Substly

About Substly

Substly is the rare entry in this category that will tell you what it costs before you talk to anyone. Two standard tiers are published outright: Monitor at €95 per month billed yearly or €120 monthly, and Optimize at €190 yearly or €240 monthly, with USD and GBP equivalents listed alongside ($105/$210 and £75/£150 at the annual rate) and a custom tier above that. Cancellation carries no fee or notice period, cards and invoicing are both accepted, and nonprofits and startups can apply for a discount.

What you get is narrower than the platforms it sits beside. Monitor covers multi-source SaaS discovery, shadow-IT detection, contract and cost tracking, and renewal alerts. Optimize adds unused-licence detection, offboarding workflows, and specific Microsoft 365 licence monitoring — a sensible emphasis, since M365 over-licensing is where most mid-sized companies quietly leak money. Discovery leans on Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 rather than a card-transaction feed. There is no negotiation service, no benchmark database, no procurement approval chain.

That narrowness is the position, not an oversight: the company markets itself as a lean tool without enterprise bloat. Substly AB was founded in Gothenburg in 2018 by Ola Stål and Felix Sjöstedt after they hit the limits of spreadsheet-based licence tracking, released the product in 2020, raised a single angel round of roughly $370K in 2021, and now reports users in more than 40 countries. Small vendor, small scope, honest pricing — evaluate it against that, not against Zylo.

Pricing

Model

Paid

Starting price

€95/mo (billed yearly)

Notes

Two published tiers plus a custom plan. Monitor: €95/mo billed yearly or €120/mo billed monthly ($105/$130 USD, £75/£95 GBP). Optimize: €190/mo billed yearly or €240/mo billed monthly ($210/$260 USD, £150/£190 GBP). Listed figures are described as starting prices, but neither the vendor nor third-party listings state what the cost scales on above that floor. Custom plans add bespoke API integrations, multiple Active Directory tenants and custom reporting. Payment by major cards, with invoice or bank transfer available on annual plans; no cancellation period or fee; discounts available to nonprofits and startups on application. No free trial and no free version — Capterra's listing records both as unavailable, and the vendor publishes no trial terms.

Key Features

• Multi-source SaaS discovery engine covering managed and unapproved applications
• Shadow-IT detection with a real-time vendor and subscription inventory
• Contract and cost management with future-cost visibility
• Renewal alerts ahead of auto-renew dates
• Unused and underused licence detection (Optimize tier)
• Employee offboarding workflows with de-provisioning support (Optimize tier)
• Dedicated Microsoft 365 licence monitoring and optimisation
• Integrations with Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365
• Departmental access so budget owners share responsibility for their own subscriptions

Platforms

• Web
• API

Alternatives to Substly

• Cledara
• SpendHound
• Setyl
• Torii