Tech

The Day You Outgrow a Project Tool's Free Tier

Six project tools, one spreadsheet: I checked each free plan's actual limit and what the smallest paid tier costs per seat, per year. The surprises are in the climbing costs.

Mia CarterSep 11 — 7 min read

Scheduling Links Compared: What "Free" Actually Lets You Book, and What a Year Really Costs

Compared the free plans and yearly cost of Calendly, Cal.com, SavvyCal and TidyCal. One caps you at one event type, one is free forever, one has none.

Alex NovakSep 11 — 7 min read

Newsletter Platforms: What "Free" Actually Gets You Before You Pay

I checked the free tiers on Mailchimp, Kit, Buttondown, MailerLite and Beehiiv. One caps you at 100 subscribers, another at 10,000, and "free" hides four different kinds of limits.

Tom ByrneSep 10 — 6 min read

Password Managers: What the Free Tier Actually Gives You, and What the First Paid Tier Costs

I opened the pricing pages for Bitwarden, 1Password, Dashlane and NordPass so you don't have to. Here is what each free plan really includes, where it stops, and what going paid costs a year.

Tom ByrneSep 9 — 6 min read

How Much Cloud Storage Is Actually Free, and What the Next Dollar Buys

Seven cloud services, compared: what the free tier really gives you, what the first paid tier costs a year, and why a 5 GB default is an upsell.

Mia CarterSep 8 — 6 min read

The Trackball I Bought for a Sore Wrist, Six Months In

A six-month review of switching from a mouse to a trackball to fix afternoon wrist pain — what the spec sheet does not mention about the first two weeks, and whether it actually worked.

Tom ByrneSep 7 — 3 min read

The AI Notetaker I Rolled Out to Nine People Earned Its Keep in Month Three, Not Week One

A three-month walkthrough of an AI meeting notetaker across a nine-person team, including what the pricing page leaves out about retention, export and cancellation, and whether switching was worth the migration.

Alex NovakSep 5 — 3 min read

The Annual Discount Is a Loan You Make to Your Vendor

Twenty percent off for paying yearly sounds like free money. Priced as what it actually is — an interest-free loan with a cancellation penalty — it is a much narrower deal.

Mia CarterSep 2 — 3 min read

Tech for the Rest of Us

Two-Factor Authentication, Explained Without the Lecture

What the codes actually are, why SMS is the weak version, and — the part that goes wrong — what happens when you lose the phone.

Tom ByrneSep 1 — 3 min read

Cloudflare Pages vs Netlify for a Small Marketing Site, Including the Bill at Month Six

Both deploy a static site in ten minutes. The differences show up in build minutes, redirect handling, and one caching behaviour that cost me two hours to understand.

Tom ByrneSep 1 — 3 min read

We Tried to Cut Every Tool for a Month and Learned Which Four We Actually Cannot

An audit tells you what you pay for. Turning each one off for a week tells you what you need. The results did not match my predictions in six cases out of fourteen.

Mia CarterSep 1 — 3 min read

We Left a Tool We Still Liked, Because Liking It Was Not the Question

The hardest software decisions are not about bad products. Here is the framework we used to leave something that worked fine, and why "it works fine" is not a reason to stay.

Tom ByrneSep 1 — 3 min read

The Two-Minute Check I Run Before Acting on a Machine's Answer

I sent a client a wrong number that a tool gave me confidently. Here is the check I built afterwards, and the category of question it will not save you from.

Mia CarterAug 30 — 2 min read

Noise Cancelling Is Not the Feature I Actually Use

Three pairs of headphones judged over a full working day rather than a demo. The thing that decided it was comfort at hour six, which nobody can test in a shop.

Tom ByrneAug 30 — 3 min read

A Password Manager Is the One Tool Nobody Argues About — So We Tested Whether It Deserves That

1Password at three seats for four months, including the migration nobody warns you about and the one feature that turned out to matter more than the vault.

Mia CarterAug 30 — 3 min read

Every Small Team Has Shadow Software, and Ours Was Eleven Tools Deep

Nobody signed off on any of it and every single one was a reasonable decision at the time. What we found when we went looking, and the policy that replaced the ban I nearly wrote.

Tom ByrneAug 27 — 3 min read

Four Tools Added AI Features This Year. I Turned Three of Them Off.

What happens when software you rely on grows a feature it wants you to use, and how to tell an improvement from a shareholder announcement.

Tom ByrneAug 25 — 2 min read

Tech for the Rest of Us

The Backup Setup I Would Give a Friend Who Has None

Not the ideal one. The one that takes forty minutes, costs about £3 a month, and covers the failure that actually happens to people.

Mia CarterAug 25 — 3 min read

Fastmail vs Proton Mail for a Business Inbox, After Moving Twice

We migrated to one, disliked something specific, migrated to the other, and found a different specific problem. Here is the honest split for a small business address.

Mia CarterAug 24 — 3 min read

We Replaced Four Tools With Notion and Got Two of Them Back

Consolidating onto Notion saved us $91 a month and cost us something harder to price. A year later, here is exactly which parts stuck and which we quietly reversed.

Tom ByrneAug 24 — 3 min read

The Real Cost of Moving a Team Off a Tool Is Not the Migration

We budgeted two weeks for the data and got it done in three days. Then spent five weeks on the part nobody schedules — every integration, habit, and link that pointed at the old thing.

Mia CarterAug 22 — 3 min read

I Spent Two Years Upgrading the Wrong Half of My Desk

Four monitors, three chairs, and the £90 accessory that did more for my working day than any of them. A note on where the returns actually are.

Mia CarterAug 21 — 3 min read

The SaaS Pricing Audit I Run Before Any Trial (It Caught a $4,200 Surprise)

A 20-minute checklist for finding the real cost of a SaaS tool before you start a trial — seats, add-ons, overage, and the traps pricing pages hide.

Mia CarterAug 20 — 4 min read

I Exported My Data From Nine Tools Before I Needed It, and Only Three Gave Me Something Usable

Every SaaS product has an export button. Testing them while you are still a happy customer is the only way to find out what it actually produces.

Tom ByrneAug 16 — 3 min read

Figma vs Penpot, Run in Parallel on the Same Client Project for Five Weeks

We rebuilt the same twenty-screen deliverable twice, once in each tool, and timed it. The gap is real but it is not where the comparison articles put it.

Tom ByrneAug 15 — 3 min read

The Quarterly Stack Audit That Takes Ninety Minutes and Has Never Not Paid For Itself

A repeatable process for going through every piece of software a small team pays for, in one sitting, with a decision at the end of each line.

Mia CarterAug 14 — 3 min read

Per-Seat Pricing Has a Number Nobody Quotes You, and It's the One That Grows

The list price per seat is the least interesting figure on a pricing page. Here is the arithmetic that actually predicts what a tool costs a growing team in year two.

Tom ByrneAug 14 — 3 min read

I Logged Every Time I Used an AI Tool for a Month. Two Uses Were Worth It.

Forty-one logged uses, honestly timed against doing it myself. The wins were narrow, real, and not the ones I expected.

Mia CarterAug 13 — 3 min read

Tech for the Rest of Us

Nobody Explained What I Was Actually Buying When I Bought a Domain

A plain account of what a domain name is, what the renewal is for, and the four upsells that are not necessary — written for people who were handed this decision without being told anything.

Tom ByrneAug 13 — 3 min read

The Keyboard I Stopped Noticing, and the Three I Sent Back First

Four mechanical keyboards over eighteen months, judged on the only criterion that survived — whether I still thought about it in month six.

Tom ByrneAug 11 — 3 min read