How Much of Your Marketing Stack Do You Actually Use?
Feb 18, 2026
Mahdin M Zahere
Your marketing stack has 9 tools. You pay for all of them. You actively use about 4. The other 5 are either running on autopilot with settings nobody's reviewed in a year, used by one person for one narrow task, or genuinely forgotten — still billing monthly because nobody remembered to cancel them.
This is the utilization problem. It's not unique to any one company or any one platform. It's a structural outcome of how marketing technology gets adopted: one tool at a time, each solving an immediate need, with no periodic review of whether the full stack still makes sense.
The result is that most B2B marketing teams are overspending on tools by 30–50%. Not because the tools are bad — but because the team doesn't use what they're paying for.
The utilization audit
Here's a simple framework. For every tool in your stack, answer three questions:
Who uses it? If the answer is "one person" or "I'm not sure," the tool is at risk of being underutilized or completely unused. Tools that depend on a single person's knowledge are also the most likely to break silently when that person leaves.
What do you use it for? List the specific features. Not what the tool can do — what your team actually does with it. For most platforms, the list is shorter than expected.
Is there overlap? Does another tool in your stack do the same thing? CRM with forms + separate form tool. Marketing platform with scheduling + separate Calendly account. CRM with automation + separate Zapier for automations.
Most teams running this audit discover that their effective stack — the tools and features actually driving pipeline — is 40–60% of what they're paying for.
Where utilization drops
Some patterns show up across nearly every mid-market B2B company:
Tool / feature | What you pay for | What you actually use |
|---|---|---|
Marketing automation (enterprise tier) | Advanced workflows, predictive scoring, ABM, adaptive testing, custom events, revenue attribution | Email sends, basic workflows, a simple scoring model, and standard reporting |
Enrichment provider | 5,000 credits/month, full API access, intent signals | 1,500 credits/month on form fills. No API integration. Intent signals unused. |
CRM (enterprise) | Custom objects, advanced reporting, forecasting AI, territory management | Contact/deal management, basic pipeline views, a few dashboards |
ABM platform | Account identification, engagement scoring, orchestration, advertising integration | Account lists and basic intent signals. Orchestration unused. |
Analytics | Custom event tracking, funnel analysis, cohort reporting, predictive analytics | Pageviews, form conversions, and traffic sources |
Middleware (Zapier/Make) | Multi-step paths, filters, conditional logic, error handling | 4–6 simple Zaps that push data between tools |
The enterprise tier exists for teams with dedicated ops resources who can configure and maintain advanced features. Most teams buy enterprise because they want the capability in theory — but in practice, they operate at the professional tier level while paying enterprise tier prices.
The cost of unused tools
Unused tools aren't free just because nobody's actively using them. They cost money in three ways.
Direct cost. The subscription itself. A tool that costs $300/month and doesn't get used is $3,600/year in pure waste. Across 3–4 underutilized tools, that's $10K–$20K/year.
Maintenance cost. Even unused tools need occasional attention — login credential management, security updates, integration monitoring. Every tool in the stack is a surface area for potential issues.
Complexity cost. More tools means more integrations, more data flows, and more places where things can break. Simplifying the stack reduces the maintenance burden on ops teams and makes the remaining tools easier to manage and optimize.
The right-sizing framework
You don't need to rip out your entire stack. Right-sizing is about three moves:
Downgrade where you're underutilizing. If you're on the enterprise tier of a platform and only using professional-tier features, downgrade. The annual savings on a single downgrade — say, HubSpot Enterprise to Professional — can be $20K–$40K.
Eliminate overlap. If two tools do the same job, pick the better one and cancel the other. Common overlaps: CRM forms + standalone form tool, CRM scheduling + Calendly, CRM automation + Zapier.
Consolidate point solutions. If you have separate tools for forms, routing, enrichment, and scheduling, evaluate whether a single lead ops layer can replace 3–4 of them. This reduces both cost and complexity.
Where Surface fits
Surface consolidates the capture, qualification, routing, and response layer into one tool — often replacing a standalone form tool, a middleware layer (Zapier), and a scheduling tool. That's 3 subscriptions and their associated maintenance replaced by one.
If your marketing stack has 9 tools and you actively use 4, the other 5 represent both cost savings and complexity reduction. Surface was built to be part of the 4 you actually need — not one of the 5 you're paying for but not using.
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