CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
Tom Brauer: How an indie studio founder killed four subscriptions and finally knew if his project was worth his team's time.
How Tom Brauer, founder of Linkframe, stopped operating blind — and turned a fragmented multi-tool setup into a clean, measurable system his team could actually trust.
Tom Brauer
Founder, Linkframe · Berlin, DE
VERIFIED HERO
$2,160
Annual Savings
in recurring SaaS fees cut
+8 hrs/mo
Deep Work Recovered
from reduced tool-switching
4 → 1
Modules Toggled
one workspace, toggled to fit
“I was paying to make my own life harder.”
Tom Brauer builds software products solo. He runs Linkframe entirely alone: product, development, support, marketing, finances. Notion for roadmap, Clockify for time tracking, Wave for invoicing, and Trello for his weekly sprint board. Four separate monthly charges quietly leaving his account. The deeper problem was the friction. To check whether a feature development was worth his time, he had to open three tabs and manually correlate hours from Clockify with tasks in Trello.
“I counted it up one Sunday night. Four tools, four bills, none of them talking to each other. I was paying $180 a month to stay disorganized. The worst part? I'd just accepted it as the cost of doing business. It isn't.”
Problems Before Switching
- $180/mo across four tools that had zero native integration with each other
- No way to answer 'is this feature worth building?' without manually correlating data across three apps
- Clockify time logs lived in total isolation — no link to tasks, milestones, or revenue impact
- Weekly sprint planning spread across Notion, Trello, and a personal sticky-note system that kept drifting
- Constant context-switching between tools burned 6–8 hours a month of deep work capacity
- Paying for full-featured tiers on tools used at 20% capacity — pure subscription waste
Solutions With Melororium
- One flat-fee workspace replacing all four tools — $29/mo for the whole team, no seat tax
- Modular toggles let Tom activate only the features his workflow actually needs today
- Timers live inside task cards — every hour logged is automatically tied to a specific feature or milestone
- Real-time dashboard shows exactly how many hours went into each product area this week — no manual math
- Slack webhook keeps Tom notified of his own workflow events without a second screen or browser tab open
Why They Switched
“”Every tool you add is a tool the team has to maintain mentally. I need software that shrinks our cognitive load, not one that adds to it. Melororium's modular design was the thing that convinced me — I could turn off everything we didn't need and keep the workspace clean. It felt like it was built by someone who actually works the way we work.”
How Tom rebuilt his workflow
Operational efficiency was rebuilt around a modular structure, focusing on eliminating duplicate manual data entry:
Consolidated roadmap and sprint board into a single Kanban canvas
Tom moved his entire Linkframe product roadmap — features, bug queue, and weekly sprint tasks — into one Melororium Kanban board. Notion and Trello became redundant overnight.
Replaced Clockify with native in-card timers
Instead of switching to a separate app, Tom now clicks the timer directly inside whichever task card he's on. Hours are automatically logged and categorized.
Toggled off every module he didn't need yet
Tom activated Task Management and Time Tracking, leaving everything else off to keep his workspace lean. When he needs invoicing, he'll toggle it on.
What changed after 6 months
Direct efficiency gains logged 6 months after switching to Melororium:
| Efficiency Metric | Before | With Melororium | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly SaaS spend | $180 / mo | $29/mo (Melororium) | $1,812 / yr saved |
| Tools open simultaneously | 4 apps, 4 tabs | 1 workspace | 75% less switching |
| Time tracking accuracy | ~60% (manual) | 100% (in-card timers) | Full visibility |
| Deep work hours recovered | Lost to overhead | +8 hrs / mo | 8 hrs back |
| Weekly sprint setup time | 45–60 mins | Under 10 mins | 5x faster |
Ready to stop paying per seat?
Replace 5 separate tools with one flat-fee workspace. Tasks, time tracking, client CRM, invoices — one price for your whole team, no seat tax.
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