You might have too many tools on your e-commerce store

You've undoubtedly received this message before:

"Are we still using this tool?"

And then, a brief moment of uncertainty...

You recognize the name (presumably). You have a general idea of why the tool was installed. But is it still really being used? By whom? And most importantly, is it still worth the €200, €500, or €1,000 that appear on the bill every month?

If you've been managing an e-commerce store for a few years, chances are your tech stack was built exactly like this: little by little.

1 app for upsell + 1 customer review tool + 1 search solution + 1 support platform + 1 A/B testing tool + 1 new analytics component...

Taken separately, each of these choices probably made sense. But if you were asked today to take your list of tools and justify the presence of each one, would you be able to do it easily?

That's probably the best way to know if your toolbox is starting to deserve a little attention.

Your stack wasn't built all at once

Go back a few years, or even a few months:

Your conversion rate was stagnating: you tested an upsell solution.

Support was becoming difficult to manage: you added a dedicated platform.

Your tracking wasn't precise enough: a new analytics solution arrived.

Then an agency recommended a tool. Another team tested a new one. An app installed for a one-off operation eventually became a permanent fixture.

The problem isn't necessarily what you've added: it's what you've never taken the time to re-evaluate.

Because during that time, your environment has changed. Your CMS might now natively offer a feature for which you're still paying for an app. Two tools may have evolved to cover part of the same need. A tool that was once indispensable may be used much less since the departure of the person who managed it.

And then there's FOMO

You inevitably watch what others are doing 👀

A competitor offers an interesting personalization experience. A new solution regularly appears on LinkedIn. An agency shows you what they've implemented for another client.

Chrome extensions like Wappalyzer even allow you to identify some of the technologies detected on a competitor's site.

And inevitably, when you discover they're using a solution you don't have, the question arises: "Should we have it too?"

Doing this research is useful. Copying a stack is much less so.

A competitor's stack is a source of inspiration - not a shopping list.

You don't necessarily know why that tool was chosen, how it's used, how much it really costs, or even if the team paying for it is satisfied.

Inventory your solutions

Take 30 minutes to list all your tools.

Before deciding what to keep or remove, start by laying out all your tools. No need for a complex audit: a simple table is enough to get a clearer picture.

You'll quickly see which ones deserve your attention: those whose cost you no longer really know, which no one seems to use regularly, or whose functionalities duplicate another tool.

If you use 25 solutions and each meets a clear need, is managed, and brings something concrete, it's not particularly concerning.

Conversely: you might only have 8 and already be paying for tools whose role has become unclear.

The problem is therefore not the number of tools, but the number of tools whose use you cannot justify.

Now take each tool on your list and ask yourself these five questions:

1. What does it do for us today?
2. Who actually uses or manages it?
3. What concrete benefits does it bring us?
4. What would happen if we stopped using it tomorrow?
5. Are we already paying for another tool that covers all or part of the same need?

Did you easily answer all five? Great 👍

Did you have to search, ask several people, or answer "I think so..." multiple times? That's probably where you need to start digging.

Not necessarily to remove the tool, but at least to verify that it still deserves its place.

Don't mass cancel your subscriptions

You may have just thought of two or three tools you could remove right now.

But be careful: an apparently little-used tool can feed an email scenario, a merchandising rule, a tracking script, or a report. It may also have become invisible to your teams precisely because it works correctly in the background.

Therefore, assessing your stack is not about pulling out your credit card and deleting everything that seems too expensive.

For a given tool, the right decision might be to remove it, but it could also be to:

• make better use of it,
• renegotiate its contract,
• replace two similar solutions with a single one,
• or simply keep it.

Your tool environment should be easy to explain

Before your next renewal or your next addition of a new SaaS, do a simple exercise: try to reconstruct your current stack.

Not just the big platforms everyone knows. Also look at the small apps, marketing solutions, analytics tools, support, payment, merchandising, and even the automations that continue to run.

For each one, look at what you pay, who uses it, how often, and what would actually happen if it disappeared: some will be immediately obvious, others will probably make you realize they could be better utilized.

And some are likely to provoke the exact same reaction as the message at the beginning:

"Wait... are we still using that?"

Those are the ones you need to challenge first 💡

Having a good e-commerce stack doesn't mean having as few tools as possible. The important thing is to know the utility of each and its impact on your business.