Why is Stacks free?
I've been a small business owner for more than 25 years.
I know what it feels like to watch a dozen software subscriptions drain the account every month. To pay for a CRM, a scheduler, an invoicing tool, an email tool, and still keep half the business in a spreadsheet, because none of it talks to each other.
I've also spent those 25 years building software. CRMs, mostly. Systems that ran real companies, mine, and ones I helped run.
What changed when I started building with AI?
Then AI changed the math.
Building good software used to take a team and a year. That's why it was expensive, and that's why you rented it. Today, as someone who has built these systems for decades, working with modern AI tools I'm able to build in months what used to take years.
So Stacks wasn't a moonshot for me. It was the system I'd already built a dozen times, finally built the way I always wanted, flexible enough for nearly any small business. A contractor's pipeline. A shop's invoices. A practice's front desk. A studio's client list.
Keeping Stacks running still has real costs: infrastructure, support, and the work of improving it. The plan is to keep the core Free while optional AI Pro and scoped Custom work help fund what comes next.
So I had a choice.
I could charge you per user like everyone else, and spend it the way everyone else does. The downtown office. The sales team whose quota is you. The booth at the trade show. The ads that follow you around the internet. That's what a software subscription really pays for, most of the time. It isn't the software.
Or I could skip all of it. Stay lean, keep building with AI instead of hiring a sales floor, and give the software away.
How does Stacks make money?
- Stacks is free. Not a trial. It doesn't expire, and it isn't a crippled demo. It's the real product.
- Free includes 50 one-time AI credits. After those are used, upgrade to AI Pro for $99/month or $995/year to continue using supported AI features: drafting replies, scoring leads, replying to reviews, reading invoices, and asking questions about your business. It comes with priority support, too, for when you'd rather talk to a person. The free version runs your business; AI Pro works alongside you.
- Stacks Custom is optional. If your business needs tailored workflows or hands-on implementation, we can discuss a scoped Custom engagement. We assess the fit and agree on any migration, training, and ongoing maintenance before work begins.
Free and AI Pro give you access to hosted Stacks, not its source code or infrastructure. If we build custom code for you, ownership and maintenance are agreed as part of that Custom scope.
That's the model. No ads. No selling your data. You can export supported contact details; current export tools have documented limits and do not provide a complete workspace backup.
After 25 years of being the small business, I'd rather a thousand owners run on something I made than ten sit through a sales pitch.
Use it. Run your shop on it. Tell me what breaks.
That's why it's free.