1. The tools: $20 to $30 per person per month
A serious AI assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) costs between $20 and $30 per person per month in its business version. That is the price of a lunch. For a team of 6, about $150 a month.
Two traps. First: using the free or consumer version for work. It throttles you at peak hours, and depending on the tool, your conversations may be used to train the model. Second: stacking subscriptions. Someone paying for ChatGPT, Claude, a writing tool and a meeting-notes tool spends $100 a month to do the same thing four times. One well-configured assistant covers 90% of cases.
If you already use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, check what is included in your plan before buying anything: the AI is often already there, half hidden.
2. Setup time: the cost nobody budgets
Opening an account takes five minutes. Getting the AI to know your offers, your prices, your tone, your quote templates and your terms is what changes everything, and it is what takes time.
The first time, count 2 to 4 days of work spread over a few weeks for a small team: gathering reference documents, writing instructions, testing on real tasks, correcting. If you do it alone, that time comes out of your evenings. If someone does it with you, it is the main line of the invoice.
That is also why "we tried ChatGPT, it didn't work" is the sentence I hear most: the tool was there, the setup was not.
3. Outside help: when is it worth it?
The math is simple. An employee costs $30 to $60 an hour fully loaded. If AI saves them 2 hours a week, that is 100 hours a year, or $3,000 to $6,000 per person per year. For a team of 6, between $18,000 and $36,000 a year.
Against that, a one-day workshop costs around €2,500, a full setup between €5,000 and €10,000. If the help does not save at least 2 hours a week per person, it is not worth it. If it saves 5, it pays for itself in a quarter.
What I always ask before signing: on which precise tasks will we save that time? If nobody can answer, we are not ready, and I say so.
4. What is not worth paying for
- The 6-month "custom" project. A tool built from scratch, with a project manager and meetings. In a company under 50 people, most of the value comes from existing tools, properly configured, in two weeks.
- Theory training. A day spent understanding "how AI works" saves zero hours the following Monday. What works: working on your real files, at your desk.
- A subscription for everyone. Start with the 2 or 3 people who have the most repetitive tasks. They will convince the others better than you will.
5. A realistic budget, in three sizes
- Solo: $20 to $30 a month for the tool, plus 4 coaching sessions (€890 with me) if you want to move fast. Otherwise, my free course and two weekends.
- Team of 3 to 12: $100 to $350 a month in tools, a half-day or full-day workshop (€1,490 to €2,490), and a month to settle in.
- Company of 12 to 50: $300 to $1,500 a month in tools, a full setup on the 3 or 4 most expensive tasks (€5,000 to €10,000), and one internal point person.
In every case, the AI runs on your own accounts. The day you stop the engagement, everything keeps working.