Honestly I reckon Notion has to be up there. Everyone acts like it's the holy grail but half the time I see teams struggling with it because it's just bloated for what they actually need. The learning curve is steep, it's slow under load, and people end up spending more time configuring it than actually using it. I get why it's powerful for the right use case, but the hype around it being a replacement for everything doesn't match reality.
Then there's the whole wave of AI SaaS stuff that's just older tools with a chatbot slapped on top. Investors are calling it AI-wash and honestly it's getting hard to tell what actually solves a real problem versus what's just riding the hype train. Like yeah, some of it works, but a lot of it feels like solutions looking for problems.
What's funny is the alternatives that are actually winning aren't usually the headline-grabbing ones. Simpler tools like Pipedrive, ClickUp, or even just Airtable seem to do more for most teams than the overhyped darlings. Curious what everyone else thinks is the biggest let-down they've tried. Has anyone actually had a tool that lived up to the hype or do they all disappoint eventually?