The Tools Australian Small Businesses Are Overpaying For (And the Free Alternatives)
A practical audit of the software subscriptions draining Australian SMB budgets, which free alternatives genuinely work, and which ones are false economy that will cost you more than the subscription.
The average Australian small business is running somewhere between eight and twenty software subscriptions, and most owners couldn’t list them all from memory. That’s the real problem. Not any single overpriced tool, but the accumulation of $15 and $30 and $49 a month charges that nobody ever revisits.
We see this constantly when onboarding new clients. A five-person consultancy paying for two project management tools because a former employee set one up. A sole trader on a $79 a month marketing platform sending four emails a year. A firm paying separately for cloud storage they already get with their email plan.
This post is an audit, not a crusade. Some of these subscriptions are worth every dollar. Others have free alternatives that are genuinely just as good. And a few “free” options are false economy that will cost you more in time, risk, or migration pain than you’d ever save.
All prices below are AUD unless noted, verified August 2026, and exclude GST. Software pricing moves constantly, so check the vendor’s current page before acting.
First, the audit that takes ten minutes
Before changing anything, find out what you’re actually paying. Most owners underestimate by 30% or more.
Search your email inbox for “receipt”, “invoice”, “subscription”, and “your payment”. Then check your business card and bank statements for the last three months, looking specifically for recurring charges under $100. Small amounts are the ones that hide.
Write every one down with its monthly cost, annualise it, and mark each as: use it weekly, use it occasionally, or haven’t opened it in a month.
That third category is usually 20% to 40% of the list. Cancelling those alone typically saves an Australian SMB somewhere between $600 and $3,000 a year, before you’ve evaluated a single alternative.
Where the money usually goes
Design and creative tools
Canva Pro sits around $18 a month, or roughly $164 a year for one person. Adobe Creative Cloud runs considerably higher, often $80 or more monthly for the full suite.
The free alternatives here are unusually strong. Canva’s own free tier covers most small business needs: social posts, simple documents, basic presentations. The Pro features that actually justify the upgrade are background removal, brand kits, and the resize tool. If you’re not using those weekly, the free tier is fine.
For anything Adobe-shaped, the open source options have genuinely matured. GIMP handles photo editing, Inkscape handles vector work, and Photopea runs a Photoshop-like editor in your browser with no install. Figma’s free tier is excellent for interface and layout work.
Verdict: Canva Pro is worth it if you produce visual content weekly. Adobe Creative Cloud is hard to justify for a small business that isn’t doing professional design work. That’s a $960-a-year decision worth examining.
Cloud storage
This is the most common duplicate charge we find. Businesses pay for Dropbox at around $20 a month per user while already having storage included in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
Google Workspace Business Standard includes 2TB per user. Microsoft 365 Business Standard includes 1TB per user via OneDrive. If you’re on either and also paying Dropbox, you’re paying twice for the same capability.
Free alternatives: Google Drive gives 15GB free, OneDrive 5GB, and Proton Drive offers a free tier with end-to-end encryption if privacy is a priority.
Verdict: check what you already have before renewing any separate storage subscription. This one is pure waste for a large share of businesses.
Email marketing
Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, and ActiveCampaign all sit in the $30 to $100 a month range once your list grows past a few hundred contacts.
Free alternatives worth knowing: MailerLite’s free tier covers up to 1,000 subscribers with 12,000 monthly emails. Brevo offers a free tier with a daily send limit rather than a contact limit. Both handle automation, which used to be the paid-only feature.
Verdict: if you’re sending fewer than four campaigns a year, you almost certainly don’t need a paid plan. If you’re running genuine automation sequences that generate revenue, the paid tier pays for itself easily. The waste is in the middle: businesses paying monthly for a tool they open quarterly.
Project management
Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp typically land between $15 and $30 per user per month. For a five-person team, that’s $900 to $1,800 a year.
Free alternatives: Trello’s free tier is genuinely capable for small teams. Notion’s free plan covers individuals and small collaborations well. ClickUp and Asana both have free tiers that handle basic task tracking. GitHub Projects is free and works well for technical teams already using GitHub.
Verdict: most small teams overbuy here dramatically. The paid features that matter (timelines, workload views, advanced automation) only earn their cost above roughly ten people or in genuinely complex project work. Below that, free tiers usually suffice.
CRM
HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive scale up fast. Pipedrive starts around $20 per user monthly. HubSpot’s paid tiers climb steeply once you move past the free CRM.
Free alternatives: HubSpot’s free CRM is genuinely generous and covers contact management, deal pipelines, and basic email tracking. Zoho CRM has a free tier for up to three users. For very small operations, a well-structured Google Sheet with a few formulas outperforms an underused CRM every time.
Verdict: the most common mistake here isn’t overpaying, it’s paying for a CRM nobody fills in. An unused $50 a month CRM is worse than a spreadsheet somebody actually updates.
Accounting software
This is where the “free alternative” advice usually goes wrong, so it’s worth being precise.
Australian accounting software pricing has climbed steadily. Xero’s plans run from around $35 to $130 a month depending on tier, with payroll and automated super now included across plans. MYOB Business runs roughly $26 to $70 monthly, with the desktop AccountRight range sitting higher. MYOB Solo targets sole traders at a lower entry point, and QuickBooks Online sits in a similar band with payroll handled as a separate add-on.
There are free options. Wave offers free accounting and invoicing. Manager has a free desktop version. Spreadsheets, obviously, cost nothing.
Verdict, and this is the important one: for any Australian business that is GST-registered, has employees, or lodges BAS, the free options are usually false economy. Single Touch Payroll reporting, automated super, ATO-compliant BAS preparation, and bank feeds that your accountant can actually work with are not optional infrastructure. Your accountant almost certainly works in Xero or MYOB, and handing them something else costs you in their billable hours.
If you’re a pre-GST sole trader with simple income and few transactions, free tools or a spreadsheet are entirely reasonable. Past that point, this is a subscription worth keeping.
Scheduling and booking
Calendly’s paid tiers start around $10 to $20 monthly per user. Acuity sits higher.
Free alternatives: Cal.com has a genuinely capable free tier and is open source, so you can self-host if you want full control. Calendly’s own free tier covers one event type, which is enough for many solo operators. Google Calendar appointment schedules are included with Workspace.
Verdict: this category has strong free options. Paid tiers earn their cost when you need multiple event types, team routing, or payment collection at booking.
Website hosting and builders
Squarespace and Wix run roughly $25 to $50 a month, so $300 to $600 a year, ongoing and permanent. Traditional shared hosting sits lower but adds up.
Free alternatives: Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, and GitHub Pages all host static sites free, including custom domains and SSL. Cloudflare’s free tier includes CDN and DDoS protection that used to be enterprise features.
Verdict: this is the category we know best, so treat the following as a disclosed interest. A static site on free hosting genuinely costs nothing to run and typically outperforms a page builder on speed. The catch is that it needs to be built properly first, whereas Squarespace lets a non-technical owner build and edit it themselves. If you value editing your own site without help, the subscription is buying you something real. If you have a developer or agency anyway, paying $500 a year in hosting for a brochure site is money you don’t need to spend.
Password management
1Password and LastPass business plans run roughly $5 to $10 per user monthly.
Free alternatives: Bitwarden’s free tier is excellent and includes unlimited passwords across unlimited devices. Its paid plans are also far cheaper than competitors. KeePass is free and open source if you want fully local storage.
Verdict: Bitwarden free genuinely replaces the paid competitors for most small businesses. This is one of the clearest wins on the list.
Video conferencing
Zoom Pro sits around $22 monthly per host.
Free alternatives: Google Meet is included with Workspace with no meaningful time limit for paid Workspace users. Microsoft Teams is included with 365. Zoom’s own free tier allows 40-minute group meetings.
Verdict: most businesses paying separately for Zoom already have a capable alternative bundled into their email plan. Another common duplicate charge.
Where free is genuinely false economy
Being honest about this is what makes the rest of the post trustworthy.
Accounting and payroll, as covered above. Compliance obligations are not a place to save $40 a month.
Domain registration and DNS. Free DNS services exist, but your domain is the single most critical asset your business owns online. Pay for a reputable registrar, keep the registration in your own name, and set it to auto-renew. Losing a domain costs vastly more than the $20 a year.
Business email. Free email on a Gmail or Hotmail address costs you credibility with every enquiry, and free custom-domain email options have real deliverability limitations. A proper Workspace or 365 seat is one of the highest-return subscriptions a small business has.
Backups. Free tiers rarely include meaningful version history or retention. If losing your data would end your business, this is not the line item to trim.
Anything holding client data with confidentiality obligations. Free tiers frequently come with weaker contractual protections and different data handling terms. For professional services firms, the paid or business tier is often the difference between a defensible position and an awkward one.
The real saving isn’t the free alternative
Here’s the pattern we see most often, and it’s not about any of the tools above.
The biggest waste isn’t paying for a tool that has a free alternative. It’s paying for a tool nobody uses. A $30 a month platform used properly is cheap. The same platform, logged into twice since signup, is $360 a year for nothing.
So before you swap anything, run this filter over your list:
Cancel the ones you haven’t opened in a month. Not “downgrade”, cancel. You can always resubscribe, and most vendors keep your data for a grace period.
Check for duplicates. Two project tools, two storage services, two schedulers. Pick one.
Check what’s already bundled. Workspace and 365 include storage, video calls, and scheduling that many businesses pay for separately.
Switch annual billing on the ones you’re certain about. It’s typically 15% to 20% cheaper, which on a $1,500 annual software spend is $250 or so for a single decision.
Then, and only then, evaluate free alternatives for what’s left.
Frequently asked questions
How much do Australian small businesses typically spend on software?
It varies enormously by industry and size, but a small professional services firm commonly runs eight to twenty subscriptions. The figure most owners underestimate is the total, not any individual line. A ten-minute audit of bank statements almost always turns up charges the owner had forgotten about.
Is free accounting software safe for Australian businesses?
For a pre-GST sole trader with simple transactions, free tools or spreadsheets are workable. Once you are GST-registered, lodging BAS, or paying employees under Single Touch Payroll, paid Australian-focused software is generally the better decision. Your accountant’s familiarity with the platform also affects what they charge you.
What’s the single easiest software saving to make?
Cancelling subscriptions nobody uses, followed by eliminating duplicates. Together these typically account for more savings than swapping any paid tool for a free alternative.
Are free tiers safe for client data?
Read the terms for each specific tool. Free and consumer tiers frequently have different data handling and retention terms than business tiers. If you have professional confidentiality obligations, the business tier is usually the appropriate choice regardless of price.
Should I switch to annual billing?
If you’re confident you’ll use the tool for the next twelve months, yes. Annual billing is commonly 15% to 20% cheaper. If you’re uncertain about a tool, stay monthly, since the flexibility is worth more than the discount.
Does free website hosting actually work for a business?
Yes, for static sites. Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, and GitHub Pages all host production business websites free, including custom domains and SSL. The requirement is that the site is built as a static site rather than a page builder, which usually means having it built for you once rather than editing it yourself.
The honest summary
Software isn’t the enemy. Unexamined software is.
Most Australian small businesses could cut 20% to 30% of their subscription spend without losing a single capability they actually use, mostly by cancelling the forgotten and deduplicating the overlapping. The free alternatives are a bonus on top of that, not the main event.
And a few subscriptions, accounting, business email, your domain, backups, are worth paying for without hesitation. Knowing which is which is the whole skill.
At ReadyStack Digital we build websites for Australian professional services firms, and we’re happy to tell clients when they don’t need something. If you want a straight answer about your own setup, get an instant estimate or book a free strategy call.
Pricing verified August 2026 and quoted in AUD excluding GST where applicable. Software pricing changes frequently, so check the vendor’s current pricing page before making any decision.