Starting broke is fine — almost every category has a genuinely usable free tier. Here's the stack that costs nothing until revenue shows up.

The $0 stack

• LLM: Free tiers of Claude or ChatGPT handle drafting at launch volume
• Email + funnels: Systeme.io's free plan is the rare free tier that isn't crippled — up to 2,000 contacts with full automation
• Design: Canva free covers social graphics and lead-magnet PDFs
• Site: this very site is a static build — hosting on Netlify/Cloudflare Pages is free
• Automation: Zapier's free tier (100 tasks/mo) or Make's free tier for simple connections

When to start paying

Pay for a tool the moment its free limit costs you revenue, not convenience. Concretely:

1. First paid upgrade should be your email platform (it directly earns) 2. Second: an LLM subscription (it saves the most hours) 3. Everything else waits

The trap to avoid

Free-tier hopping. Migrating lists and content between tools eats entire weekends. Pick decent-enough free tools and stay put until you outgrow them on purpose.