AI automation services

AI automation services: the deliverables, the prices, and the parts we refuse to sell

Updated 7 September 2026 10 min read

Short answer

AI automation services cover three distinct pieces of work: finding which manual processes are worth automating, building the workflows that replace them, and keeping those workflows alive as your tools change. Sold properly, each piece has its own price and its own deliverable — a costed process map, a working workflow with documentation, and a monthly support arrangement. Ours are $490 for the audit (credited against your first build), from $1,900 per workflow, and $690 a month for support. Anything sold as a single undifferentiated "AI transformation" retainer is priced to hide which of the three you are actually getting.

Every price published, next to what the same work costs elsewhere
Built on your current stack — no CRM migration, no platform lock-in
You own the output: workflows, credentials, source, and runbook
Audit-first, so the shortlist is a business case rather than a demo

Start with a process audit Estimate the payback first

Built for teams of 5–300 people in services, ecommerce, logistics, finance operations, and professional services.

What has to be true before we build anything

Published because "it depends" is the least useful answer in this market, and because these five tests are what stop us selling a build that will not pay back. A process that fails any of them gets flagged in the audit rather than quoted.

01Frequency: the work repeats at least weekly. Anything monthly or seasonal rarely earns back the cost of building it.
02Volume: enough instances per month that removing 80% of the effort is a real number rather than a rounding error.
03Stability: the steps have held for a quarter. Automating a process that is still being redesigned produces rework, so we document and stabilise first — often with the free SOP generator, at no cost to you.
04Decidability: a person can state the rule they follow. Where the judgement is genuinely fresh every time, the right build is an approval queue that routes to a human, not a decision engine.
05Access: every system involved has an API, a scheduled export, or a mailbox we can work with. A closed system with no integration surface is a hard stop and we say so before quoting, not after.

Why most companies buy automation services twice

The second purchase is usually a rescue. These are the three failures we are called in to undo, and all three are decisions made before any code existed.

The engagement was scoped as a retainer, not a deliverable

A monthly fee with no named output produces months where nothing ships and nobody can say what was bought. Splitting audit, build, and support into three priced lines removes the ambiguity: you can buy the audit alone, take the findings, and walk away.

The workflow had no exception path

Automation that handles the clean 80% and fails silently on the rest creates a new job: finding the failures. Every workflow needs a defined route for the cases it cannot handle, and a named person who receives them.

Nobody measured the manual process first

Without a baseline in hours, error rate, and turnaround time, the result cannot be defended in a budget conversation, so the next automation never gets funded. Measuring before touching anything is the cheapest step in the whole engagement.

The three services, and what each one hands you

Sequential but not bundled. Most clients start at the audit; a minority arrive knowing exactly what they want built and skip straight to the second line.

01
Process audit — $490
A structured intake per department covering what actually happens rather than what the process document claims: who touches the work, which systems it crosses, how often it repeats, where it waits. Each process then gets costed in hours and currency so the shortlist can be ranked by payback.
You get Process map, cost-of-manual-work table, and a ranked shortlist with build estimates and payback periods.
02
Workflow build — from $1,900 each
One process built end to end: triggers, AI steps for classification, extraction or drafting, human approval gates where judgement belongs, exception routing, and logging. It runs in parallel with the manual process until the two agree on live data.
You get A live workflow in your own accounts, its SOP and runbook, and a measured before-and-after.
03
Support — $690 a month
Integrations break on the vendor's schedule, not yours. Support covers monitoring, incident response, and one new or reworked workflow a month, which is how the automation estate grows without a new project every time.
You get Monitoring with alerting to a named owner, plus one workflow added or reworked per month.
04
Handover, whenever you want it
Available at the end of any line above. Source, credentials, and a runbook written for whoever inherits it — including the failure modes and how to diagnose them. Several clients take the estate in-house after two or three builds, which is a legitimate outcome rather than a lost account.
You get Admin access, source, runbook, and a written list of known failure modes.

What one automated process is actually worth

A model, not a case study — substitute your own numbers and the recommendation changes with them. This is the same arithmetic the audit applies to every candidate, and it is why we ask for volumes on the first call.

Inbound customer email arriving in a shared support mailbox, read and manually sorted into refunds, delivery questions, and everything else, then assigned to the right person. A common first candidate because the volume is countable and the delay cost is visible to customers.

Support emails received per month: 1,450
Minutes to read, categorise, and assign each one: 1.5 min
Manual hours per month spent triaging: 36.3 h
Loaded hourly cost of the person triaging: $26
Direct cost of manual triage per month: $944
Messages misrouted and re-handled, at 6%: 87
Re-handling at 6 minutes each: $226
Total monthly cost of triaging by hand: $1,170
Same figure over twelve months: $14,040

A classifier that routes 85% of messages automatically and sends the ambiguous remainder to a person with a suggested category saves roughly $11,900 a year on this one process, against a build that starts at $1,900. That is a payback measured in weeks. Halve the volume and it still works; take it down to 200 emails a month and it does not — at that point the honest recommendation is a better set of mailbox rules, which costs nothing.

What is in the service, and what we will not sell you

The exclusion list is longer than most agencies publish. It exists because every item on it is something we have been asked to quote and declined.

In scope

Process discovery, mapping, and cost-of-manual-work analysis
Workflow design: triggers, AI steps, approval gates, exception routing, logging
Implementation on n8n, Make, Zapier, or direct API integrations
Document and email processing: extraction, classification, routing, enrichment, drafting
Data movement between CRM, accounting, helpdesk, spreadsheets, and internal tools
Internal SOPs and runbooks so the workflow survives staff turnover
Baseline measurement and a before-and-after review after launch
Handover of source, credentials, and documentation on request

Not in scope

Replacing your CRM, ERP, helpdesk, or accounting system
Multi-month "AI transformation" programmes with no shipped workflow in them
Reselling software licences with a margin attached — we take no vendor commissions
Custom model training that needs a data science team you do not have
Automating a process that is broken or undocumented — we flag or fix it first
Anything requiring credentials we would have to hold outside your own accounts, where avoidable
Chatbots pointed at customers with no human escalation path behind them

Prices, next to what the same work costs elsewhere

Published in full because the first question every buyer has is whether this is a four-figure engagement or a six-figure one, and because a quote that arrives only after two discovery calls has already cost you a week. We sit deliberately at the bottom of this market; the reasons are below the table, since below-market pricing invites a fair question.

Process audit

$490

Typical market rate: $2,500–8,000

You know there is waste but cannot point at the one process worth fixing first.

Up to three departments in scope
Process map and cost-of-manual-work table
Ranked shortlist with build estimates and payback periods
An explicit not-worth-automating list
Credited in full against your first build

Workflow build

from $1,900

Typical market rate: $6,000–15,000

The process is chosen and you want it running, measured, and documented.

One workflow, end to end, in your own accounts
Exception routing and human approval gates
SOP and runbook for whoever maintains it
Parallel run against the manual process before cutover
Two weeks of post-launch tuning

Support

$690 / month

Typical market rate: $3,000–8,000 / month

Workflows are live and you want them watched, maintained, and extended.

Monitoring and incident response
One new or reworked workflow per month
Integration maintenance as vendors change their APIs
Quarterly review of what the estate is actually saving
Cancel with 30 days notice

The build price is a floor rather than an average. A workflow crossing two systems with clean structured data lands near $1,900; one crossing five systems with scanned documents and inconsistent supplier formats lands materially higher. Those two variables — system count and input quality — move a quote more than anything else, including which platform it runs on. You get a fixed number in writing after the intake call, before any work starts, with the $490 audit deducted in full.

Why this is a fifth of the agency price

Cheap consulting usually means junior people learning on your process. That is not the trade here, so it is worth being specific about where the difference comes from.

No sales layer to fund

You speak to the person who will build the workflow, on the first call and every call after. No account manager, no pre-sales engineer, and nobody whose salary has to be recovered from your invoice.

The audit is a product, not bespoke discovery

Same intake, same cost model, same deliverable every time. Agencies bill discovery as custom work because for them it is; the template already exists here, so you are not paying for its invention.

The plumbing repeats even when your process does not

The tenth mailbox-to-helpdesk pipeline takes a fraction of the time the first one did. We price the tenth. Your process is specific; the integration underneath it rarely is.

No licence margin, no vendor commissions

Revenue comes only from work delivered. That is also why the audit is willing to conclude that automation is the wrong answer — there is no software deal riding on a yes.

Automation services, a software subscription, or your own team

All three are legitimate. They fail in different places, and which one is right depends far more on how much recurring automation work you have than on budget.

Criterion	AI automation services	DIY on Zapier or Make	In-house automation hire
Time to first working workflow	2–6 weeks	An afternoon for something simple	3–5 months including hiring
Cost shape	Fixed audit, then a fixed price per build	Subscription plus your team's time	Salary, tooling, and management overhead
Where it works best	A handful of expensive processes crossing several systems	Single-trigger, single-action automations with no real exceptions	Automation is central to the product, not the back office
Main failure mode	Engagement ends before your team can maintain it — the runbook exists for exactly this	Workflows accumulate with no owner and no documentation	One person becomes a single point of failure
Who owns the result	You — source and credentials handed over	You	You

Which service you actually need

Read down to the line that matches your situation. Three of the six answers do not involve buying anything from us.

You can name the process and it costs more than roughly ten hours a month
Audit, then one build. The standard path and the one with the shortest payback, because the audit fee comes off the build.
Something is clearly wrong but you cannot say which process is worst
Buy the audit on its own. Take the ranked shortlist and decide afterwards whether we build it, your team does, or nobody does.
The automation is one trigger and one action
Do not hire anyone. A Zapier or Make subscription and an afternoon will do it, and our comparison guide explains which of the three platforms to pick.
The process changes every few weeks
Not ready. Document and stabilise it first — the free SOP generator is enough, and automating a moving target is how rework gets created.
You have twenty workflows running that nobody owns
Start with an audit of the estate rather than a new build. Inherited automation tangles usually contain duplicated and dead workflows, and the first win is deletion.
Automation is part of what you sell to customers
Hire in-house. An external service is the wrong structure when the work is permanent and central to the product.

The first half of our audit, run yourself in a week

This is genuinely the same method, done manually. If it turns up nothing above the payback bar, you have saved a fee — and that is a legitimate result rather than a failed exercise.

Day 1Ask every team to list each task they do at least weekly that involves moving information between two systems.
Day 2For the five most frequent, count how many times they actually happened last month using the systems themselves — search the mailbox, count the records — rather than asking people to estimate.
Day 3Time each one end to end, honestly, including the cost of interrupting other work to do it.
Day 4Multiply instances by minutes by loaded hourly cost. Rank the five by monthly cost, not by how annoying they feel.
Day 5For the top two, ask whether someone can write down the rule they follow. If yes, it is automatable; if no, the useful build is an approval queue.
Day 6Check each system involved for an API, a scheduled export, or a dedicated mailbox. None of the three means a hard blocker, and it is better to find that now.
Day 7Compare the top process against a $1,900 build. Anything that does not pay back inside six months goes to the bottom of the list.

If your top process costs more than about $500 a month and passes the rule test, it is worth a conversation with someone — us or anyone else. If nothing clears that bar, automation is not this quarter's bottleneck and the honest advice is to spend the money elsewhere and revisit when volumes grow.

Looking for something more specific?

Frequently asked questions

What are AI automation services, exactly?

Three separable pieces of work: analysis that decides which manual processes are worth automating, implementation that builds the replacement workflows, and ongoing support that keeps them running as your tools change. A provider selling only the first is delivering analysis; one selling only the second is a contractor waiting for a specification. Ask which of the three you are buying before comparing prices between providers.

How much do AI automation services cost?

Ours are published: $490 for the process audit, credited in full against your first build; from $1,900 per workflow implementation; $690 a month for monitoring and support, cancellable with 30 days notice. For comparison, agencies commonly charge $2,500-8,000 for the audit alone, $6,000-15,000 per build, and $3,000-8,000 a month for support. We quote a fixed figure in writing after the intake call — an hourly rate against an open scope is the arrangement most likely to go wrong for both sides.

What is the difference between AI automation services and hiring an automation consultant?

Mostly framing. A consultant is a person you engage for judgement; a service is a defined deliverable with a price attached. In practice the work overlaps heavily, and the useful question is whether the engagement ends with a document or with a workflow running in production. Ours is scoped to end with the workflow, which is why the audit is priced separately and credited back.

Do AI automation services work for small businesses?

Below roughly five people there is usually not enough repetition to pay back a build, and the honest answer is a subscription tool plus an afternoon. Between about 5 and 50 people it works well, and we have a page written specifically for that situation. The test is not headcount but whether one identifiable process costs more than about $500 a month to run by hand.

Which platforms and tools do you build on?

n8n, Make, and Zapier for orchestration, direct API integrations where those fall short, and current large language models for steps needing judgement — classification, extraction, drafting, summarising. Platform choice follows the workflow rather than the reverse, and we take no vendor commissions, so there is no revenue reason to recommend one over another.

Will we have to replace our CRM or accounting system?

No, and be sceptical of any provider who raises it early. Automations run as a layer on top of the systems you already have. Replacing a core system is a separate decision with its own business case and its own risk, and it is not a prerequisite for removing manual work.

How long does it take to get the first automation live?

The audit takes about two weeks. A first workflow typically goes live two to four weeks after that. The usual bottleneck is not build time but access — waiting on credentials and API permissions for the systems involved. Starting those requests during the audit is the single most effective thing a client can do to shorten the timeline.

What happens when an automation breaks?

Every workflow ships with logging and a failure path that notifies a named person rather than failing quietly. Without a support arrangement, the runbook tells your team how to diagnose the common cases. With one, we monitor and fix it. Something will eventually break, because integrations change on the vendor's schedule rather than yours.

Who owns the workflows when the engagement ends?

You do. Workflows live in your own accounts wherever technically possible, and you receive the source, the credentials, and a runbook written for whoever inherits it. Nothing is held back to keep a support contract alive — several clients have taken their estate in-house after a few builds.

Can you take over automations someone else built?

Yes, and it is a common starting point. Inheriting a half-built Make or n8n estate starts with an audit of what is running, what it costs, and what duplicates something else. Companies are regularly surprised by how many workflows are live with no owner, and the first deliverable is often a list of things to switch off.

What if the audit concludes we should not automate?

Then it says so, and that is a real outcome rather than a sales failure. Some processes are cheaper to fix by deleting a step, changing a form, or renegotiating with a supplier. Recommending that costs us a build and saves you the build fee, which is exactly why the audit is priced and delivered separately from implementation.

Do you sign NDAs and handle sensitive data?

Yes. An NDA before the intake call if you prefer, and a data processing agreement before any work touching personal or financial records. Where processing has to remain in a specific jurisdiction we design for that constraint from the start, because retrofitting it after a workflow exists usually means rebuilding the workflow.

Next step

Start where the money is

Tell us which process bothers you most. We come back with what it likely costs you per month, whether it clears the payback bar, and what a build would involve — including if the answer is that it does not.