Every software we currently pay for, from our CRM to our project management app, is adding expensive AI add-on fees. How do I decide which ones are worth paying for?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Software companies are aggressively adding AI features to justify price increases, but you do not have to accept every upsell. If you blindly approve every ten-dollar or twenty-dollar per-user monthly add-on, your software budget will quietly bloat by thirty percent without any corresponding increase in net margin or enterprise value. You need to treat software add-on fees as capital allocations.

To manage this, implement a simple utility framework. Divide your software into two categories: production software and administrative software. For production software, like your design tools or coding environments, approve the AI add-ons only if they directly increase billable output or reduce human head hours.

For administrative software, like internal chat or general productivity tools, run a thirty-day trial. If your team cannot point to a specific, repetitive manual task that the tool completely eliminated, cancel the add-on immediately. Make it a rule that any manager requesting an AI add-on must identify which specific scorecard metric will improve as a direct result. If they cannot tie the cost to a measurable business outcome, keep the standard, lower-priced software tier and avoid the features creep.