AI pricing runs from free to "contact us for pricing," which is not helpful when you are trying to budget. Here is the honest landscape for a small business in 2026.
The Four Price Tiers
Free ($0). The consumer versions of major AI assistants. Genuinely useful for drafting emails, summarizing documents, and brainstorming. Fine for anything you would say out loud in a coffee shop. Not appropriate for customer data, and they do not connect to your systems.
Off-the-shelf subscriptions ($20 to $60 per user per month). Business tiers of the big AI assistants, or AI features inside software you already use. This is the right tier for most owners to start with. The jump from free buys you data protections and better capability.
Configured tools ($50 to $500 per month). Software built for one job, set up for your business: missed-call text-back services, review management, booking automation. You are paying for the job getting done without anyone touching it. A missed-call text-back system that rescues two customers a month usually pays for itself several times over.
Custom builds (one-time project cost, then modest running costs). Something built specifically for your workflow, like invoice and purchase order automation that matches how your shop actually processes paperwork. Small, focused builds land in the hundreds to low thousands, not the six-figure horror stories. Running costs after that are usually tens of dollars a month, and we quote them before you commit.
How to Tell If a Price Is Fair
Work out what the problem costs you first. The math is simple and worth doing:
- A missed call that would have become a $300 job, twice a month, is $7,200 a year.
- Five hours a week of retyping invoices at $25 an hour is $6,500 a year.
- An hour a day answering the same staff questions is over $6,000 a year.
If a tool costs $100 a month and removes a $6,000 problem, the price is fair. If nobody can tell you what problem it removes, the price is not the issue. The tool is.
The "Contact Us for Pricing" Problem
We think hiding prices is a bad habit in this industry, so we do not do it. Our Business Health Check is $150 flat, it tells you which of your problems are worth solving and roughly what solving them costs, and $100 of it becomes credit toward any project you move forward with. No mystery.
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