What business automation costs for a small business
2026-09-02 · 5 min read
Most pricing pages for automation work say "contact us." I understand why, and I still think it is the wrong call for an owner who is trying to decide whether this is a $500 problem or a $50,000 one before getting on a call. So here are my numbers, what moves them up or down, and the cases where you should not spend the money at all.
The short answer
A first automation from my studio is $500 one time, then $99 a month after a 30 day run-in. Three connected workflows are $1,000, then $249 a month after 60 days. Wiring a whole operation from intake to invoice is $5,000, then $499 a month after 90 days. The monthly is cancellable, the system stays yours, and the number you get after the free audit is fixed before anything gets built.
If you only wanted the price, that is it. The rest of this post is about what those tiers buy and how they compare with the other ways of getting the same work done.
The four ways to make busywork go away
| Route | Upfront | Ongoing | Who keeps it running | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself with connector tools | Your evenings | Per-task fees that grow with volume | You | One trigger, one action, low volume |
| Hire a part-time admin | Recruiting time | A wage every month, whether the phone rings or not | You, as a manager | Work that needs judgment on every item |
| A freelancer, one project | A build fee | Usually nothing, until it breaks | Nobody, in practice | A job you can specify completely up front |
| This studio | $500 to $5,000 | $99 to $499 a month after run-in | Me | Repetitive work with real branching, where a missed step costs money |
I left competitor prices out of that table on purpose. I do not know what a given freelancer or agency will quote you, and made-up ranges are how this kind of article usually goes wrong. The shape of each row is what matters: where the cost sits, and who gets the call when a step fails at 7 a.m.
What each tier is for
Starter, $500 then $99 a month. One nagging bottleneck. The usual first build is missed calls: a call goes unanswered, the caller gets a text back within the minute, and the system collects what the job needs and books it or hands it to you. Intake forms and booking are the other common starting points. It comes wired into the tools you already pay for, with handoff docs so your team can run it without me.
Growth, $1,000 then $249 a month. The workflow that eats your week, usually three connected pieces. Quotes drafted from your price book, follow-up sequences that chase the job until someone answers, and a dashboard that shows what ran and when. This is the tier for a contractor or small practice whose first automation has proved itself and exposed the next bottleneck.
Full System, $5,000 then $499 a month. Intake to invoice, end to end, with a phone and chat assistant that is always on, reporting built on your own data, and training plus an SOP hub for the team. This is for an owner who wants the operation to run on rails and is done being the router for every request.
There is also a smaller product that sits outside the tiers: a digital business card for $249, then $49 a year for hosting and edits. It is a separate thing, but people ask about it on the same call, so it belongs here.
What the monthly pays for
This is the part owners push back on, so it deserves a straight answer. The monthly is monitoring and tuning. Every step the system takes is logged. When a step fails, because a calendar changed its login or a phone provider changed an interface, I hear about it and fix it before you hear about it from a customer. It also covers the small adjustments that always come up in the first months, like a new service type or a changed price.
The run-in period exists so you are not paying the monthly while we are still finding those adjustments. Starter gets 30 days, Growth 60, Full System 90. After that, if the system is not earning its monthly, cancel it. You keep what was built.
What moves the price inside a tier
The audit sets the number, and a few things move it.
How many systems have to talk to each other. A phone provider and a calendar is simple. A phone provider, a dispatch tool, an accounting package, and a spreadsheet someone built in 2019 is not.
Whether the tools you use have decent connections. Most modern software does. Some older practice management and dispatch systems do not, and working around that takes time.
How much judgment sits inside the workflow. A rule like "no-heat calls in January go straight to a person" is easy to write down. A rule like "figure out whether this tenant is exaggerating" is not a rule, and I will tell you so.
When you should not buy this
If the job is one form feeding one spreadsheet, use a connector tool. It takes twenty minutes and a login. I wrote about where those tools stop working in Zapier vs custom automation.
If the work needs a person's judgment on every item, hire the person. Automation is for the column of tasks that are the same every time. There is a longer version of that argument in should you hire or automate.
If you are not sure the busywork is costing you anything, measure first. The missed call calculator takes your missed calls and what an average job is worth, shows the formula, and tells you whether a $500 build is even in the conversation.
How to get a real number
The free 20 minute process audit is where the fixed quote comes from. We walk through one normal week, mark the repetitive work, and put hours against it. You get the map either way. If a build pays for itself, I will tell you which tier and why. If it does not, I will tell you that too. Start here, or read how this works for businesses across Illinois.