The honest answer: it depends on who you buy it from. There are four ways to put AI to work in a small business, and they range from a $200,000 hire to a flat monthly fee. Here is what each one actually costs, including the parts nobody puts on the invoice.
Every quote you get falls into one of these four buckets. The sticker price and the total cost of ownership are rarely the same number.
$120,000 to $180,000 salary, or $156,000 to $234,000 all-in with benefits and overhead. Add a 2 to 3 month ramp and the risk of one person being a single point of failure.
$20 to $400 a month in software, plus 5 to 15 hours a week of your time maintaining it. At $100 an hour that is $26,000 to $78,000 a year in time you never see on a bill.
$3,000 to $15,000 a month on retainer, often with a separate scoping fee and $10,000 to $50,000 project builds. Some build and hand off; fewer actually operate it for you.
A flat monthly fee scoped to the work it replaces, billed against the line item it eliminates. Building, running, and maintaining are all included. Zero ongoing time from you.
The same automation work, priced four ways, with the hidden line items made visible.
| What you compare | In-house hire | DIY Zapier stack | Generic agency | Apex Solved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sticker cost | $120k–$180k/yr | $20–$400/mo | $3k–$15k/mo | Flat monthly, scoped |
| True all-in cost | $156k–$234k/yr | +$26k–$78k/yr of your time | + scoping & build fees | All-in, one number |
| Who maintains it | The hire | You at 11pm | Sometimes you | Apex (included) |
| Time to live | 2–3 month ramp | Weeks of trial & error | Weeks to months | 7 days |
| Your weekly time | Managing a report | 5–15 hours | Variable | ~30 min/month |
| Best fit | $10M+ with constant work | Hobby / non-critical tasks | Big one-off projects | SMBs under $5M revenue |
Figures are typical 2026 US ranges for small-business automation. Apex Solved does not publish a fixed price because every build is scoped to your stack and bottleneck. Talk to Alex for an exact number.
The number on the invoice is the cheap part. These are the costs that decide what you actually pay.
An owner who spends 8 hours a week babysitting automations is spending $40,000+ a year of the most valuable time in the company. DIY is only cheap if your hours are worthless, and they are not.
A Zap that quietly stops firing does not send you a bill. It sends you a lost client, a missed invoice, a quote that never went out. The failure cost of cheap automation is paid in revenue, not software fees.
A hire takes months to ship and can walk out the door with everything in their head. A build-and-disappear freelancer leaves you stranded the first time an API changes. Continuity is a cost line too.
Apex Solved does not charge by the hour and does not publish a price list, because no two builds are the same. Instead, the fee is flat, monthly, and scoped to the specific work it replaces — the bookkeeping hours, the receptionist who misses after-hours calls, the inbox that eats your mornings. It is priced against the line item it eliminates, so it is designed to cost less than the salaried hours or the agency-plus-time stack it stands in for.
There is no separate maintenance invoice, no hourly meter, and no platform fee on top. Building, running, monitoring, and tuning are all included in the one number. You spend about 30 minutes a month approving the work. When you are ready for a real figure, it takes one 15-minute call to scope your bottleneck and put an exact number on it.
There are four price points. A full-time in-house automation engineer runs $120,000 to $180,000 in salary, or roughly $156,000 to $234,000 all-in once you add benefits, payroll tax, and overhead. A DIY Zapier or Make stack costs $20 to $400 a month in software plus 5 to 15 hours a week of your own time, which is $26,000 to $78,000 a year in time alone if you value an hour at $100. A generic agency retainer is typically $3,000 to $15,000 a month. A done-for-you studio like Apex Solved charges a flat monthly fee scoped to the work it replaces, with zero ongoing time from you. Talk to Alex at aaarhontoulis@gmail.com or (484) 602-6390 for an exact number.
An automation or AI engineer earns $120,000 to $180,000 in base salary for a small business in the US. The real cost is higher: add 25 to 30 percent for benefits, payroll tax, equipment, and software, and the all-in number is $156,000 to $234,000 a year. You also carry recruiting time, a 2 to 3 month ramp before they ship anything, and the risk that one person is a single point of failure. For most businesses under $5M in revenue, a full-time hire is hard to justify against the volume of automation work.
Zapier looks cheaper on the invoice and is often more expensive in total. The platform is $20 to $400 a month, but a non-trivial setup eats 5 to 15 hours a week of an owner or staff member maintaining it, debugging silent failures, and re-wiring flows when an API changes. At $100 an hour that is $2,000 to $6,000 a month in time you do not see on a bill. A done-for-you build removes that time entirely. Once you value your own hours honestly, the total cost of ownership usually favors the agency for any automation that actually matters to revenue.
Generic AI automation agencies charge $3,000 to $15,000 a month on retainer, often with a separate scoping or discovery fee and project builds of $10,000 to $50,000. Pricing varies with scope and how much the agency operates the system versus just building it. Apex Solved prices differently: a flat monthly fee per line of work, scoped to your business, that includes building, running, and maintaining the automation. There is no separate maintenance bill and no hourly meter.
Apex Solved charges a flat monthly fee scoped to the specific work it replaces, billed against the line item it eliminates rather than by the hour. Because every build is custom to your stack and your bottleneck, there is no public price list. The honest answer is that it is designed to cost less than the salaried hours or the agency-plus-time stack it replaces. Talk to Alex for an exact number tied to your scope: aaarhontoulis@gmail.com or (484) 602-6390.
The cheapest option on paper is DIY with Zapier or Make, and it is the right call for a hobby workflow or a non-critical task. It stops being cheapest the moment the automation touches money, clients, or your calendar, because the failure cost and your maintenance time outweigh the software fee. The cheapest reliable way to automate the work that actually runs your business is a fixed-fee done-for-you build that you do not have to operate. Cheap is not the same as low total cost of ownership.
Weighing a hire against an agency? Is AI automation worth it for a small business? →
15-minute call with Alex. We scope your bottleneck and put an exact monthly figure on it. No pitch deck. No fluff.
aaarhontoulis@gmail.com · (484) 602-6390