Your Software Costs Too Much: How AI Is Replacing Per-Seat Subscriptions
Add up your monthly software subscriptions. It goes fast:
- CRM: $50–150/month per user
- Office suite: $20–35/month per user
- Accounting software: $30–80/month
- Project management: $15–30/month per user
- Email marketing: $30–300/month
For a 10-person business, that’s easily $2,000 to $5,000 per month — just in software.
What if some of those subscriptions became unnecessary?
The Per-Seat Model Is Breaking Down
For 20 years, business software ran on a simple premise: every employee needs a seat in every tool. As you grow, you pay more.
AI breaks that model. Why? Because an AI agent can do the work without logging into the software.
A stark example: in December 2025, a simple 200-line text file — an AI plugin for the legal industry — wiped out $285 billion in market value from legal software companies. Thomson Reuters dropped 16%. LegalZoom fell 20%.
Why? Because AI can analyze contracts, draft legal documents, and answer legal questions — without anyone paying for a legal software subscription.
What This Means for Your Business
You don’t need to replace everything overnight. But you should evaluate each subscription with one question:
“Am I using this software to store data, or to do work?”
- Storing data — you still need the software (CRM, accounting, databases)
- Doing work — AI can probably do it better and cheaper
Concrete examples:
| Current task | Software used | AI alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Writing marketing emails | Mailchimp ($300/mo) | AI agent + direct send ($50/mo) |
| Creating reports | Excel + hours of work | AI agent generates it automatically |
| Managing social posts | Hootsuite ($100/mo) | AI agent schedules and publishes |
| Writing quotes/proposals | Word + copy-paste | AI agent generates the full proposal |
| Categorizing expenses | Accounting software (manual) | AI agent categorizes automatically |
The Smart Approach: Simplify Before You Automate
The best-performing businesses don’t just layer AI on top of their existing software stack. They simplify first.
One documented case: a company migrated its complex content management system to simple structured text files. The migration cost around $260, took 3 days, and let AI work directly with the content — something that was impossible with the old system.
The principle: the simpler your infrastructure, the more AI can help you.
Where to Start
- Inventory your software subscriptions and their monthly cost
- Identify tools used primarily for repetitive work (not storage)
- Evaluate which ones could be replaced by AI automation
- Start with the simplest, most cost-effective replacement
At Telos Machina, we run this exercise with every client in the first meeting. The goal: find the immediate savings that fund automating everything else.
Analysis inspired by Nate B Jones and his research on AI disruption of the SaaS model and the trend toward “disposable software.”