When people ask me how much an automation costs, I would like to be able to give a single figure. The truth is that there is not one, any more than there is a single price for “redoing a kitchen”. It depends on what is being connected, how many tools are involved and how much of it is custom. But you can perfectly well explain what drives the price, give realistic ranges, and above all show how to work out whether the investment pays for itself. That is what this article is about.
What really drives the price of an automation
Three factors account for most of the cost. Understanding them already tells you where your need sits, before any quote.
How complex the chain is
A simple automation follows a straight line: an event happens, an action follows. A quote is signed, a follow-up goes out. It is quick to build and to test. As soon as you add conditions (if the customer is a private individual, do this; if it is a business, do that), branches, error cases to handle, the work grows. This is not a whim: every special case has to be planned, wired up and checked against real data. The richer the logic, the more design time it takes.
The number of tools connected
Connecting two tools that already talk to each other is one thing. Connecting five, one of them an old till system with no modern interface, is another. Every extra connection means understanding how the tool exposes its data, handling its authentication and testing that everything flows both ways. The cost does not grow quite in proportion to the number of tools, but it does grow. It is one of the first things we look at together during the audit.
Custom builds or a set solution
Some needs come up so often that they can be handled with a proven approach: the review request after a visit, chasing unpaid invoices, the weekly report. It is faster, so cheaper, and that is what our packaged services cover. Conversely, a sequence that is genuinely specific to your trade calls for custom builds: we start from your tools and your habits, which takes more design work. Both have their place. The point is to pay for custom work only where it really brings something.
Honest ballpark figures
Two things often get mixed up: what the setup costs once, and what the tool subscriptions cost every month.
The set-up cost
This is the design, connection and testing work, billed once. A first useful, well-targeted automation is a modest investment next to what it saves; a project that orchestrates several tools with business logic naturally costs more. Rather than quoting hollow figures here, I would rather point you to our public pricing: it is published precisely so you know what to expect before the first conversation, with no surprise quote.
Tool subscriptions
An automation sometimes relies on third-party services billed monthly: a professional mailbox, text message sending, storage space. These are recurring costs, modest but real, and they belong in the calculation. One point matters here: some platforms bill per task executed, which makes the bill unpredictable as volume climbs. That is one of the reasons we favour building blocks with no per-task cost, a choice I explain in detail elsewhere. A well-designed automation always tries to limit these subscriptions, not stack them up.
The real subject: return on investment
A price on its own means nothing. What counts is what it brings back. And on that, the calculation is surprisingly simple.
Take a repetitive task from your week. Estimate the time it takes each time, multiply by how often it happens in a month, then in a year. Ten minutes of re-keying done four times a day is more than a hundred and fifty hours a year. Set against the cost of the automation that removes it, those hours tell the whole story: most well-targeted automations pay for themselves in a few months, then keep giving time back at no extra cost. That is exactly the reasoning I set out in automate or do it yourself, and it is the sorting we apply to the tasks to automate first.
On top of the time saved come quieter but very real gains: fewer missed follow-ups, so invoices paid faster; fewer retyping errors; customers reminded without fail, so fewer slots lost. These effects do not show up on a payslip, but they weigh on cash flow and on peace of mind.
Why an independent workshop costs less than a big agency
For comparable work, the price varies a lot depending on who does it. A large agency bills for a structure: sales staff, project managers, offices, several levels of sign-off. All of that ends up on the bill, sometimes more than the work itself. An independent workshop mainly bills the work and the time spent. That does not mean “cheapest at any cost”, but “fewer middlemen to pay for the same result”.
Being local also affects the hidden cost. A single contact who knows your case, who can come and see how you work and who replies without going through anyone else means fewer meetings, fewer misunderstandings, less time lost explaining yourself again. That is the whole point of a local workshop, which I develop in automation agency in Lyon. The right price is not the lowest advertised: it is the one where you pay for useful work, and nothing else.
How to get a figure on your real tasks
Everything above stays theoretical until it is applied to your business. The only way to get a fair price is to look at your real tasks, your current tools and what moves between them. That is exactly what we do during the audit: we identify the two or three most profitable projects, then you leave with a clear plan and a figure to set against our published pricing.
This first conversation carries no commitment. The discovery coffee is free: forty-five minutes to work out together how much time you are losing, in Lyon or by video call, and an honest view of what it would cost to get it back. If you want to see how we work first, take a look at our approach to automation before you come.