There are over 30,000 SaaS products on the market right now. If you’re a small business owner trying to pick the right CRM, project management tool, or accounting platform, you’ve probably spent more hours reading comparison articles than actually running your business.

I get it. The fear of picking wrong is real. Migration costs, retraining staff, lost data — it’s enough to keep you stuck on that spreadsheet you’ve been using since 2019. But here’s the thing: not deciding is also a decision, and it’s usually the worst one.

The Three-Filter Framework

After watching dozens of SMBs go through this, I’ve landed on a simple three-filter approach that cuts through the noise.

Filter 1: Does it solve your actual problem?

Not the problem you think you’ll have in two years. Not the problem the sales rep just convinced you that you have. Your actual, right-now, keeping-you-up-at-night problem.

Write it down in one sentence. “We can’t track customer conversations across our team.” “We don’t know which invoices are overdue until someone calls to complain.” “Our project timelines exist only in Sarah’s head.”

If a tool doesn’t directly address that sentence, it’s out. Doesn’t matter how many features it has or how impressive the demo looked.

Filter 2: Can your team actually use it?

This is where most business AI solutions start to matter — finding tools that match your team’s actual technical comfort level. The fanciest tool in the world is worthless if your team won’t use it.

Ask yourself: What’s the most complex software your team currently uses well? That’s your ceiling. Pick tools at or below that complexity level. You can always move up later, but you can’t force adoption.

During trials, watch who struggles. Not the tech-savvy person you asked to evaluate it — watch the person who still prints emails.

Filter 3: What’s the real total cost?

The subscription price is maybe 40% of what you’ll actually spend. Add up:

• Setup and migration time (yours and your team’s)
• Training hours (multiply by everyone’s hourly rate)
• Integration costs (connecting it to your existing tools)
• The productivity dip during the transition (usually 2-6 weeks)
• The cost of the workarounds you’ll inevitably need

A $50/month tool that takes 40 hours to set up and 20 hours to train on has already cost you thousands before you’ve sent your first invoice through it.

The 72-Hour Rule

Here’s my favourite trick for beating analysis paralysis: give yourself exactly 72 hours to decide.

Day one: shortlist three options based on Filter 1. Not five, not ten. Three.

Day two: run each through Filters 2 and 3. Do a quick trial if free trials are available. Don’t try to test every feature — just test the one thing from your problem sentence.

Day three: pick one. Commit for 90 days.

That’s it. Three days, one decision.

Why 90 Days Matters

Most software takes about 90 days to properly evaluate. The first two weeks are chaos — everything’s unfamiliar and you’ll hate it. Weeks three through six, things start clicking. By month three, you’ll have enough data to know if it’s working.

Don’t bail after two weeks because it feels hard. Don’t extend your “trial” to six months because you’re avoiding the commitment. Ninety days gives you enough runway to see real results.

The Comparison Trap

Stop reading comparison articles after you’ve shortlisted. Seriously. There’s always going to be another article saying Tool X is better than Tool Y. Those articles are often sponsored, outdated, or written by someone whose business looks nothing like yours.

The best tool for your business is the one your team will actually use, that solves your actual problem, at a cost you can sustain. That’s it. It doesn’t need to be the “best” tool on the market. It needs to be the right tool for you, right now.

What If You Pick Wrong?

You probably will, eventually. And that’s fine.

The switching costs you’re so worried about? They’re real, but they’re also finite. I’ve helped businesses migrate from one platform to another in a weekend. It’s not fun, but it’s not the catastrophe most people imagine.

The bigger risk is spending six months in decision limbo while your competitors are out there actually using tools to grow. A decent tool used well beats a perfect tool sitting on your “to evaluate” list.

Make the decision. Set the 90-day timer. Move on. Your business will thank you for it.