We tried nineteen AI tools in the last nine months. Four are still on the card. The rest got cancelled, usually within the free trial, sometimes after a full paid month once we admitted the novelty had worn off and the output still needed a full rewrite.
This is the audit, not a sales pitch for any one of them. If a tool is not listed here, it is because it did not earn its place — not because we forgot it existed.
What we actually kept
A general chat model for first drafts
Ad copy, email replies, meeting summaries, the first pass of a client proposal — all of it starts as a prompt now, not a blank page. The rule that makes this work: nothing goes to a client unedited. Every output gets read by a person before it leaves the building.
An AI-assisted coding tool inside the editor
For repetitive WordPress and Elementor work — wiring up a form, adjusting a query, writing a small utility function — this cuts real hours. It does not design anything. It does not choose the approach. It types faster once we already know what we want.
A transcription and summary tool for client calls
Every discovery call gets transcribed automatically now. The summary goes into the project notes within minutes of hanging up, instead of whatever someone remembers to write down an hour later.
A background-removal and image-cleanup tool
For product photos and quick mockup placeholders, this replaced what used to be a slow back-and-forth with a freelancer for small edits.
What we cancelled, and why
Most of the cancellations share one pattern: the tool promised to replace judgement, not just speed up typing. An “AI marketing strategist” that generates a content calendar without knowing the client, the market, or last quarter’s numbers is not saving anyone time — it is generating a plausible-looking document that still needs to be thrown out and redone properly.
A few tools were genuinely good and got cancelled anyway, simply because a two-person team could not justify the monthly cost against how often it actually got opened.
If we cannot explain in one sentence what a tool replaces, we do not keep paying for it.
What a two-person team can skip entirely
- Anything billed as an “all-in-one AI marketing suite” — these tend to do six things adequately rather than one thing well.
- AI-generated stock imagery subscriptions, when a real product photo or an honest placeholder communicates more trust.
- Any tool whose main feature is generating more content faster, without a person reviewing what goes out under the client’s name.
The honest version of this story: AI tools save us time on the parts of the job that were always mechanical — first drafts, transcription, repetitive code. They have not replaced the parts that were always the actual job: understanding what a specific client needs and being willing to say no to the rest.