7 types of SaaS tools teams are replacing with Retool

Software stocks are in a historic sell-off, driven by a fear that AI has made it so easy to build custom software that teams no longer need to buy it off the shelf. While it‘s a little early to declare all of SaaS dead, there is evidence to suggest a real underlying trend here. And our data reflects this trend.

In Retool‘s 2026 Build vs. Buy Report, based on a survey of 817 builders across engineering, operations, IT, and data:

This doesn‘t mean that every large enterprise is ripping out their CRM, but there‘s growing evidence to show that companies are turning away from expensive, bloated SaaS tools for custom, purpose-built solutions.

Below are the most common types of SaaS tools teams are replacing with Retool—and when it makes sense to build instead of buy.

According to the 2026 Build vs. Buy Report, these are the kinds of SaaS tools teams are swapping for custom builds.

Why are more teams opting to build tools on their own? There are a few factors to consider.

Most companies don‘t plan to replace their internal tools—it happens gradually as point solutions multiply, workflows stretch across systems, and teams spend more time working around their software than with it.

Three forces are accelerating this:

What used to require a dedicated engineering team and a multi-sprint roadmap can now be prototyped in days. The Build vs. Buy Report found that 51% of builders have already shipped production software using AI, and about half of them report saving six or more hours per week. Building custom used to be a luxury—only if you had the engineering resources—but now, it‘s often the path of least resistance.

A workflow automation platform that serves a 50-person team well starts to buckle when it needs to handle cross-functional processes, connect to multiple data sources, and comply with enterprise security requirements. The gap between what purchased software provides and what the organization actually needs tends to widen, not narrow, over time.

60% of builders surveyed said they‘d built something outside of IT oversight in the past year. Why?

These aren‘t rogue interns—64% of these shadow builders were senior managers and above. They‘re experienced operators choosing “build it myself” over waiting for procurement.

The question isn‘t really whether teams will replace SaaS tools. They already are. The question is whether they‘ll do it in a way that‘s governed, connected, and scalable—or whether they‘ll trade one kind of tool sprawl for another.

Workflow automation platforms are the most common category of SaaS tool under replacement pressure, and it makes sense.

These tools—the ones designed to connect apps, trigger actions, and move data between systems—tend to be where the gap between vendor capability and business reality is widest.

The core issue isn‘t that automation tools don‘t work. It‘s that they work within the constraints of their own ecosystem. As automations grow more complex—multi-step, touching production databases, requiring error handling and audit trails—teams find themselves either hitting platform limits or building elaborate workarounds that defeat the purpose of the tool.

ClickUp‘s experience is a good example. They were evaluating a wave of AI vendors to automate their go-to-market operations and realized that none had the right integrations or the staying power they needed. "We realized we could build these tools ourselves and save on multiple subscriptions," says Borys Aptekar, ClickUp‘s GTM AI Product Manager. The company built six AI-powered tools connected to Salesforce, Zendesk, and Snowflake inside Retool.

The result:

Retool lets teams build workflows that connect directly to their databases and APIs, with UIs for monitoring and manual intervention when needed—all governed under one platform rather than duct taped together across multiple subscriptions.

Every growing company accumulates admin tools. There‘s one for managing user accounts, another for processing refunds, a third for reviewing flagged content, a fourth for onboarding new vendors. Many of these started as a feature inside a broader platform—or as a spreadsheet that someone eventually productized into a licensed tool.

These tools are usually built for generic workflows, though. And as your needs grow more and more specific, you‘ll either need to adapt to fit your chosen tool‘s workflow, or build your own.

These are prime candidates for internal builds because they‘re:

They just need to connect to the right data and enforce the right rules.

DoorDash runs 40+ operational tools in Retool—everything from a route management app to their Dasher rewards program—after outgrowing their admin panel. A switch saved them an estimated $6M.

BI tools can be split into two different categories:

Most teams don‘t need to replace their strategic analytics platform. The operational layer, though, is ripe for replacing. These tools often charge per-viewer, which means costs add up quickly with adoption—which is exactly the wrong incentive structure when you want more people to have access to the data they need.

Custom-built dashboards in Retool:

Treasure Financial did exactly this. Instead of pulling engineers off the product roadmap to field ad hoc data requests, they let finance and operations teams build their own dashboards in Retool—saving over $1M in engineering costs in a single year.

And with AppGen capabilities, building is easier and more accessible than ever.

First, let‘s be clear about what‘s realistic here. A large enterprise with thousands of reps, years of pipeline data, and deep integrations into its CRM system of record probably shouldn‘t replace it all with a custom-built app.

But CRM is also one of the most over-licensed categories in enterprise software.

Organizations pay for far more seats than they need because adjacent teams—sales ops, RevOps, customer success—need access to some CRM data without needing the full platform. Others have specialized workflows (like deal desk approvals or commission tracking) that they‘ve jammed into their CRM, but they‘re fragile and expensive to maintain.

This is where custom tools complement rather than replace a CRM.

Instead of forcing every workflow into Salesforce or HubSpot, teams build focused internal apps in Retool that sit on top of CRM data via APIs. For example:

The CRM remains the system of record, while custom tools handle the workflows the CRM was never designed for.

Neo4j, for example, built a Renewals Control Center on top of their Salesforce data. In the app, CSMs can track renewal timelines, see account health, and generate forecasts.

These two categories are natural complements—forms capture information, and approval systems route it—so teams often replace them together.

The pattern typically goes: team buys a form builder for intake requests, a separate tool for routing and approvals, and then connects them with an automation platform. Three subscriptions, three vendor relationships, three sets of permissions to manage for what‘s essentially a single workflow.

Custom-built intake and approval tools collapse this into one governed system.

In Retool, teams can:

Snowflake‘s security team did this for their quarterly user access reviews—building an app to intake new reviews, and filter them to the right manager to answer questions that help them stay compliant.

Building this on your own is especially helpful in ops-heavy environments. Think IT service requests, vendor onboarding, budget approvals, or compliance workflows. These are all processes that every organization does differently, which is why generic tools struggle to serve them well.

This one may be the most surprising on the list given how entrenched project management software is in most organizations. But the tools being replaced here aren‘t typically the platform an engineering team uses to manage sprints. They‘re the secondary project tracking tools that non-engineering teams adopt—and then customize beyond recognition—to manage operational work.

Think: a marketing team tracking campaign launches across a spreadsheet-like tool, an ops team managing implementation projects in a system designed for software development, or a finance team using a project board to track month-end close tasks. The tool works, but it was designed for a different type of work, and the team spends significant effort bending it to fit.

Custom-built tracking tools in Retool:

Instead of bending a sprint board into an ops tool, teams build purpose-built coordination software.

so project status can reflect real-time data rather than manually updated fields.

The story here parallels the CRM category: most large-scale teams aren‘t replacing their primary ticketing system. However, they are replacingtools for specific support workflows that their ticketing platform handles poorly, like:

Let‘s expand on a common example: Internal help desks. IT team or internal ops teams need a way for employees to submit requests and for the team to triage and resolve them—but buying a full customer-facing support platform for internal use is expensive and overbuilt.

That‘s when a custom-built internal service desk in Retool makes sense. You could connect directly to the relevant systems (HRIS, device management, access provisioning) and handle the workflow without bringing on expensive, bloated software.

Harmonic, a startup discovery platform, built a customer management interface in Retool that connected to Salesforce and internal APIs to better manage onboarding, offboarding, and permissions for its customers. What started as a single app then evolved into what their team calls Harmonic OS: a hub of 33 internal applications powering everything from customer onboarding to data operations.

Now, when someone proposes new software, the default question at Harmonic has become: “Why can‘t we just build this in Retool?”

Not every tool on this list should be fully replaced. The decision framework is more nuanced than “build everything yourself.”

If your CRM does what you need for the core sales team but you‘re paying for 200 seats when 50 people actually need full access, the right move is to build lightweight interfaces for the rest and reduce your license count.

If your team spends more time customizing and working around a tool than using it, the total cost of ownership—license fees, maintenance, lost productivity—often exceeds the cost of building something purpose-built.

If you have a form builder, an automation tool, and an approval system all handling parts of the same workflow, that‘s three vendors doing the job of one well-built app.

These are categories where the switching cost is enormous and the risk of getting it wrong is high. Custom tools should sit alongside these systems, not attempt to replicate them.

The SaaS replacement conversation is real, but so are the risks. A vibe-coded app might replicate a feature—but most platforms can‘t connect securely to your data, enforce your access controls, or scale across your organization. Teams that replace 10 disconnected SaaS tools with 10 disconnected custom apps haven‘t actually solved the problem.

Retool, however, brings AI-powered app building to the enterprise. You can build internal apps on top of your data quickly and securely—with permissions and access controls baked in. We do this with:

Teams like ClickUp and Harmonic aren‘t building on Retool because they want fewer tools for the sake of it. They‘re building because purpose-built software, deployed in a governed environment and connected to live data, outperforms the generic alternative—and now it‘s fast enough to prove that at scale.

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