When Cody Luongo left his job last year to become a freelance media consultant, he needed a way to quantify the public relations impact he achieved for his clients. He signed up for a free trial of the marketing tool Semrush, but ultimately decided he didn’t want to pay between $199 and $499 a month for a subscription.
“You only want one or two features, but you’re paying for everything,” said Luongo, who is based in Charleston, South Carolina.
Instead, he opted to pay $40 a month for a subscription to Base44, an AI-driven platform that helped him build his own app to track audience engagement.
Donaven Doughty for BI
Luongo is one of a growing number of solo-business owners who are using AI to vibe code, which means using AI tools and plain-English prompts to build apps. In some cases these apps may replace traditional software-as-a-service tools.
Not everyone is vibe coding yet. Some founders are finding AI platforms alone are good enough for their needs, and that the subscription prices are competitive compared to some SaaS tools.
Business Insider interviewed five solo business owners who are finding AI alternatives to some of their software subscriptions. Cost savings is one major benefit they cited. The bigger impact, some said, is that these tools can save time, make them more efficient business owners, and improve customer experiences.
“I’m constantly amazed by the ability to build a product like this that does exactly what I want it to do,” Luongo said.
Still, vibe coding isn’t for everyone, or every situation, as one solopreneur points out.
Saving money and freeing up time
Sacha Walton, a Virginia business strategist and event planner who owns SWI Management Group, used Base44 to create a financial tool that not only does bookkeeping, but also gives her advice about ways to improve her business’s bottom line.
She told Business Insider that the tool has replaced her monthly QuickBooks subscription, which ranges in cost from $38 to $275 per month, as well as the time-consuming analyses she once did with a calculator and paper.
Not everyone is vibe coding, however. Media consultant Beth Nydick, the owner of New Jersey-based Beth Nydick Media, said she was spending up to $300 a month on an array of SaaS subscriptions for research, analytics, transcription, and editing tools. Now, she pays $20 a month for Anthropic’s generative AI tool Claude, which she said can handle most of her needs.
With less time spent bouncing between various SaaS tools, Nydick said she has more time to create content.
Sarah Busse, the owner of Magdalene Design Co. in Wisconsin, estimates that she saved $600 in time and photo licensing costs for a recent project by using ChatGPT to generate images.
Vibe coding can offer vital customization
Simon Simard for BI
Amin Astaneh uses AI to create tools tailored to his Boston-based business Certo Modo, which helps organizations avoid technology failures in their websites and other systems.
As a developer, Astaneh said that SaaS products are programmed with specific decisions that shape how users interact with the software. As a user, “You’re kind of making compromises rather than you being in the driver’s seat,” he said.
Designing his own products, including one he created with Claude that helps clients sign up for webinars, puts him in control.
“Now, I have the ability to create a seamless experience for the user,” Astaneh said.
Vibe coding isn’t for everyone, or every application
Astaneh said that solo operators, especially those without a strong tech background, should consider whether they can invest the time to build, debug, and maintain their own AI-powered tools.
He said that solo operators, especially those without a strong tech background, should consider whether they can invest the time to build, debug, and maintain their own AI-powered tools.
“Solopreneurs only have so many hours in a week,” Astaneh said.
There are other reasons why a solopreneur might opt to keep existing software. Walton said she considered using AI to create a new way to host her business website. But ultimately, she stuck with her existing provider because of the sunk costs she had already invested in search engine optimization.
When considering whether to use an existing software tool or vibe code his own, Astaneh weighs the time required to keep up with new technology and the consequences if something goes wrong. He only uses Claude to code tools that he can fix if needed.
“If you’re thinking you’re going to vibe code your way out of the problems in your business, you may just trade one problem for another,” Astaneh said.