Last week I froze at my books: 8 SaaS, ¥6,400/year
Last week I opened my bookkeeping app and the SaaS subscription line made me freeze: CRM, forms, customer management, email marketing, knowledge store, auto-reply... ¥6,400 a year. I went through each one asking: can a WeChat group, Notion, or a mini-program do this? After cutting 5, the answer was yes — they really can.
This is the same thing as the dev circle's "use the platform" mantra — the platform already gave it to you, why pay again?
People around me already do this
Lao Zhou runs an indie dev community in Hangzhou, 30k followers. His clients, orders, and content all live in a WeChat group + Knowledge Planet. His CRM is an Excel sheet, his email marketing runs on a mass-send helper. "Less than ¥300 a year on SaaS," he says. "The money I save goes into ads."
Lin Jie (side-hustle consultant in Shanghai, ¥800k/year) runs all her client management on Feishu multi-dim tables, automations on Feishu's native flows. "I got stuck here too — I thought skipping it looked unprofessional. But I only had 12 clients, and Excel was 10x more useful than the CRM."
Replication cost: Money ¥0, Time 1 weekend, Tech barrier "can send WeChat"
Money: Basically ¥0. WeChat, Notion, Feishu, Xiaohongshu's backend, Zhihu columns — these platforms' native features are enough for a 1-5 person team for a year.
Time: 1 weekend. List your current SaaS features one by one, find platform replacements, migrate data. The 1-2 week transition gets a little messy.
Tech barrier: Basic WeChat, Notion, Feishu operations. Easier than learning any new SaaS. I messed this up too — thought "pro tools = professional image," ended up with half the features I never used.
First step: Open your latest SaaS bill (Alipay/WeChat bill works), categorize each subscription by purpose. Then ask yourself: "Can the platform backend do this?" If yes, mark it X and cancel before the next renewal cycle.
No rush to try tonight. Most SaaS bill yearly, so you have a full month before your next renewal to do this — totally fine to wait.
By stage, how to use the platform
If you're just starting out (0 clients, under ¥5k/month): I'd say don't spend a yuan on SaaS. WeChat group + WeChat payment QR + Tencent Docs can hold you for 6 months.
If you have 1-2 clients: I'd use Feishu/Notion multi-dim tables to manage clients. Under 50 clients, CRM isn't essential — platform tables + labels are plenty.
If you're scaling (100+ clients, ¥30k+/month): Now 1-2 core SaaS (CRM + automation) aren't a bad spend — they save hours, not yuan. Just don't drift back to 8 subscriptions.