.
Step 1: List every tool, including the small ones
Go through your bank or card statements for the last three months and list every software charge. The usual categories for a coaching business:
- Website builder and hosting
- Funnel or landing page builder
- Email marketing
- Scheduling and booking
- Course or membership platform, and a community platform
- Checkout or payments tool
- Texting, forms or surveys, and a CRM
- The connector that moves data between them
Don't skip the small ones. Add-ons, extra seats and "pro" upgrades are where most stacks quietly grow.
Step 2: Multiply to a year, and note what grows
Turn every monthly charge into a yearly one. Then mark which tools charge more as you grow: by contacts, by members, by seats or by sales. Those are the ones that will cost more next year even if you change nothing.
Step 3: Count the hours
The subscriptions are only part of the cost. Think about the time spent re-entering data, troubleshooting connections that broke, and learning five different dashboards. If you spend even two hours a week on that, it's worth putting a value on it.
The tech isn't the point. You are. Every hour spent holding tools together is an hour not spent on your clients.
Questions to ask about every tool
- Does it share contacts with my other tools, or do I copy them by hand?
- Would I notice if it disappeared tomorrow?
- Is it charging me for something another tool already does?
- Does its price go up as my list, members or team grow?
Be fair about what to keep. An all-in-one platform replaces your website, funnels, email, booking, courses and checkout. It doesn't replace your accounting software, your video calls or the design app you love, and it doesn't need to.
Step 4: Compare it with one platform
With the full number in front of you, the comparison gets simple. The Firestarter Funnels Signature Plan is $1,470 a year (or $147 a month), locked for life, and it covers websites, funnels, email and text, CRM, booking, courses and communities, payments and automations. Email and text are billed by what you send, with a $20 credit every month. You can run your own numbers with the email cost calculator, and see the side-by-side on our compare page.
What to do with your number
If your stack costs less and works well, keep it. If it costs more, or you're the glue holding it together, consolidating is worth planning. One member, Lucy, told us she'd been "doing it all alone on 8 or 9 different platforms," and after moving she said she'd "moved exponentially faster." My guide to consolidating your tech stack walks through the order to move things in, and a free call is the fastest way to map it for your business.