We just cancelled $32,000/year in SaaS subscriptions — Contentful and Twilio Segment — and replaced them with tools we built ourselves using Claude Code.
For a small startup like GRID, this is real money. And the time invested? About two days for each replacement.
These homegrown solutions are obviously not as feature-rich as what they replaced. They just do exactly what we need.
The economics that drove the SaaS boom are inverting. Building software was expensive, so you bought standardised tools even if you used 20% of the features. Now? Custom solutions that fit your exact needs are a weekend project.
I know some SaaS vendors are already seeing this in their churn numbers — but the wave has by no means hit yet. It’s hardly begun to rise.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.