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Every few months someone asks me what tools we run on. Not the aspirational list — the actual stack, the one open in tabs on a Tuesday. So this is that: the marketing tech stack we genuinely use to operate growth-stage B2B companies, grouped by job, with a one-line reason each tool is in the stack and an honest con for each.
A few principles first, because the stack matters less than the philosophy behind it. One tool per job. Data has to flow between tools, or it is not a stack, it is a pile. And you upgrade on real need, not on aspiration — most of these tools earn their place on free or starter tiers for a long time. The biggest martech mistake I see at this stage is not the wrong tool. It is too many tools, half-configured, none of them owned.
The CRM: your system of record
The CRM is the foundation. It is where every contact, deal, and pipeline stage lives, and nearly everything else connects back to it. Get this right and clean before you optimize anything downstream.
We run on HubSpot. The reason is not that it is the cheapest — it is that the CRM core is free for unlimited users, the marketing, sales, and service tools share one contact record, and the ecosystem of integrations means almost everything else in this stack talks to it. For a growth-stage team that wants its CRM, forms, email, and reporting in one connected place, it is hard to beat.
Why it's in the stack: one connected record for every contact and deal, free CRM core, and it integrates with nearly everything.
Honest con: the jump from the free and Starter tiers to Professional is steep — Marketing Hub Professional lands in the high hundreds per month and adds onboarding fees. Stay on free and Starter as long as you can; check current tiers on the HubSpot pricing page. If HubSpot feels like more than you need, we cover lighter options in best CRM for small business.
Email and newsletter: owned audience, two jobs
Email is two different jobs that people conflate: broadcasting to an audience you own, and triggered lifecycle email tied to the CRM. We split them.
For the newsletter and owned audience, we use beehiiv. It was built for newsletters specifically — growth tools, a clean web layer, native monetization and referral mechanics — and the free tier carries you to a couple thousand subscribers before you pay anything.
Why it's in the stack: purpose-built for newsletter growth, generous free tier, monetization built in.
Honest con: it is a newsletter platform, not a full marketing-automation suite. If you need deep behavioral lifecycle flows tied to product events, that is a different tool. Paid plans start around the high tens per month — see the beehiiv pricing page.
For broader email marketing and automation — autoresponders, landing pages, lifecycle sequences when we want them separate from the CRM — we reach for GetResponse. It bundles email, automation, and landing pages at a lower entry price than the big enterprise suites.
Why it's in the stack: affordable all-in-one email, automation, and landing pages without enterprise pricing.
Honest con: pricing scales with your contact count, so a fast-growing list raises the bill, and the all-in-one breadth means no single feature is best-in-class. Confirm the tier for your list size on the GetResponse pricing page; entry plans start in the low tens per month.
Analytics and reporting: one source, one view
Analytics is its own discipline, and we go deep on it in best marketing analytics tools. In this stack, two tools do the heavy lifting.
Supermetrics is the pipeline. It pulls spend, clicks, and conversions out of every ad platform, GA4, and Search Console into a sheet or BI tool on a schedule, so reporting refreshes itself instead of eating a morning.
Why it's in the stack: ends manual data exports; every channel flows into one place automatically.
Honest con: cost scales with data sources and refresh frequency — check the Supermetrics pricing page and start with only the connectors you need.
Databox is the dashboard layer on top of it — the clean, glanceable scorecard a CEO or board will actually open, with a real free tier to start.
Why it's in the stack: turns raw data into a recurring executive view without building reports from scratch.
Honest con: the free plan is limited on sources, and deep ad-hoc analysis is not its job — see the Databox pricing page.
Meeting notes: capture without taking notes
If your day is calls, the notes are a job that should not require a human. We run Granola for this. It transcribes and summarizes meetings without sending a visible bot into the call, then turns the transcript into structured notes and action items you can route into the CRM or a task list.
Why it's in the stack: clean meeting notes and action items with no bot in the room; the context flows into the rest of the stack.
Honest con: the free tier has a lifetime cap on meetings, so heavy users hit the paid plan quickly — the Business tier runs in the mid-teens per user per month. Check the current cap and price on the Granola pricing page.
Project management: where the work lives
A marketing team needs one place where the work lives and its status is visible. We use ClickUp as the system of record for tasks, projects, and who owns what. It is flexible enough to hold campaign calendars, client work, and internal ops in one workspace, and the free tier is genuinely usable for a small team.
Why it's in the stack: one source of truth for every task and project, flexible enough for marketing and ops both.
Honest con: that flexibility is also the con — ClickUp can become a maze of nested lists and custom fields if nobody owns the structure. It needs a deliberate setup. Paid tiers start around the mid-single digits per user per month; see the ClickUp pricing page. The discipline of capturing and closing tasks matters more than the tool.
Content, decks, and AI: the production layer
This is the layer that has changed most, and it is where we lean on the best AI marketing tools. Two earn a permanent spot.
For decks and one-page docs, Gamma turns an outline into a presentable deck or doc fast. For client one-pagers, internal proposals, and quick strategy decks, it removes the slow part of slide-making.
Why it's in the stack: fast, decent-looking decks and docs from an outline, without living in slide software.
Honest con: the free tier watermarks output and metered AI credits run down — the Plus tier is the practical starting point at under ten dollars a month. See the Gamma pricing page.
For AI voice and audio — narration for short videos, voiceovers, audio content — we use ElevenLabs. The voice quality is the best available, and it has become a real part of how we produce video and audio content.
Why it's in the stack: best-in-class AI voice for video narration and audio content.
Honest con: the free tier has no commercial usage rights, so for any client or monetized work you need a paid plan — entry plans start in the low single digits to low tens per month. Confirm rights and credits on the ElevenLabs pricing page.
The full stack at a glance
| Category | Tool | Why it's in the stack |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | HubSpot | Free CRM core, one connected record, integrates with everything |
| Newsletter | beehiiv | Purpose-built newsletter growth, generous free tier |
| Email + automation | GetResponse | Affordable all-in-one email, automation, landing pages |
| Analytics pipeline | Supermetrics | Every channel into one place automatically |
| Dashboards | Databox | Recurring executive scorecard, real free tier |
| Meeting notes | Granola | Clean notes and action items, no bot in the room |
| Project management | ClickUp | One source of truth for tasks and projects |
| Decks and docs | Gamma | Fast, presentable decks from an outline |
| AI voice | ElevenLabs | Best-in-class voice for video and audio |
How we'd build it from zero
If you are assembling a stack today, the sequence matters more than the brand names:
- CRM first, clean. Stand up HubSpot, get your contacts and pipeline stages right, and resist downstream tools until the foundation is tidy.
- One email job at a time. Newsletter on beehiiv, lifecycle and broadcast on GetResponse or in the CRM. Do not run two overlapping email tools.
- Analytics once you have spend to measure. Supermetrics for the pipeline, Databox for the view. Skip this until you have channels worth reporting on.
- Operations layer. Granola so meetings capture themselves, ClickUp so work has a home.
- Production layer last. Gamma and ElevenLabs when content output becomes a bottleneck.
Buy on real need. Every tool above has a free or starter tier that carries a growth-stage team a long way, and the most expensive mistake is upgrading to enterprise pricing before the team uses the basic version well.
The stack is not the strategy
A clean stack is necessary and not sufficient. The tools make it possible to run growth marketing well; they do not run it for you. The teams that get leverage from this stack are the ones where someone owns it — keeps the CRM clean, makes the data flow, kills the tools nobody uses, and connects all of it to a revenue number. That ownership is the actual job, and it is most of what a fractional CMO does.
If your stack has grown into a pile — overlapping tools, a messy CRM, dashboards nobody opens — that is the problem we untangle. See how we approach the operating layer on our services page, or run the free Scorecard to find the biggest gap in your current setup.