How should I price my automation services? Should I target small local businesses for a few hundred dollars a month or firms with capital for a couple thousand? Should I use monthly recurring or another payment model?
You should look for clients who have money and suffer from a costly problem that you can find via automated methods. Price using value‑based pricing, not monthly recurring right away. Start with a small, tightly scoped intro offer you can deliver quickly, then move to a recurring deal after proving value.
I don't see the amounts as absurd. If you think you're charging an absurd amount, the prospect will doubt you. I deliver roughly $20,000 a month worth of value, so charging $6‑7k a month is rational. It’s comparable to a $850,000 a year salary, which is far more than a typical software engineering job.
A tiered (“ladder”) pricing approach can work, but the real key is confidence and positioning. Your value comes from the perception of high‑touch, white‑glove service combined with templates that do 80% of the work, letting you leverage effort like a mortgage. To charge $3,000/month, first uncover the client’s problem and quantify its cost (e.g., $10,000/month), then present your $3,000 solution as a clear ROI. Use consultative sales to get them to agree on the problem’s worth, then offer your service as the logical fix.
There's no one‑size‑fits‑all price for an automation because the scope varies wildly—from simple proposal generators to full‑stack hiring pipelines that take a team months to build. Instead of charging per automation, use a value‑based pricing approach: check out Nick Saraiya's value‑based pricing video and apply his framework to price each specific automation based on the value it delivers to the client.
Essentially, anytime you need a dynamic front‑end that can’t be satisfied by a CRM, Google Sheet, or Looker Studio, you need an app. When a client requires a custom front‑end, the solution stops being a simple automation and becomes full‑stack app development. In practice, you build the back‑end flow with drag‑and‑drop, no‑code platforms rather than writing complex code. An average automation you can charge $1‑2K a month for is a backend flow that creates, for example, sales quotes or estimates, saving a team of five salespeople about five hours a month. If each hour is worth $100, that’s $500 saved per month per person, $2,500 total. Applying a typical value‑pricing multiplier of 20 % lets you charge roughly $500 a month, and with additional revenue impact the charge can rise to $1,000 a month. The key is to understand the value equation: the time saved plus any extra revenue the automation enables, then price accordingly.