I replaced a $490 subscription with this software I built in a weekend
Two weeks ago I opened my Frame.io billing page and scrolled through my invoice history, and it was $45 every single month, going back further than the screen could show.
If you have never heard of Frame.io, it is the app video teams use to send each other cuts and leave feedback, and it is big enough that Adobe bought it for over a billion dollars.
I totalled everything visible and it came to $490.81 over the last couple of months that I have used the software. That’s a lot when you think about it, can I cut these costs?
That’s what I am going to talk you through in this episode.
So what was I paying $45 a month for?
When I explain my actual workflow, it will connect everything together.
I make videos and my editor cuts them, and Frame.io is where we meet.
I upload my raw footage, she uploads her cuts, and we leave each other comments pinned to timestamps on the video, things like “trim the dead air at 0:42.”
She clicks my comment, the video jumps to that exact moment, she fixes it, uploads again, and I approve.
That is the whole loop, and even though Frame.io has hundreds of features, that loop is genuinely all I use (I’m a lazy user lol).
Then seeing how much I’ve spent, I got angry. I opened Claude Code and asked: what would it take to build just my loop?
We started by going through my real Frame.io account together, and we wrote down which features I actually touch and which ones I have never clicked in two years of paying.
Fun fact: I actually used the Claude Code (CC) browser for this. Remember, I am a lazy user. I logged into my Frame.io account inside CC and let CC mimic me as a user. That was how I could see what I actually use Frame.io for. I will do a write-up on the CC browser in another episode. Let me know in the comments if you want it. Back to the rest of the piece.
So my entire usage came down to three things:
folders,
a video player where comments stick to timestamps,
and a share link my editor can open without creating an account.
In less than an hour of prompting the loop was working on my laptop. I was super excited!!!
I uploaded a cut, copied the link, left myself a note at two seconds in, clicked it, and watched the video jump straight to that frame.
It was my own app doing the exact thing I had paid Frame.io for thirty-two times, and I sat there clicking that one comment over and over because I couldn’t believe how good it felt.
But there was still a problem I had to solve, and I really want you to understand this part.
I have over 300GB of footage sitting inside Frame.io.
That is two years of raw clips, edited cuts, and every comment my editor and I ever exchanged.
If I cancel and walk away, all of that history dies with the account, and moving it by hand would take days with plenty of chances to lose things.
So we wrote a migration script.
It talks to Frame.io through their own official API and pulls everything out: every folder, every video file, and every single comment with its exact timestamp and the name of whoever wrote it.
Then it rebuilds all of it inside my app, with the same folder structure and the same comments pinned to the same moments in the same videos.
When I finally cancel, all two years of work comes with me.
So what do you think the new bill comes to?
About $6 a month, which is what storing my footage on Cloudflare costs.
I have gone from paying $45 a month to paying $6 a month, which means I am saving $39 every month, and that adds up to about $468 a year, for software that fits me better than the thing I was renting.
I will be honest with you, I am still excited about it.
I built a real product in a weekend, something my editor and I will use every single week, and it cost me two evenings and a Saturday.
And somewhere in that excitement, I realised something else: most people have no idea this is now possible.
That is why I am writing this. You can build things that save you money, and you can build things that make you money.
Let’s start with the saving-money part. We will get to the money-making part in a moment.
Here is what I want you to do.
Open your subscriptions tonight and look for the app where you pay full price and use three features.
Write down what you actually use it for, in plain sentences, the same way I described my loop above.
Or be lazy like me and ask Claude Code to do it for you. That is exactly how this started for me, and I promise you the list is shorter than you think.
Now, the money-making part.
You have just read how I replaced a much more expensive piece of software with something I built myself in a weekend.
That is a skill, and it is one I can teach you.
Inside my community we have conversations exactly like this one every week, and I will show you how to build your own personal software, whether that is something cool that makes your life easier or something that people actually pay you for.
And because it is my 30th birthday this month, I am giving 30% off the yearly subscription until the end of July.
Come build with us. Here is the link to join
Blessing Adesiji