/MARKETING-STACK · FULL TRANSPARENCY · v1.0 · SEPTEMBER 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 $110–165 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 and forecasting every campaign before building it (review) | Map Pro (free canvas retired) | $39 |
| 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 |
≈ $110–165/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 SEO plan / 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
2026-09 · v1.1 — Funnelytics retired its free mapping plan; the working-stack row now carries Map Pro at $39/month (7-day trial) and the total moved from $70–125 to $110–165. See the updated review.
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, Miro and Metricool (Funnelytics stays on the bench — its free canvas is gone), 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.