How I replaced a $50/month SaaS tool with Apps Script

Northwind paid $50 a month for a CRM. It did a few things well, a lot of things adequately, and a fair number of things we never touched at all.

When I actually wrote down what we used it for, the list fit on a sticky note. That is the problem with a generic “everything” tool — we were paying $50/mo for pipelines we never configured, email campaigns we never sent, integrations we never connected, and reports we never opened, while using a narrow slice of the whole thing. Stripped back, the real requirement was tiny: a contacts list, an activity log per contact, and a “who haven’t I talked to in 60 days” report. Three features, and one of them was the only thing that ever genuinely changed my behaviour.

So I rebuilt the useful 10% inside a spreadsheet and cancelled the subscription. Here is how it works, and — just as importantly — where I drew the line on doing this.

How the spreadsheet CRM works

I rebuilt those three things and nothing else. There is a Contacts sheet for the list, an Activities sheet with one row per call, email, or meeting, and a lastTouched column kept current by an onEdit trigger. The whole thing took three days to build and costs roughly two hours of maintenance per year.

In day-to-day use it runs like this:

1. I log every interaction as a row in the Activities sheet.
2. An onEdit trigger fires and stamps the contact’s lastTouched date.
3. Each Monday, a time-based trigger scans every contact’s lastTouched.
4. Anyone past 60 days lands in a list.
5. The script emails me that list — my “go reconnect” prompt for the week.

There is no dashboard. The email is the product, because the email is the only part that ever made me pick up the phone. This beats the SaaS for one plain reason: the SaaS optimised for a generic audience, so it suited everyone and no one perfectly, whereas the spreadsheet optimises for me. Every column exists because I use it, the 60-day report is tuned to how Northwind actually works, and adding a field is a five-minute edit rather than a feature request.

Know where to stop

This worked because a lightweight CRM is low-stakes. If the script breaks, I lose a report for a week — not money, not trust. The $600 saving is only a saving if a failure stays cheap, so I keep a firm rule: do not do this for tools that carry real liability. Billing, payments, payroll, security, access control, anything with compliance — keep the paid tool. Internal, low-risk admin is fair game for a spreadsheet, and that is the only place I will rebuild.

Was it worth it

Plainly, yes:

• Saved $600/year by cancelling the SaaS subscription.
• Three days of building, about two hours of upkeep per year.
• A CRM that does exactly what Northwind needs and nothing it doesn’t.

Most SaaS bills are 90% features you never use. Before you renew, write down what you actually touch — if it fits on a sticky note and carries no real liability, it probably fits in a spreadsheet too.