FUTURE PROOF MARKETER/MARKETING-STACK · FULL TRANSPARENCY · v1.0 · AUGUST 2026
Every tool. Every price. Every month.
This is the complete stack behind Future Proof Marketer — the tools that run the operation and the deliberately oversized bench we pay for because reviewing tools is the operation. Updated quarterly with a changelog, so you can watch what we add, drop and downgrade over time. Nobody's stack page should be a highlight reel; this one isn't.
LIST PRICES FOR THE PLANS WE RUN, CHECKED 2026-08 · RE-CHECKED QUARTERLY · CHANGELOG BELOW
The working stack — what actually runs this site
Strategy, video, voice, email, funnels, social and hosting: eight line items, roughly $70–125 a month depending on plan sizes. This is the part a normal one-person operation should copy.
Some links below are affiliate links: if you buy through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It funds the testing budget and never changes a verdict — affiliate policy.
| Tool | Job | Plan | List price/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus / Claude Pro | Strategy, copy, briefs for everything else | Plus / Pro | $20 |
| HeyGen | Avatar video & translation (review) | Creator | $29 |
| ElevenLabs | Voice cloning & narration (review) | Starter | $6 |
| ActiveCampaign | Email sequences & CRM engine (pricing breakdown) | By list size | $15–49 |
| Funnelytics | Mapping every campaign before building it (review) | Free canvas | $0 |
| Metricool | Social calendar & channel analytics | Free | $0 |
| Resend | The site's own signup & transactional email | Free tier | $0 |
| Vercel + domain | Hosting this site | Hobby/Pro + TransIP | $0–20 + ~€1 |
≈ $70–125/MO · The trimmed-down version of this is the $67 stack.
The test bench — the cost of the methodology
Nobody needs two CRMs, three email platforms and a rotation of SEO suites — unless publishing honest comparisons is the job. It is, so we pay for the bench: roughly $110–235 a month, kept sane by two rules — free tiers wherever a real test allows it, and at most one paid SEO suite active in any month.
| Tool | Job | Plan | List price/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | The incumbent benchmark for every CRM comparison (the challengers) | Starter | $15–20/seat |
| Synthesia | The structured-video benchmark (comparison) | Starter | $29 |
| SEO suite (rotating) | Semrush Pro / Ahrefs Lite / Surfer Discovery — at most one active per month (how we choose) | Rotation | $49–140 |
| Systeme.io / Kit / GetResponse | The funnel & creator-email bench (head-to-head) | Free–Starter | $0–29 |
| OpusClip / Vizard | Clip engines under test (the workflow) | Free tiers | $0–15 |
| Challenger bench | Brevo, MailerLite, beehiiv, Attio, Dune, Zealy, Galxe — free tiers during switch tests | Free tiers | $0 |
≈ $110–235/MO · Every row links to the comparison it exists to power.
On probation this quarter
ActiveCampaign. Still the engine — but the challenger switch test is live, and if MailerLite holds up through a full quarter of sequences, the invoice math (we published it) gets hard to ignore.
The HubSpot seat. Kept as the benchmark for comparisons — but Attio's free tier now covers our own pipeline needs, which is exactly the finding that page predicted.
The SEO rotation itself. Surfer's $49 Discovery tier is making the "one suite at a time" rule easy to keep; whether Semrush earns year-round residency gets decided in the next re-check.
Changelog
2026-08 · v1.0 — Page launched. All prices checked against vendor pricing pages this month. Next re-check: November 2026.
Questions we actually get
Are these your literal invoices?→
They're the current list prices for the plans we run, checked August 2026 — not invoice screenshots. Annual discounts and older grandfathered rates mean a few rows are slightly cheaper on our actual bill. We deliberately publish what YOU would pay signing up today, because that's the only number useful to a reader; where our plan differs materially, the row says so.
Why do you pay for so many overlapping tools?→
Because reviewing them is the business. No normal one-person operation should pay for two CRMs and a rotation of SEO suites — we do it so our comparisons come from paid accounts instead of press demos. The 'working stack' table is what actually runs this site; the 'test bench' is the cost of the methodology.
What would you cut to get under €100/month?→
Exactly what our under-€100 stack page prescribes: keep the AI assistant, HeyGen and ElevenLabs, run email on MailerLite instead of ActiveCampaign, take the free tiers of Attio, Funnelytics and Metricool, and drop the entire test bench. That's the ~$67/month configuration — the bench exists for reviews, not for marketing.
How often does this page update?→
Quarterly, with a changelog at the bottom — prices re-checked, tools added or dropped, and the reasons stated. If a price here doesn't match a vendor's site, the vendor changed it after our last check; the changelog date tells you how stale we might be.
Get notified when the stack changes
Every quarterly re-check — what we added, dropped and downgraded, with reasons — lands in the letter first. Plus the free stack guide on signup.
One email with the goods, then the weekly letter. Unsubscribe anytime.