What automation costs in a small company
Published 6 August 2026
Short answer: 1 500 to 4 500 PLN for the first process, plus an optional 200 PLN a month for ongoing care. The longer answer is below, together with what drives that number and when it is not worth doing at all.
My prices
| What | How much | Market rate |
|---|---|---|
| One simple process | from 1 500 PLN | 1 500 – 3 000 PLN |
| A process with integration and alerts | 4 500 PLN | 3 000 – 10 000 PLN |
| A package of three processes | 9 000 PLN | 10 000 – 30 000 PLN |
| AI agent | from 1 500 PLN | 4 000 – 20 000 PLN |
| Inbox triage | from 500 PLN | from 2 990 PLN |
| Care for a running system | from 200 PLN / month | 490 – 990 PLN / month |
Market rates are given for comparison, from published price lists of Polish automation companies, as of August 2026. Mine come out lower because I work alone and there is no office to cover.
What moves the price
How many sources there are. One portal is one thing to recognise. Three portals in three formats is three times the work on recognition, though not three times the work on everything else.
How messy the data is. A table inside an email is easy. A sentence a person writes differently every time is hard.
Whether something has to be connected to. Google, Gmail and Sheets are simple. A closed industry system with no open access can double the quote, or settle the question of whether it can be done at all.
Whether you want ongoing care. That is a separate decision, see below.
Do the tools cost extra
Usually not. I start with what you already have. Some of it I build on Google Workspace, some of it locally on your own machine, depending on the project. Either way you can build more on that than most people suspect, and it adds nothing to your bills.
If the process outgrows it, I pick a tool to fit the case and tell you what it costs before you buy anything. I take no commission from vendors.
When it does not pay
If you do something once a month for ten minutes. That is two hours a year. Automation will never pay for itself and you will hear that from me instead of a quote.
If the process keeps changing. Automation likes repetition. Something that looks different every time will need constant fixing.
If the process is not sorted out yet. Automating a mess gives you a faster mess. First somebody has to decide how it should work.
How to work out whether it is worth it
Measure for one week how long that single task takes you. Multiply by four. If it comes to more than two hours a month, there is something to talk about. An example: five hours a month at 80 PLN an hour is 400 PLN — a 1 500 PLN setup then pays for itself in four months, a 4 500 PLN one in about a year.
Below two hours it is not worth your money or my time.
Is ongoing care compulsory
No. The system will run without it.
But one day it will stop. A portal rebuilds its panel, a supplier changes the format of a summary. Without care you find out when something has already been lost, and you pay for the fix separately. With care somebody is watching and fixes it before it turns into a problem.
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