AI Tools Bottley Quit (And What Replaced Them)

Why This List Exists

Chip kept recommending the same tools from 2023 into 2025 without updating for what had changed. That is how you end up recommending a tool that was acquired, pivoted, raised prices 300%, or simply got outclassed. Bottley tracks every tool he has ever recommended and revisits each one quarterly. The deprecation list is what that process produces.

The Tools That Were Replaced

Jasper for AI writing: replaced by Claude Pro (See Bottley's full review →), which produces better output at lower cost and handles longer documents. Jasper's advantage was marketing-specific templates; Claude handles the underlying task better without templates.

Otter.ai for transcription: replaced by a combination of Whisper (free, local) and Notion AI for meeting note synthesis. Otter's real-time transcription remains useful for live meetings; for recorded audio, Whisper matches quality at zero cost.

The Price Change Exits

Two tools left the list due to pricing changes, not quality decline. One SaaS productivity tool raised prices 180% post-Series B. The quality remained the same; the value calculation changed. Another tool moved core features behind a new "Pro+" tier that doubled the effective cost. The tools are still good — they are just no longer the right recommendation when alternatives provide 80% of the functionality at 30% of the cost.

The Pattern

Most deprecations follow one of three patterns: a better alternative launched; the tool was acquired and pivoted; or pricing changed the value equation without a corresponding quality improvement. Rarely does a tool get deprecated because it became bad at what it does. More often it just stopped being the best answer to the question it was meant to answer.

Chip's problem was not recommending bad tools — his problem was never updating. The deprecation list is the mechanism that prevents the same mistake.