How much does business automation actually cost?

Most agencies won't tell you until you book a call. Here's what actually drives the price of an automation project, exactly what we charge — publicly, on this page — and how to tell when you don't need to spend anything at all.

The honest answer, up front

It depends — but not in the vague way agencies mean when they say that. The price of automating a workflow comes down to three measurable things: how many decisions the workflow makes and how hard they are, how many systems have to talk to each other, and what happens when something goes wrong at 2am with nobody watching. A simple two-app connection might be an afternoon. A lead qualification system that reads enquiries against your criteria, updates your CRM, follows up on schedule, and escalates properly to a human is genuinely more work — more rules to write, more edge cases to handle, more testing before we'd let it near your customers.

Rather than quote you a fake "market average," here's what we can do honestly: show you exactly what drives cost, publish our own prices in full, and help you figure out whether your job even needs us.

The five things that drive the price

• Volume of judgement calls. Moving data between apps is cheap. Deciding things — is this lead worth chasing, what tone should this reply have, does this document need attention — costs more to automate well, because every rule has to be written down explicitly instead of living in someone's head.
• Number of integrations. Each system the workflow touches adds build time and, later, maintenance surface. Five systems is not five times one system's work, but it's meaningfully more than two.
• Failure handling. What should happen when a source form is half-filled, a portal changes its layout, or an API times out? Systems that escalate cleanly to a human take longer to design than ones that just... stop.
• State and memory. A workflow that remembers where each conversation left off — and stops following up the moment a human replies — needs more structure than a fire-and-forget notification.
• Ongoing change. Your process will evolve. Systems built to be adjusted (clear rules, documented logic) hold their value; clever-but-opaque builds get cheaper upfront and expensive later.

Exactly what Socieva charges

These numbers are on our pricing page and they're the same ones you'd get on a call:

Engagement	Price
Workflow audit	$499 — credited in full against a build commissioned within 60 days
Single-workflow build	$2,500–$6,000 fixed fee, quoted before work starts
Connected multi-step system	$8,000–$20,000 depending on systems involved
Care plans (optional)	$500 / $1,200 / $2,500+ per month — cancel any month
Operations partner	From $6,000/month, minimum six months

Two things about these numbers worth knowing. First, everything built stays yours regardless of whether you keep a care plan — there's no hostage situation. Second, the audit isn't a sales tax: if you commission a build within 60 days, every dollar of it goes against the build price, and you keep the map either way.

What that buys — and what it doesn't

A single-workflow build covers discovery and mapping of your actual process, building the system around your existing tools, testing it against real cases with you, and handing over something documented that your team doesn't need to log into or learn. It doesn't cover inventing a process you don't have — if the underlying workflow is broken, automation makes it faster at being broken. That's why mapping comes first, and why some audit findings end in "don't automate this yet."

When the right amount to spend is close to zero

If your process is standard, connects two well-known apps, and someone on your team has the time to maintain it — an off-the-shelf connector is genuinely the better answer, and most agencies won't say so. We wrote a separate guide on telling custom builds from off-the-shelf tools, because pretending every problem needs a custom system would make us richer and you poorer.

How to pay less (from people who charge for this)

Genuinely, from our side of the table:

• Map before you buy anything. A written map of the current process — here's how to do it yourself — shrinks discovery time, which shrinks the quote.
• Start with one workflow, done completely. One system live beats three half-built. It also tells you whether working with an agency suits you before committing to more.
• Demand fixed-scope quotes. Hourly billing rewards slowness. If an agency can't tell you what a workflow will cost before starting, that itself is information.
• Use the audit credit. Our $499 audit exists so both sides know what's worth building before a larger commitment — and it comes back off the price if you proceed within 60 days.

Cost questions, answered.

How much should a small business spend on automation?

Enough to solve one real bottleneck properly, and not more until it proves itself. The practical path: run the $499 audit to find the highest-value workflow, build that one completely (typically $2,500–$6,000), and only expand once the first system is visibly paying for itself.

Is custom automation worth it compared to monthly tools?

Do the arithmetic on frequency and judgment. Off-the-shelf tools charge smaller amounts forever; custom is front-loaded then quiet. Something running weekly or daily, involving judgment calls, usually justifies building. Something monthly and mechanical usually never will — our guide on custom builds versus off-the-shelf tools walks through it.

What happens if I only need the audit?

Then you only pay for the audit. You keep the map either way, there is no obligation to commission anything, and an honest map is genuinely useful even if you hand it to another vendor or fix the workflow yourself.