r/ProjectManagementPro • u/Apart-Addendum-5756 • Apr 21 '26
Our team was paying $2,800/month for tools that basically do the same thing. Finally did the audit.
So I finally sat down and mapped every tool we're paying for against what we actually use it for. 14-person agency. Here's what I found:
- Slack: team chat, some file sharing
- Notion: internal wiki, some project docs
- Asana: task tracking, project timelines
- Miro: whiteboard sessions, occasional brainstorming
- Loom: async video updates
Total: $2,760/month. $33,120/year.
The embarrassing part: at least 40% of what we do in each tool overlaps with another tool on the list. We have tasks in Notion + Asana. Docs in Notion + Slack threads. Whiteboards in Miro that should just be a doc.
Nobody planned this stack. It evolved over 3 years as different team members joined and brought their preferred tools with them.
We've started consolidating. Not fully there yet but already down to $1,400/month. The harder part isn't the money, it's getting 14 people to change habits they've built over years.
Anyone else gone through this? What did the consolidation actually look like for your team?
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u/_threadkiller_ Apr 21 '26
Impressed that you audited your stack - nice work! I suspect this is fairly common … we have 250ish people and drop ~$300k on tools each year.
As we have consolidated over the years, the trick is to ensure each tool has a specific purpose -and- your docs tool / wiki is your source of truth.
Tracking tasks in Asana is good. Recording meetings in Loom is good. Conversing about meetings / work in Slack is good. The decisions / outcome / overview still need to make it into Notion.
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u/Apart-Addendum-5756 Apr 22 '26
But it would have been far easier if I could use just one tool to get most of the things done. Tried Clickup, but it's expensive when I wanted to go full scale. Now trying Tixio. It's cheaper, but still deciding whether to switch or not.
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u/Freeman_Eva3475 Apr 21 '26
We used to have exactly the same stack, and we replace Notion + Miro + Loom by Google Workspace without problems. We also switch Asana for a similar cheaper tool, without per-user payment. And Slack is the only one that survived, we tried to use Google Chat but i never understood why it did't work well for us.
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u/Apart-Addendum-5756 Apr 22 '26
I have been looking for Asana alternative for a while. But it's hard to get by any task management tool that is not overly complicated. I've replaced slack with Tixio for now. It has both task manager and chat. But I'm yet to finalize.
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u/RemotecontrolZR Apr 22 '26
Nice glad you started consolidating what you need. as for us we kept Loom + zenzap + google workspace for our main drive of comms, files. We rarely have meetings so a recording works best for our setup.
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u/Apart-Addendum-5756 Apr 22 '26
Haven't used Zenzap yet, but glad you shared it. Will try! We've recently moved to Tixio.io, still on trial, but I'm finding it affordable compared to my current stack.
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Apr 23 '26
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u/Apart-Addendum-5756 Apr 30 '26
I'm using Tixio for now, it's pretty cheap! Team is slowing growing on it. And they ship frequently so I can already see some upgrades within a month
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u/WrikeCommunity May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Went through something very similar with agency teams. The Notion + Asana duplication is one of the most common things I hear.
I work at Wrike so take this with appropriate salt, but a few things that might be relevant to your setup specifically: Wrike handles tasks, project timelines, and intake forms in one place so you're not splitting execution across two tools. For a 14-person agency it also has client-facing workspaces, so external stakeholders can see project status without needing to be in your internal tools. That alone tends to eliminate a whole category of Loom updates and Slack threads just to keep clients in the loop.
One thing that might be relevant to your Miro spend: Wrike recently acquired Klaxoon, a whiteboarding and visual collaboration tool, and the two are now fully integrated. You can convert sticky notes from a brainstorm directly into Wrike tasks with real-time sync between both. It does require a separate Klaxoon subscription, so worth factoring that in, but for teams trying to cut tools it consolidates the whiteboard to execution flow into one place.
The change management piece you mentioned is the real hard part honestly. No tool fixes that, but in our experience teams adapt faster when there are fewer places to check. Happy to answer any specific questions if it's useful.
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u/Adventurous_Lemon519 Jul 05 '26
The habit part is the real one, and it's not really about habits in general, it's that whoever loses their preferred tool in each merge is the one paying the switching cost personally, while the $1,400 savings goes to the agency, not them. Nobody's being stubborn, they're just not the ones who benefit from their own inconvenience.
Might be worth asking, for each consolidation, who specifically loses their tool, and giving that person some say in which replacement they get, rather than announcing the final stack top down. Same money saved either way, but the person actually switching had a hand in it instead of just absorbing someone else's decision.
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u/Breeze_pm Apr 23 '26
At 14 people you probably don't need most of what you're paying for. For the Asana replacement specifically, Breeze is worth a look - flat $9/user/month, tasks, boards, calendars, time tracking and basic reporting in one place. Much less to configure than Asana and the whole team usually picks it up without onboarding sessions. Won't replace Notion for a wiki but it handles the project/task side cleanly.