"Is a $1,500 system actually worth it?" Stop guessing. Put in your real numbers and see the exact month it pays for itself. And if the math says no, it says no.
Defaults match a typical private follow-up or reporting build. Drag until it matches your reality.
Only count real, repeated work the system absorbs. Be conservative, the math should survive your skeptic cofounder.
Our private setups run $750 to $2,500. The slider goes higher in case you are pricing someone fancier.
Care plan, tool subscriptions, API costs. Ours start at $199/month, zero if you maintain it yourself.
The honest slider. Every good system keeps a human checking output. Calculators that skip this line are selling you something.
Grey bars: still paying off the setup. Lime bars: you are in profit. The glowing bar is break-even month.
The math is plain: hours saved minus review hours, times your hourly value, times 4.33 weeks, minus running costs. Setup cost divided by that number is your payback month. No growth assumptions, no compounding tricks, no "value of peace of mind" fudge.
If your payback lands past 12 months, this tool tells you not to automate yet, and we mean it. We turn that work down on real calls too, because a client who loses money on a system tells ten people, and a client who breaks even in month two tells everyone.