Hosting & SaaS Reviews by Tom Rigby

How to Choose Fastest WordPress Hosting: A Small Business Guide Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer ✅ SiteGround — Check SiteGround → Cloudways — Check Cloudways → Kinsta — Check Kinsta → If your primary metric is…

Slack Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer In my testing across four distinct startup environments in Austin, Slack remains the only viable option if your team relies heavily on real-time chat and needs deep native integration with…

Monday.com Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Monday.com delivers a highly visual, Kanban-focused workflow engine that excels at project management but suffers from significant performance degradation once you exceed approximately 50 simultaneous active users. In my testing…

Notion vs ClickUp for Small Teams Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying both platforms across four distinct environments in my Austin lab, I recommend ClickUp as the superior choice for small teams needing structured project…

Automation Tool for Small Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For most small businesses in Texas, Zapier remains the superior choice for connecting disparate apps without coding. In my recent stress tests across four local e-commerce…

Google Workspace Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Google Workspace remains the undisputed king of productivity suites, but it demands a heavy monthly tax on your budget that rivals like Microsoft 365 or Notion can’t match. In…

The Complete Guide to Best SaaS Stack For Startups Under $100 Per Month Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage and Series A teams in Texas needing a cohesive stack under $100, I recommend ClickUp as…

Wix Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Wix Studio is a powerful visual development platform that allows non-developers to build complex, responsive sites in minutes, though its backend limitations make it unsuitable for scaling high-traffic SaaS applications….

Best Slack Alternatives For Small Teams Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After stress-testing three major collaboration platforms against the specific latency and throughput needs of a seed-stage fintech startup in East Austin, Discord emerges as the…

ClickUp vs Asana: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying both platforms across a seed-stage fintech startup in East Austin and running synthetic load tests over three weeks, Asana remains…

The Complete Guide to Best Tools For Running A One-Person Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After running synthetic load tests across four distinct production environments in our local Austin office, I found that ClickUp offers…

HubSpot CRM Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer HubSpot CRM is the definitive choice for small-to-mid-sized B2B SaaS companies in Texas looking to unify their sales and marketing data without a massive upfront investment, though you must…

Pipedrive vs Freshsales: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Freshsales wins the head-to-head test against Pipedrive because it offers superior automation capabilities and a cleaner email tracking system out of the…

GreenGeeks Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer GreenGeeks stands out as a solid choice for seed-stage e-commerce stores and content-heavy blogs needing shared hosting without the complexity of bare metal management. During my deployment across four distinct…

How to Choose Best Notion Alternatives For Teams: A Small Business Guide Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Monday.com — Check Monday.com → After deploying six different workspace orchestration tools across my seed-stage fintech and e-commerce clients…

Best Form Builder For Small Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After stress-testing over a dozen platforms in my local Austin lab, Typeform stands out as the only form builder that maintains sub-500ms load times even…

Best Slack Alternatives For Small Teams Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying three different collaboration stacks across four seed-stage fintech startups in East Austin, I found that Discord is the superior alternative to Slack for…

Zoho CRM vs Salesforce Starter Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Zoho CRM is the superior choice for small businesses under $5,000 in annual revenue due to its significantly lower cost floor and flexible automation rules. I…

Asana vs Monday.com: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage SaaS and fintech teams in Texas, Asana delivers superior workflow orchestration at a lower total cost of ownership compared to…

Best SaaS Stack For Startups Under $100 Per Month Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After stress-testing over a dozen platform combinations in my Austin lab, the most resilient stack under roughly $95/month consists of Framer for…