I've been a marketer long enough to have a small graveyard of subscription cancellations under my belt.
Some of them lasted a month. Some of them lasted years. All of them, at some point, felt indispensable until they weren't.
The truth about marketing tools is that most of them are fine. A few of them are excellent. And a lot of them exist to make you feel like you're being productive when you're actually just paying $47 a month to have another dashboard to log into.
I've talked before about how I actually use AI in my day-to-day. This is the natural next question I get asked: okay, so what tools are actually in your marketing stack?
So here's the honest version. What I pay for, what I ditched, and how I decide whether something makes the cut.
Why Most "Best Marketing Tools" Lists Are Useless
Before I get into it, let me save you a Google search.
Most of the tool roundups you'll find online are affiliate content. That means the recommendations are often more about who's paying commissions than what's actually good.
They also lump every business into the same bucket. A tool that's great for a solo creator might be a total mismatch for a boutique agency. A tool that a Fortune 500 company swears by will absolutely bury a five-person team in complexity they don't need.
The right tool is the one that fits your actual workflow, budget, and team size. Not the one with the shiniest landing page.
So instead of a generic ranked list, here's what I actually use, why I use it, and why some tools that everyone else seems to love didn't work for me.
What I Actually Pay For
The centerpiece of my stack. We use it for CRM, email sequences, landing pages, forms, workflows, reporting, and lead scoring. It's not cheap. It's absolutely worth it.
Here's why we don't mind the price tag: when your marketing, sales, and service data all live in one place, you stop making poor decisions based on incomplete information. The learning curve is real. But once you're in, the ROI shows up everywhere.
Our social media management hub. Metricool handles scheduling, analytics, and reporting across every platform we manage, both for EleVault and our clients.
I like it because the reporting is genuinely usable, the interface doesn't fight me, and it scales well as we take on more accounts. It's one of the few tools I've added in the last two years that I use daily and haven't second-guessed once.
Everything design-related for EleVault and most of our clients starts here. Templates. Brand kits. Resize tools. Access to a solid stock library. All at a price that would embarrass Adobe.
Yes, I have opinions about Canva design when it's overused or lazy. But in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, it's a workhorse.
📌 Claude (yes, still)
I've said it before and I'll say it again. AI is a genuine part of my workflow. Brainstorming, title testing, batch outlining, the occasional recipe lookup. Money well spent.
If you missed my full take on AI, it's in the archives. TL;DR: it's a tool, not a personality.
The unsexy foundation. Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive. Plus Search Console, which is free and criminally underused by most small businesses.
If you're not looking at Search Console regularly, you're missing free intel about how people are finding your site and what content is actually working. Start there before you spend money on fancier SEO tools.
What I Ditched (And Why)
Now the fun part.
I used to love Mailchimp. It was my first "real" email tool, and it did the job for a long time.
Then we outgrew it. Once we needed serious segmentation, behavioral triggers, and connected CRM data, the workarounds got ugly fast. Moving to HubSpot for email was a jump in complexity, but it solved every workaround at once.
If you're a solo operator with a simple newsletter, Mailchimp is still great. If you're growing a real pipeline, you'll want more.
I've tried them all. Each one had its moments. Each one had real strengths. None of them stuck for us.
Here's the thing: they were all trying to solve a problem I didn't actually have anymore. Between HubSpot managing our client-facing work and Google Workspace handling everything else internally, adding another layer of project management just meant one more place to check.
Trello is what we use for client-facing project boards, and it works because it's simple, visual, and doesn't require anyone to learn a new system to collaborate with us. That's the whole point of a client tool.
Apollo has a solid prospecting and lead database. That part isn't the issue. The issue was the email side of the platform, which felt underdeveloped compared to what we needed.
Once we had the contacts, we ended up needing to rely on a separate tool for actual outreach, which defeated the point of consolidating in the first place. HubSpot eventually absorbed most of that responsibility, along with a few other things I don't need to name.
If a tool only handles half the job well, it's costing you more than the subscription.
HoneyBook is a beautiful product for the businesses it's built for. Ours isn't one of them.
It doesn't go deep enough on workflows and automation for the way we work. The interface, while friendly, isn't as advanced or intuitive as we needed once our processes got more complex. Every workaround felt like we were fighting the tool instead of using it.
HubSpot replaced it. Not because HoneyBook is bad, but because our business needed something different.
What I Look For in a Tool Now
After enough graveyard subscriptions, I've developed a simple framework for deciding whether a tool earns a spot in my stack:
- Does it solve a real, current problem, not a hypothetical future one?
- Will I use it at least weekly? Ideally daily?
- Does it replace something else I'm paying for, or does it add another dashboard to log into?
- Can I clearly explain the ROI to someone else in one sentence?
- Is the annual cost worth the time it saves?
If a tool can't clear all five, I don't buy it. Or if I already have it, I cancel it.
The best marketing stack isn't the biggest. It's the one you actually use.
The Real Point
Here's what I want you to take from all of this:
This isn't about what works for me. It isn't about what works for the marketer you follow on LinkedIn. It isn't about what works for the agency down the street.
It's about what works for your business, your team, and the way you actually operate.
The tools I love might be wrong for you. The tools I ditched might be exactly right for you. HoneyBook might be perfect for the way your business runs. Mailchimp might be all you need forever. ClickUp might change your life. And that's the point.
Stop asking what everyone else uses. Start asking what your business actually needs.
Audit your stack. Cut the fluff. Invest in the tools that fit the unique shape of the work you do.
And when in doubt, remember: the goal isn't to have more tools. It's to have less noise between you and the work that matters.
That's it. That's the stack.
Until next time, Nina
📚 Currently reading: Honestly? I'm 3 chapters deep in about 4 different books right now, let's see which one sticks.
🎧 Currently listening to: Rotten Mango (the Duggars episode!)
🍷 Currently sipping: An iced vanilla oat milk latte.