Free tools for a SaaS site: what building twelve taught us

A founder asks for more content. Fair. A blog feels like the obvious move, and it gives you something to point at. But a post answers a question once. A tool answers it every time someone turns up with their own numbers.

That’s the bet we made on the site for Axelize, the sales assistant I build next to Oxeni. It now carries a set of free tools for sales calls. They run in the browser, need no sign-up, and each one does a single job.

• 12

  Free tools live

• 4

  Moments of a call they cover

• 0

  Sign-ups to use one

Why tools, in Google’s own words

Google’s page on helpful content lists “calculators, online tools, games, or search functionality” as interactive features. Its example of high effort is a custom interactive map for a game (last updated 5 October 2026). It doesn’t promise a ranking for any of it. Nothing does.

What it does show is how Google sorts effort. A page that took an afternoon of copy sits on one side. A page that took a week of build sits on the other. A tool is cheap to read and expensive to fake, and that gap is the whole point.

What a tool needs before it earns a page

We held every one of the twelve to three rules.

One job on the first screen. Take the price objection script generator. You pick what the buyer said, add your price and your next step, and it hands back words to say. Nothing else to configure. No account wall in front of it.

Sorted by the moment, not by feature. The hub groups the tools by when in a call you’d reach for them: before, during, after, and around it. Someone who lands from search is already in one of those moments. A flat grid of twelve makes them work out which one is theirs.

One way into the product, after the result. The output comes first. The pitch comes second, once, below it. Put the pitch first and people leave before they’ve seen what the tool does.

Twelve is more than I’d start with. Eleven went live on 9 October. The twelfth followed five days later and took a data file, not a new build, because the tools share a handful of engines underneath. If you’re doing this yourself, start with one.

How I’ll know if it worked

The tools are new, so I won’t quote traffic. Here’s the plan instead. Search Console impressions per tool page, week by week. How many tool visits go on to the product. Which tools get used and which just sit there. The ones that sit there get cut.

If you’re weighing the same call for a SaaS site, start with the question your buyers ask most. Build the smallest thing that answers it with their own inputs. Then see whether anyone uses it.