Get your admin hours back with one custom AI agent.
If you searched for what AI agent development costs, here is a straight answer: $2,500 AUD ex GST, fixed, for one custom agent connected to two of your systems, live in about 30 days. This page explains what an agent actually is, what it can do for a small business, and whether one fits yours.
What an AI agent actually is
A chatbot sits in a window and waits for you to type. An AI agent is different. It is a worker made of software: it has tools, a to-do list and written rules. It reads your inbox, looks things up in your CRM, files documents in your drive and checks your calendar. Then it acts, inside the systems you already use, without you prompting it.
The important word is acts. A chatbot can tell you that three quotes have gone unanswered. An agent notices, drafts the follow-ups in your words, and sends them once you approve. Here is what that looks like in an ordinary week.
Email triage
You open the inbox at 6am to 60 unread emails and sort them yourself before the real work starts.
Overnight the agent has sorted the lot, drafted replies to the five that matter and filed the rest. You start the day with a short list.
Quote follow-ups
Quotes go out, then silence. Chasing feels awkward, Thursday got busy, and the job goes to whoever followed up.
Every quote is chased politely, on a schedule, in your words, until there is a yes or a no. Nothing falls through the cracks.
Document filing
Attachments pile up in the inbox. Finding last month’s compliance certificate takes twenty minutes and three searches.
Every document lands in the right Team Drive folder, named your way, the moment it arrives. Finding it takes seconds.
Customer updates
Customers ring to ask where their job is up to, and someone stops billable work to go and check.
The agent reads the job status and sends the update before they think to call. Fewer interruptions, calmer customers.
Everything above runs inside your existing accounts, governed by written rules and logged, so you can see every action the agent took and why. Not sure which jobs would suit your business? Ask Andy a question, it is a free 30 minute chat, not a pitch.
Why small, scoped agents are the ones that work
You may have seen the headline that 95% of corporate AI pilots fail. It comes from MIT’s 2025 GenAI Divide study, and it is worth reading past the headline. The pilots that failed were vague, sprawling, do-everything projects. The ones that paid off were narrow back-office automations with a fixed scope: one job, two systems, done properly. That finding is the entire design of this offer.
Meanwhile, most agencies quote $5,000 to $25,000 for a small business agent build, usually after a discovery phase, usually billed hourly. At those prices the maths only works for big firms. At $2,500 with the scope fixed in writing, it works for a business of three.
And waiting is not free. If admin eats five hours of your week, every month you put this off costs you another twenty-odd hours you never get back. The models will keep improving, but your workflow, your email, your CRM, your rules, does not go out of date. A better model next year just makes the same build better.
of corporate AI pilots showed no measurable return (MIT, 2025). The winners were narrow, fixed-scope, back-office builds. Exactly this shape.
is the typical Australian agency quote for a small business agent build, often hourly, often after a paid discovery phase.
is the repetitive admin a well-scoped agent typically absorbs. If your number is near this, the payback maths below will interest you.
Pick the two connections that hurt most
Your build includes two system connections. Each one opens up a family of jobs. Most owners start with email plus one other, then add connections later once the agent has earned its keep.
Inbox triage, drafted replies waiting for your approval, attachments filed, the important stuff surfaced. The most common first connection, because everyone’s inbox is on fire.
CRM
New leads captured and entered properly, quotes chased until they close, records kept clean, follow-ups that actually happen. Works with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho and most others.
Filing
Team Drive or document store kept in order. Certificates, invoices, signed forms and photos land in the right folder with the right name, every time, without anyone thinking about it.
Reporting
A Monday morning summary of the pipeline, the week’s jobs or the unpaid invoices, pulled from your own systems and written in plain English. No dashboards to learn.
Bookings
Calendar requests handled, appointments confirmed, reminders sent, reschedules sorted without the four-email back-and-forth. Google and Outlook calendars both work.
Customer updates
Status updates sent before customers ring to ask. The agent reads your job system and tells people where things are up to, in your words, on your schedule.
Two connections is the base build, on purpose. It is enough to solve one real problem properly, and small enough to go live in about 30 days. Extra connections are add-ons, priced per connection and quoted before you commit to anything.
One agent. Two connections. $2,500, fixed.
The price is on the page because that is how we would want to be sold to. $2,500 AUD ex GST buys one custom AI agent connected to two of your systems, for example email plus CRM, or email plus Team Drive filing. The scope is agreed in writing before the build starts, so both of us know exactly what “done” means.
It goes live in about 30 days. When it does, everything belongs to you: the accounts, the credentials, the configuration and plain-English documentation of how it all works. If we vanished tomorrow, your agent would keep running and any competent developer could pick it up.
Need more later? Add capacity or connections one at a time, priced per add-on and quoted before you commit. No bundles, no pressure.
- Scoping of the job that costs you the most time
- Fixed scope agreed in writing before we start
- One custom AI agent with tools and a to-do list
- Two system connections of your choice
- Guardrails: draft mode, human approval steps, audit log, kill switch
- Monitoring and alerting, so failures are loud, not silent
- Live in about 30 days, with a support window after go-live
- Plain-English documentation. You own everything
- Third and fourth connections (available as add-ons)
- Ongoing model usage and subscriptions (typically $50 to $300 a month, billed directly to you by the providers)
- A customer-facing chatbot for your website (different product, happy to talk about it)
- Anything we did not agree in writing. That is the point of fixed scope
This is probably for you if
- A repetitive task eats five or more hours a week: triage, chasing, filing, updating
- The work follows rules you could explain to a new hire in an afternoon
- It lives in systems like email, a CRM, a drive, a calendar or job software
- You want it done for you, not another tool to learn
It is probably not for you if
- No single repetitive task eats five hours a week. Keep your $2,500
- Every job is genuinely different and needs your judgment each time
- You want a customer-facing chatbot rather than back-office help
- The real need is one trigger and one action. A DIY Zapier zap will do
The honest maths, and the honest word on grants
Here is the sum that matters. If admin eats five hours of your week and your time is worth $50 an hour, that is about $13,000 a year. Against a $2,500 build, the payback is roughly ten weeks. If your number is two hours a week, the maths is thinner, and we will say so on the call rather than sell you something marginal.
On funding, the honest position first: there is no open cash grant today that pays for a $2,500 agent build. Anyone telling you otherwise is reading old blog posts. What is real:
- Tax deduction. A build like this is a business expense, and most clients can claim it as a deduction. The $20,000 instant asset write-off was announced as permanent in the 2026-27 Budget, but that change has not passed Parliament yet; ask your accountant where the legislation is up to and how any of this applies to you.
- Queensland grant rounds. Programs like Business Basics have funded digital projects in past rounds. They are closed right now but open periodically. If we work together, we will flag the next round when it opens.
- Free advice, right now. The Digital Solutions program offers government-subsidised digital advice for small businesses, and the federally funded AI Adopt Centres offer free specialist AI advice. Both are worth a look whether or not you talk to us.
- What we will not promise: the R&D Tax Incentive. A $2,500 integration build almost never qualifies, and anyone dangling 43.5% back on a job this size is guessing with your money.
Swap in your own hours and rate. If the sum does not work for your business, we would rather tell you that in the free chat than after an invoice.
Straight answers to fair questions
These are the real objections owners raise, in roughly the order they raise them. If yours is not here, ask Andy a question and get it answered in person.
Is this just ChatGPT with extra steps?
The model is not the product, and we will tell you openly which models and tools we use. What you are paying for is the integration work: connecting a model safely to your email and CRM, the written rules about what it may and may not do, the edge cases, the audit log and the documentation. ChatGPT answers questions when you ask them. Your agent does jobs without being asked, inside your systems, to your rules.
What if it emails the wrong thing to a customer?
Fair question, and there is a famous cautionary tale: a Canadian tribunal made Air Canada honour a refund policy its chatbot invented (Moffatt v Air Canada). Our guardrails exist because of exactly that risk. Customer-facing messages start in draft mode. A human approves anything that leaves the building, until you choose to loosen the rules yourself. Every action is written to an audit log with a timestamp. And there is a kill switch that stops the agent instantly if you ever want it stopped.
Where does my data go?
It stays in your accounts. The agent runs on your email, your CRM and your drive, under your credentials, not ours. When it needs a model, it uses API access, and API calls to the major providers are not used to train their models. We work within the Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles, and during scoping we will map out exactly which data touches which system, in writing, before anything is built.
Who fixes it when it breaks?
Software connected to other software breaks eventually: an API changes, a password expires, a vendor moves something. The dangerous failure is the silent one, where leads quietly drop while everything looks fine. That is why monitoring and alerting are part of every build, not an extra. You also get a support window after go-live while we tune it with you. After that, you can have us on call under a no lock-in arrangement, or just ring when something changes.
What does it cost per month after the $2,500?
Typically $50 to $300 a month, depending on how much the agent does: model usage plus any software subscriptions it needs. Those accounts are in your name and billed directly to you by the providers, so you see the real numbers rather than a marked-up bundle. We estimate your figure during scoping so there are no surprises in month two.
Why is this so much cheaper than the $10,000 quote I got?
Three reasons. First, the scope is fixed at exactly two connections, so we are not pricing in unknowns. Second, the process is productised: we have built this shape of agent before, so there is no paid discovery phase. Third, we are a family business without agency overheads. The trade-off is real, and we will name it: if you need six systems connected and a research phase, we are not the right fit, and a bigger quote from an agency is fair.
What if my business is too small for this?
It might be, and we would rather say so upfront. The honest test: is there a repetitive task that eats five or more hours a week? If yes, the payback maths works. If no, if every job is genuinely different, or the admin is an hour here and there, keep your $2,500. If you are not sure which side you fall on, book the chat anyway. Andy will tell you straight, either way.
Will my staff hate it?
In our experience the opposite, because of what the agent takes: the chasing, filing and copy-paste work nobody put their hand up for. It lives inside the tools your team already uses, so there is nothing new to learn, and a staff handover session is part of the scope. For what it is worth, Australian survey data suggests only around 13% of people think AI could replace whole roles. The point of this build is to remove tasks, not people.
Could I just build this myself with Zapier or n8n?
If the job is one trigger and one action, yes, genuinely, go and do that. It will cost you an afternoon. The paid case is different: two systems, customer data, judgment calls, and a workflow that must not fail silently. That takes guardrails, approvals, monitoring and testing, and that engineering is what the $2,500 buys.
What happens if AI Answers disappears?
You keep everything and the agent keeps running. It is built in your accounts with your credentials, on standard tools, and you get plain-English documentation of how it all works. Any competent developer could pick it up from the docs. We built it that way on purpose, because vendor lock-in is the oldest trick in this industry and we want no part of it.
What exactly counts as a connection?
One system the agent can work inside: your email, your CRM, your calendar, your document drive, your accounting software or your job management software. The $2,500 build includes any two, for example email plus CRM, or email plus Team Drive filing. Extra connections are add-ons, priced per connection and quoted in writing before you commit.
A Queensland family business, and Andy builds it himself.
We are Hannah and Andy, a two-person consultancy. No pitch deck, no offshored builds, no consulting language. The person you talk to on the free call is the person who builds your agent.
QLD family business
Same time zone, same business hours, same understanding of how Australian small business actually runs. Real names, real ABN, and Andy answers his own phone.
Andy builds it personally
No handover to a delivery team you never meet. The scope call, the build, the testing and the go-live are all the same person, so nothing gets lost in translation.
A builder inside your systems
While Andy builds your agent he is working inside your email, CRM and drive, so he sees how your work actually flows. Most clients get a short list of other places AI could quietly help. No charge, no obligation, and no offence taken if you ignore it.
No bait and switch
The price on this page is the price. Running costs are published, not hidden. We carry the Responsible AI Australia badge, and we would rather lose a sale than overstate what an agent can do.
Talk it through with Andy before you decide.
The 30 minute chat is free and it is a conversation, not a pitch. If an agent fits your business, you will leave with a clear scope and a fixed $2,500 price in writing. If it does not fit, Andy will say so, and you will have lost half an hour and gained a straight answer.