Every week there's a new AI app promising to write your posts, answer your phone or run your marketing. Some of them are great. A lot of them are a nicer screen sitting on top of the same AI models you can already use yourself, with a monthly fee added.
Nothing wrong with paying for a nicer screen if it saves you real time. The trick is knowing which one you're buying.
The five questions
1. What chore does this replace?
Name the task in one sentence. "It writes my Google posts." If you can't name it, you're buying a hope, not a tool.
2. Can something I already pay for do it?
Try the same job in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, or whatever's already built into your email or phone. Give it 20 minutes. If you get most of the way there, the new app has to be worth the rest.
3. What does it cost per year, not per month?
$29 a month sounds small. $348 a year, next to the four other apps you signed up for in the spring, doesn't.
4. Where does my data go?
Look for what it does with your customer information, and whether it uses it to train anything. If you can't find a straight answer in five minutes, that's your answer.
5. What happens if I cancel?
Can you export your stuff? Do your posts, contacts or pages disappear? A tool you can't leave costs more than its price tag.
Check what you already pay for
Pull up your card statement and list every software subscription. Next to each one, write the chore it handles and the last time you used it. There's usually at least one surprise on there. (It's always the free trial you meant to cancel.)
Your next move
Before your next software purchase, answer these five questions on one page. If the tool still makes sense after that, buy it and don't look back.