Toggl, FreshBooks, Asana, Notion — four subscriptions, four logins, four places to look. A freelance developer finally found one tool that did it all.
James R. builds web apps for funded startups — mostly React frontends, API integrations, and the occasional full-stack product. He's been freelancing since 2020, after leaving a senior engineering role at a fintech company. By 2024, his business was thriving — four active clients, a healthy pipeline, and a waiting list.
But his tools were a mess.
James had assembled his toolkit piece by piece over the years. Toggl for time tracking. FreshBooks for invoices. Asana for project tasks. Notion for client notes and docs. Each tool did its job reasonably well. But together, they created a fragmentation problem.
"I was paying $47 for Toggl, $55 for FreshBooks, $30 for Asana, $16 for Notion — that's $148/month just to run my freelance business," he says. "And none of them talked to each other. I'd finish tracking time in Toggl, then have to manually enter it into FreshBooks for the invoice. If I forgot a step, the numbers wouldn't match."
The real cost wasn't the subscriptions — it was the context switching. Moving between four apps, four mental models, four sets of notifications. James estimated he was spending 2–3 hours per day on admin just because his tools required so much bridging work.
James came across Builtomate in a Hacker News thread about "freelancer tooling." He was skeptical — he'd tried all-in-one tools before and found them lacking in every category. But the free plan meant no risk, and he was tired enough of his current setup to try anything.
"I gave myself two weeks to test it seriously. If it couldn't handle time tracking, invoicing, and tasks at the level I needed, I'd cancel and go back." He didn't cancel.
James now runs his entire business from Builtomate. Each client is a project. Each feature or deliverable is a task. Time tracking is built into each task — no separate app, no manual data transfer.
When it's time to invoice, he selects the unbilled time entries for a client and generates the invoice directly — the hours and amounts are already calculated. The invoice goes to the client; if they have questions, they can see the time log in the client portal.
His Kanban board gives him a visual of where every project stands across all clients. He checks it each morning instead of opening four different apps.
"I went from 4 apps and 12 tabs open to one tab," he says. "My brain is quieter."
James cancelled all four previous subscriptions within 30 days of switching to Builtomate. He saves $148–$180/month depending on the billing cycle.
More significantly, the reduction in admin overhead has been dramatic. He estimates he's reclaimed 10–12 hours per week previously spent bridging between tools — time he now routes into billable work or, notably, not working on weekends.
"I used to answer client messages on Saturday mornings because that's when I'd finally catch up. I haven't done that in four months."
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