Every few months someone asks us: "If you were starting over today, what AI tools would you actually use?"
We're going to answer that question with specifics — actual tool names, actual prices, and the reasoning behind each choice. This is built around a solo operator or very small team (1–3 people) running a service business or content-driven brand.
Your mileage will vary based on your use case, but the framework transfers.
The guiding principles
Before the list: here's how we think about building an AI stack.
1. Solve one problem at a time, not everything at once. The temptation is to subscribe to everything promising. The result is $400/month in overlapping tools you barely use. Start with your biggest bottleneck.
2. Prefer tools with real integrations over isolated ones. An AI writing tool that connects to your CMS is more valuable than one that makes you copy-paste. Always ask: does this connect to where the work actually lives?
3. Give every tool a 2-week honest trial. Most SaaS has free trials or cheap first months. Use them. Don't pay annually until you've proven the tool survives contact with your actual workflow.
The stack
AI Assistant — Claude Pro ($20/month)
This is the center of the stack. We'd use Claude for writing, editing, summarizing, brainstorming, and reasoning through decisions. It's our pick over ChatGPT for most written work — the output is more human, the context handling is better, and it's less likely to confidently hallucinate.
We'd keep a personal "meta-prompt" — a saved system prompt with context about the business, tone, audience, and preferences — and paste it at the start of important sessions.
We'd skip: Jasper, Copy.ai, and similar writing-specific tools. Claude does what they do and more, for the same or less money.
AI Search & Research — Perplexity Pro ($20/month)
For anything requiring current information — competitor research, market sizing, sourcing stats, keeping up with industry news — Perplexity is our pick. It cites sources, stays current, and the "focus" modes (Academic, YouTube, Reddit) are genuinely useful.
We'd use this instead of Google for most research queries. The quality of synthesis is meaningfully better than reading 10 blue links.
We'd skip: Standalone AI news aggregators. Perplexity handles this use case well enough.
Coding — Cursor ($20/month) or free tier
If you write any code — even light automation scripts or website changes — Cursor (built on top of VS Code) pays for itself quickly. It understands your full codebase, can implement features from a plain-language description, and explains what it's doing.
If you're non-technical and only need occasional code help, Claude handles simple scripts. Cursor is for people who write code regularly.
We'd skip: GitHub Copilot. Cursor has surpassed it for most individual use cases.
Image Generation — DALL-E 3 via ChatGPT ($20/month bundled)
We'd keep one ChatGPT Plus subscription specifically for DALL-E 3 and the occasional task that benefits from the GPT ecosystem. $20/month for image gen, voice mode, and the custom GPTs library is good value even if it's not our primary assistant.
For more controlled image work (product mockups, brand assets), Midjourney is still the quality leader — but at $10–30/month, it's optional. We'd start without it.
We'd skip: Adobe Firefly standalone, standalone image AI subscriptions. The bundled access is sufficient to start.
Automation — Make (formerly Integromat) free tier → $9/month
Make is our pick over Zapier for automation. The free tier supports 1,000 operations/month which covers most small-business workflows. When you outgrow it, the $9/month plan is reasonable.
The workflows we'd build first:
- New lead from form → add to CRM → send personalized welcome email
- New content published → auto-post to socials
- Weekly: pull key metrics from multiple tools into one summary report
We'd skip: Zapier at $20+/month until you have genuinely complex workflows that Make can't handle. The pricing difference adds up fast.
Video — Descript ($24/month)
If any content involves video — even basic talking-head recordings for social or client updates — Descript is the only tool in its category. Edit video by editing the transcript, remove filler words with one click, and generate studio-quality audio correction.
If you're not doing video, skip this entirely. It's specialized.
We'd skip: Separate transcription tools (Otter, Descript handles this), separate video editing subscriptions unless you're doing serious production work.
Email — Resend + simple sequences
We wouldn't pay for a complex AI email marketing platform out of the gate. Resend for deliverability, simple sequences for nurture, Claude to write the copy. That's the whole email stack until you have a real list.
Total monthly spend
| Tool | Cost |
|---|---|
| Claude Pro | $20 |
| Perplexity Pro | $20 |
| ChatGPT Plus (image gen + ecosystem) | $20 |
| Cursor | $20 |
| Make | $9 |
| Descript (if doing video) | $24 |
| Total | $89–113/month |
That's under $120/month for a complete stack. If budget is tight, drop Perplexity (Claude can handle research), skip Descript, and you're at $49/month for the core three.
What we'd actively avoid
Annual commitments on anything new. The AI tool landscape changes fast. Lock in when a tool has survived 6+ months in your workflow.
"All-in-one" AI platforms. The tools that promise to replace your entire stack with one subscription almost never deliver on every category. Specialized tools are still better at their speciality.
Anything that doesn't have a clear integration story. If it can't connect to where your work already lives, it adds friction instead of removing it.
Tools that are clearly wrappers without differentiation. Read our other piece on how to spot them.
The meta-point
The best AI stack isn't the one with the most tools. It's the one that removes the most friction from the work you actually do.
Start with your biggest bottleneck. Add one tool at a time. Prove each one before adding the next.
Two focused tools you actually use will always beat six subscriptions you barely open.