Free guide for teams & founders

Build your own internal tools

A practical guide to replacing SaaS bloat with tools that actually fit how you work. Using Claude Code, Figma, and a modern web stack.

Build Your Own Internal Tools guideGet the free guide

What's inside
the guide

We built our own CRM, newsletter tool, task planner, and Meta Ads integration. This guide shares what we learned — what worked, what to avoid, and how to get started.

01

Why Build Your Own?

The real cost of SaaS sprawl — paying for a thousand features and using forty. Why the economics have shifted.

02

What's Easy to Build

CRMs, task planners, dashboards, email tools, admin panels — what takes days vs. weeks, and what to avoid.

03

The Stack

Supabase, Next.js, Vercel, and an AI coding assistant. What you need, what it costs, and how it fits together.

04

Figma for Your Style Guide

Setting up a basic design system — colors, typography, components. Keep your tools looking professional with minimal effort.

05

Building with Claude Code

How to prompt effectively, what to build first, and how to iterate. The boring parts write themselves.

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What's actually easy to build

These used to require a dev team and months of work. With AI coding tools, most of them take days or weeks — and they'll fit your workflow better than any off-the-shelf platform.

Simple CRM

1–2 weeks

Contact tracking, pipeline stages, activity log

Task planner

1 week

Team scheduling linked to clients or projects

Newsletter tool

1 week

Templates, send tracking, subscriber management

Internal dashboard

2–3 days

KPIs, charts, real-time data from your APIs

Landing page generator

1 week

AI-generated pages deployed at custom URLs

Admin panel

2–3 days

Manage content, users, or settings for any app

Client portal

1–2 weeks

Shared project status, files, and communication

Reporting with API integrations

1–2 weeks

Pull data from Meta, Google, Stripe — one dashboard

What to watch out for

Building your own tools is easier than it used to be. That doesn't mean it's free of tradeoffs. The guide covers these in detail.

Scope creep — build what you need, nothing more
Maintenance is on you — keep it simple
Start with one tool, not five
Use proper auth and never store secrets in code
Don't rebuild payment processing, accounting, or compliance tools
First version won't be perfect — that's fine, iterate

Get started in 5 days

You don't need to rip out everything at once. Start with one tool, the one that's most painful or most wasteful. Here's a week-long plan.

1

Audit

What tools do you use? What do you actually need? What's annoying?

2

Pick one

Choose the most painful or wasteful tool. That's your first build.

3

Set up

Supabase + Next.js + Vercel. Design the data model. Get the stack running.

4

Build

Build the core feature. Use AI to move fast. Don't over-think it.

5

Ship

Test it with your team. Deploy it. Iterate next week.

Get your free Build Guide

8 pages of practical advice on building internal tools with AI coding assistants and Figma. Based on what we actually built for ourselves.

What's easy to build and realistic timelines
The stack — Supabase, Next.js, Figma, Claude Code
What to watch out for — scope creep, maintenance, tradeoffs

Get the free guide

8 pages of practical advice on building internal tools with AI coding assistants and Figma.

No spam, no sales pitch. Just the guide.

Want us to build it for you?

We've built 125+ digital products for startups, scaleups, and global brands. If you want help building your own internal tools — or want us to do it — we're here.

Say hello

Andreas Melvær

Co-founder, SmplCo

andreas@smpl.as