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Every tool in a tech stack costs money. That is obvious. What is less obvious is what each tool costs in terms of attention, maintenance, and the friction it creates when it does not connect properly to everything else.
GTM Layer runs on five core platforms: HubSpot, Clay, ClickUp, Claude, and Fathom, with Miro and Instantly filling supporting roles. The combined cost of that stack is not trivial for a two-person consultancy. But the value it generates compounds in a way that makes every pound spent on tooling come back many times over in capacity, speed, and the quality of what we deliver.
This is not a "tools we love" list. This is the architecture behind how we run the business and how we deliver for clients. Every platform in the stack was chosen because it fills a specific role, connects cleanly to the others, and creates more value as part of the system than it would in isolation. The same principles we apply when designing a client's revenue architecture are the ones we applied to our own.
Before getting into individual tools, it is worth understanding the overall design.
The stack has four layers. The relationship layer (HubSpot) tracks every client and prospect interaction. The intelligence layer (Clay) enriches, scores, and qualifies data. The operations layer (ClickUp) manages delivery, tasks, and internal coordination. The automation layer (Claude) connects everything, captures context from conversations and emails, and turns unstructured information into structured action.
Fathom captures the raw meeting data. Miro holds the visual documentation. Instantly handles outbound sequencing. Each supporting tool feeds into or is fed by the core four.
The critical design decision is that data flows between these systems, not just within them. A meeting transcript in Fathom does not stay in Fathom. It becomes tasks in ClickUp, context in the daily digest, and documentation in Miro. A contact enriched in Clay does not stay in Clay. It pushes to HubSpot with signal data attached, then routes to Instantly with personalisation context. Nothing sits in a silo.
This is the same architecture we build for clients. The tools might differ, but the principle is constant: each system has a clear purpose, data moves between them cleanly, and the compound intelligence across the stack is worth more than any individual platform.
HubSpot is the CRM. It holds every client relationship, every prospect, every deal, and every interaction. For GTM Layer internally, it tracks our pipeline, manages client lifecycle stages, and acts as the source of truth for who we are working with and where each engagement stands.
For client work, HubSpot is the platform we implement most frequently. We build CRM architectures, lifecycle stage frameworks, pipeline structures, cross-object workflows, and reporting systems in HubSpot every week. The fact that we run our own business on it means we encounter the same limitations and workarounds our clients face. When we recommend a particular approach to lifecycle stages or custom properties, it is because we have tested it on ourselves first.
We run HubSpot Professional. For most of what we do, both internally and for clients, Professional tier covers it. The custom object limitation on Pro is real and we have written about the workarounds, but the cost jump to Enterprise needs to be justified by specific requirements, not just "it would be nice to have."
The cost adds up. HubSpot Pro with the hubs we use is not cheap, and it is one of the larger line items in the stack. But it is the foundation everything else connects to. The CRM is where all the enriched data lands, where lifecycle stages drive automation, and where reporting gives us visibility across the entire client base. Skimping on the CRM would undermine everything built on top of it.
Clay is where data becomes intelligence. For our own outbound, it is the enrichment and scoring layer that turns a list of target companies into a prioritised, signal-rich pipeline. For client work, it is one of the most powerful platforms we implement.
Internally, Clay runs our target market engine. It pulls in technographic data from BuiltWith, hiring signals from LinkedIn, funding data, headcount changes, and runs AI scoring to tier accounts based on signal density and recency. The output pushes directly to HubSpot and routes to Instantly for sequencing.
For clients, we build the same architecture at scale. Pre-qualifying tables, enrichment layers, AI-driven scoring, contact enrichment, CRM push, and sequence routing. The builds we do for clients are more complex versions of what we run for ourselves.
Clay's pricing is credit-based, which means costs scale with usage. For a consultancy running its own outbound, the credit consumption is manageable. For client builds with larger volumes, the credit cost is something we plan carefully. The intelligence Clay generates, the ability to know which accounts have active buying signals before a rep ever picks up the phone, makes the credit spend worth it many times over. A single qualified meeting from a signal-driven outbound sequence can be worth more than a month's Clay subscription.
ClickUp is where all the work lives. Every client project, every task, every deadline, every internal process runs through ClickUp. It is the operational backbone of the business.
We chose ClickUp over alternatives like Asana and Monday because of its flexibility with custom fields, views, and automations. For a consultancy managing multiple client projects simultaneously, the ability to build custom views that show everything across all clients in one place is not a nice-to-have. It is essential.
ClickUp is also the destination for most of our automations. Meeting transcripts from Fathom create tasks in ClickUp. Email triage creates tasks in ClickUp. The daily digest pulls from ClickUp. Documentation routes into ClickUp Docs. It is the hub that everything feeds into and that Luis and I work from every day.
For client work, we use ClickUp to manage delivery but we do not typically implement it for clients. Most of our clients are on HubSpot for project management or have their own PM tools. ClickUp is our internal operating system, not something we sell.
The Business tier gives us what we need. The cost is reasonable for what it delivers, and it is one of the tools where the value is immediately obvious. Without ClickUp, the automation layer we are building with Claude would have nowhere to route its output.
Claude is the newest addition to the stack and the one that is changing how everything else works together.
Claude connects the other platforms. It reads Fathom transcripts and creates ClickUp tasks. It scans Gmail and generates action items. It builds documentation in Miro. It produces daily digests from data across ClickUp, email, and meeting transcripts. It is the layer that turns unstructured information from conversations, emails, and notes into structured, actionable work.
For client work, we are increasingly using Claude to accelerate delivery. Building automation logic, generating documentation, analysing data patterns, and prototyping solutions before implementing them in client systems. It does not replace the strategic and architectural thinking, but it handles a significant amount of the execution work that would otherwise take hours.
Claude's cost is subscription-based and, relative to the other tools in the stack, it is modest. But the value it creates is disproportionate. It is the connective tissue between every other platform. Without it, HubSpot, Clay, ClickUp, and Fathom are all good tools that operate independently. With it, they become a system.
Fathom records and transcribes every meeting. The cost is minimal and the output, structured meeting transcripts with action items, feeds directly into the Claude automation layer. Without Fathom, the entire meeting-to-task pipeline does not exist.
Miro holds the visual documentation. Architecture diagrams, process flows, client deliverables. Luis does the design work that makes Miro boards client-ready, and Claude is starting to generate the raw content that feeds into them. Miro's cost is standard for a collaboration tool, and for a consultancy that delivers visual process documentation, it is non-negotiable.
Instantly handles outbound email sequencing. The contacts enriched in Clay, scored, tiered, and personalised, route through HubSpot and into Instantly for multi-step outreach sequences. It is a focused tool that does one thing well, and it slots into the broader architecture cleanly.
Here is where the cost conversation gets interesting.
Add up the subscriptions for HubSpot Pro, Clay, ClickUp Business, Claude, Fathom, Miro, and Instantly, and you are looking at a meaningful monthly spend for a two-person consultancy. Each tool on its own has a cost that needs justifying.
But the value does not come from each tool on its own. It comes from the connections between them.
A Fathom transcript on its own is a recording. Connected to Claude and ClickUp, it becomes automatic task creation with full context. A Clay enrichment on its own is a data point. Connected to HubSpot and Instantly, it becomes a signal-driven outbound engine. A ClickUp task on its own is a to-do item. Connected to meeting intelligence and email triage, it becomes a task that writes itself with all the context attached.
The investment in the stack compounds. Each new connection between tools makes every existing tool more valuable. Each automation that bridges two platforms creates intelligence that did not exist before. The monthly cost stays relatively flat while the capacity it creates grows with every iteration.
This is the same argument we make to clients about investing in their revenue architecture. The tools cost money. The integrations take time to build. But once the data flows properly between systems, the intelligence compounds. A CRM connected to an enrichment engine connected to a sequencing tool connected to a reporting layer creates something that is worth significantly more than the sum of its subscription costs.
The specific tools matter less than the architecture.
If you are building a tech stack for a consultancy, a revenue team, or any operation that runs on multiple client relationships simultaneously, the questions to ask are not "which CRM is best?" or "should we use Clay or Apollo?" The questions are: what is the relationship layer, what is the intelligence layer, what is the operations layer, and how does data flow between them?
Get the architecture right and the tools can be swapped. Get it wrong and even the most expensive tools will operate as expensive silos.
At GTM Layer, we designed the stack before we chose the tools. We knew we needed a CRM that could handle complex lifecycle stages and cross-object relationships. We knew we needed an enrichment platform that could layer multiple signal sources and score dynamically. We knew we needed a project management tool flexible enough to be an automation destination. And we knew we needed an AI layer to connect everything.
The tools we landed on are the ones that fit the architecture. They are also the ones we implement and build on for clients, which means every hour we spend using them internally makes us better at deploying them externally.
That is the real value of the stack. Not just what it does for GTM Layer today, but what it teaches us about building the same systems for every client we work with.
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