I Replaced 5 SaaS Tools With 40 Lines of Python Code
Photo by Joan Gamell on Unsplash I used to think SaaS tools were the holy grail of productivity.
Why reinvent the wheel when someone already built it? That’s what I told myself every time I paid for yet another subscription: project management, file renaming, email scheduling, PDF conversion, even a simple CSV merger.
At one point, I was juggling 5 tools, paying around $100/month. And here’s the kicker: I was using maybe 20% of each tool’s features. It felt like buying a Swiss Army knife to only use the bottle opener.
But one lazy Sunday afternoon, something clicked: “Why am I renting features when I can build them myself?”
I opened a blank Python file. Forty lines later, I had just replaced five different SaaS products.
The Procrastination Breakthrough I won’t lie I didn’t set out to “optimize” my workflow. Honestly, I was procrastinating.
You know that moment when you don’t want to start the big project, so you invent a smaller one? That was me.
Instead of writing a client report, I decided to write a quick Python script to merge a couple of CSVs.
import pandas as pd
import glob
files = glob.glob("data/*.csv")
df = pd.concat([pd.read_csv(f) for f in files])
df.to_csv("merged.csv", index=False)
Three lines, problem solved. And it hit me: I’d been paying $20/month for a CSV merger tool that literally did this.
The Domino Effect Once you knock down the first SaaS, the rest start to wobble.
PDF to Text I was using a paid tool to extract text from PDFs. Python’s PyPDF2 laughed in its face.
import PyPDF2 with open("report.pdf", "rb") as f: reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(f) text = "".join([page.extract_text() for page in reader.pages]) print(text)
Took me 6 lines. Subscription canceled.
File Renaming Tool HR, finance, marketing they all dumped files with ridiculous names. A few lines with os and re, and suddenly filenames made sense.
Email Scheduler Why pay for scheduling when smtplib plus a cron job gets it done? Not pretty, but it works.
Project Tracker Honestly, I just wrote a small JSON-backed CLI for my tasks. Not Trello, but my brain doesn’t need Kanban cards to remember “fix regex bug.”
Data Cleaning Tool Pandas again. A couple of str.strip() and fillna() calls, and I had a cleaner dataset than half the SaaS dashboards out there.
Why Python Wins Here’s the thing: SaaS tools sell you polish. They have sleek dashboards, integrations, and team features you’ll never use.
Python gives you control. You only write what you need, no more, no less.
And it turns out, writing the code is often faster than signing up, confirming your email, creating a workspace, learning the UI, and figuring out where the “export CSV” button is hiding.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
My New Rule Now, whenever I catch myself reaching for my credit card to pay for a new tool, I stop and ask:
Can I do this in under 50 lines of Python?
If yes, I build it. If no, I’ll consider the SaaS.
So far, 70% of the time, Python wins.
The Hidden Perk Here’s what surprised me the most: writing these tiny scripts wasn’t just cheaper, it was liberating.
No more worrying about price hikes. No more data locked in someone else’s platform. No more bloated dashboards showing me charts I didn’t ask for. Just lightweight scripts that run exactly the way I want.
My Advice to You If you’re a Python developer even a beginner don’t underestimate the power of small scripts.
You don’t need to build the next Google Docs. You just need to solve your own pain points.
Start with one tool you’re paying for. Try to replace it in Python. Even if your script is “ugly,” you’ll learn more than you think and save money while you’re at it.
Pro Tip: If your script feels too long, ask yourself: “Am I coding the problem or coding the UI I wish it had?” Stick to the problem first.
Forty lines of code. Five fewer subscriptions. And a little more freedom in my workflow.
That’s the kind of automation I’ll always bet on.
Read the full article here: https://blog.stackademic.com/i-replaced-5-saas-tools-with-40-lines-of-python-code-74b047bdea0c