Three numbers, all of them on the proposal before we start. We do not mark up platform usage and there is no minimum spend on it.
A single automation, live in about a week.
You want it to keep working without thinking about it.
Messaging, voice and identity as one connected layer.
Billed by the vendor to your account, at cost, itemised. Indicative Australian rates:
| Outbound SMS | A few cents per 160-character segment |
|---|---|
| Inbound SMS | Usually free to a cent |
| Phone number | A few dollars per number per month |
| Voice minutes | A cent or two per minute, inbound and outbound differ |
| Verification | A per-check fee that varies by channel |
| Video | Per participant-minute |
| Cents per thousand for typical transactional volume | |
| Typical small business | $30 to $300 a month all in |
For the clients whose automation work never actually finishes.
Some clients do not have one job. They have a stream of small ones, and every fixed price for those turns into an argument about whether the thing they just asked for was in scope. A retainer buys a block of our week instead. You get allocated engineering hours, we get a schedule we can plan around, and nobody argues about scope again.
| Allocation | Hours | Monthly | Effective rate | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maintain About $2,860 of build work a month at our published bands. | 4 hrs/wk about 17.3 hrs/mo | $2,717/mo | $157/hr list $165 | Keep what is running healthy, absorb the small requests. |
| Improve About $5,720 of build work a month at our published bands. | 8 hrs/wk about 34.7 hrs/mo | $5,434/mo | $157/hr list $165 | One meaningful improvement a fortnight, plus the small stuff. |
| Build About $11,440 of build work a month at our published bands. | 16 hrs/wk about 69.3 hrs/mo | $10,868/mo | $157/hr list $165 | A standing half-team. Continuous delivery against a backlog. |
| Embedded About $21,450 of build work a month at our published bands. | 30 hrs/wk about 130.0 hrs/mo | $20,378/mo | $157/hr list $165 | We function as your automation department. |
Priced at a 5%% discount to the published $165 hourly rate for committing to 3 months. Commit to twelve and the discount goes to 15%%. The discount buys the commitment, not the volume: reserved capacity is capacity we cannot sell to anyone else, and that is the thing you are paying for.
If you have one defined job and no stream of follow-on work, a fixed-price build is cheaper and you should take that instead. A retainer only beats it when the requests keep coming.
The honest test is whether you can name three things you would ask for in the next month. If you cannot, take the fixed price and come back when you can.
Describe the work and compare both →Send us your volumes and the manual process. You will get a fixed price and a modelled run cost.