What does AI automation cost for a small business in Canada?

The honest answer is that it depends on how messy the process is, not on how clever the technology is. A well-defined job with clean data is cheap. The same job where the information lives in three places and a person reconciles them by hand is not.

We quote a fixed price per project before anything is built, and you approve it in plain English. No hourly meter, no surprise scope.

What actually drives the price

• How many systems have to talk. Two is straightforward. Five, one of which has no API, is a different job.
• Whether the process is already written down. If nobody has ever mapped it, discovering it is part of the work — and it is often the part that saves the most.
• What happens when it is wrong. An automation that drafts an internal summary needs less checking than one that emails a customer or moves money.
• Whether you want it hosted. Running and monitoring the automation for you is a monthly cost; handing it over to run yourself is not.

How our engagements are shaped

• A first conversation, free. One honest hour mapping how your week runs and where the hours go. You get the map whether or not you hire us.
• A fixed-price first build. The single automation with the clearest payback, quoted up front, so you can judge us on something small before committing to anything larger.
• Monthly support, optional. Hosting, monitoring and changes as your process changes. Cancellable; the work is yours either way.

Should I hire an agency or do it myself?

Sometimes you should do it yourself, and we would rather say so than sell you something you do not need.

Do it yourself when the process is one you understand completely, it touches two systems that both have good integrations, and somebody on your team enjoys this kind of tinkering. Tools like n8n, Make and Zapier exist precisely for that, and a weekend is often enough.

Hire someone when the automation touches customers, when being wrong is expensive, when it has to keep working while nobody is watching it, or when the honest cost is the twenty hours of your own time it would take — time that is worth more spent on the business. If you are choosing between the tools rather than between building and buying, the n8n vs Make vs Zapier comparison is the more useful page.

Getting a number

We will not quote a range on a page without knowing your process — it would be a guess dressed up as a price. Book the first conversation and you will leave it with a real figure and a map of where your hours go, at no cost. Talk to us.