By Elana Kirsh, Editor in Chief, Sonary
For all the industry talk of bloated software stacks and runaway subscription spending, the typical small business tells a very different story. It runs on one or two tools, pays about $100 a month, and rarely thinks about its software again until something breaks.
That is the picture emerging from the first data we’ve pulled from the Sonary Booster, our free tool for tracking and optimizing software subscriptions. Drawn from 947 businesses tracking 1,826 tools, the numbers are strikingly lean: 90% of businesses track just one or two tools, and only 3.6% track six or more. The median software spend is $100 a month.
But the averages hide a split. While most businesses keep it simple, the top 25% spend more than $1,000 a month, and the top 10% exceed $10,000 – usually without anyone stepping back to ask whether it is all still worth it.
Most small businesses don’t have a revenue problem. They have a software discipline problem. It starts with “it’s only $29 a month.” Then another $19. A year later, you’re paying for 15 tools and you’re not sure which ones are actually worth it.
The spending pattern is consistent. Businesses pay most for the tools tied directly to revenue and compliance – CRM ($230 a month), bookkeeping ($180), accounting ($150) and IT service management ($140) – and stay on free or entry tiers for almost everything else, from project management ($44) to website builders ($48). The categories where mistakes are expensive get the budget; the categories where free plans are capable do not.
One line item is climbing fast. AI tools are now the most-tracked category on the Booster, ahead of accounting software and website builders, yet the median spend is just $24 a month. Most users are bolting AI onto their existing stack rather than replacing anything, and at that price, almost no one treats it as a real cost yet.
To test whether the spending data reflected how people actually decide, we commissioned a survey of 6,725 US consumers and business decision-makers. The results lined up. When researching new software, respondents leaned on user reviews (61.4%) and comparison and review sites like Capterra (61.4%) far more than on vendor marketing. Peer and colleague recommendations were the single biggest influence on purchases (57.5%), and 85.7% said they at least sometimes trust expert opinions over user reviews.
The survey also explained why so many stacks quietly bloat. Most businesses only revisit their software when it fails: 37.2% said they consider switching only when performance issues arise, 25.1% rarely consider it at all, and just 8% review their tools more than once a year. And the decisions are usually made alone: 39.2% decide independently, while outside consultants and advisors factor into fewer than 6%.
Put together, the Booster data and the survey point to the same structural gap. Small businesses make high-stakes software choices on their own, lean on peers and review sites, and almost never audit what they are already paying for. The ones who end up overspending are not the most sophisticated operators; they’re the ones who said yes once to each new tool, never revisited the decision, and woke up one day with a stack they could not fully account for.
That is the gap we built Sonary to close. Our free Booster tool lets businesses track their subscriptions, see what they are spending by category, and flag the tools that are no longer earning their place, turning a once-a-year afterthought into something closer to a habit.
Author bio
Elana Kirsh is Editor in Chief at Sonary, the B2B software comparison platform for small and micro businesses, where she leads the editorial and content teams behind Sonary’s software research and buyer guidance across dozens of categories. She brings roughly two decades in digital publishing and online content, spanning journalism, the nonprofit sector, and tech, and has helped build online content brands including Goodnet.org, JPost.com, and Top10.com. She previously served as CEO of The Cannigma, and writes about how small businesses discover, evaluate, and get real value from the tools they run on.