How Much Does Marketing Automation Cost?
By Andrés Jiménez, founder of Sikorre
How much does marketing automation cost? It depends on how big the job is. A simple setup that answers messages on one channel costs a lot less than a full system with a CRM, follow-up campaigns, text messages, email and AI agents working together.
That's the honest answer, and the rest of this post shows you where the price comes from, what we charge, and the costs most companies forget to mention.
Why Nobody Gives You One Price
Every business is different. Two companies can ask for "automation" and need completely different things.
Here's what moves the price:
- How many channels: one inbox, or messages coming in from several places at once
- How much the system does: just answering, or also following up, bringing back old customers, sending texts and emails
- What your information looks like: clean and organized, or spread across notebooks, chats and spreadsheets
- Add-ons: every extra piece you want connected adds work
A simple CRM that takes leads from one channel is one project. A CRM that pulls from several channels and runs follow-up, reactivation, text, email and AI agents is a very different one.
Why I Don't Quote Before I Understand the Job
I've learned that giving a price without knowing the real scope can go either way. Sometimes it works in my favor and I make more. Sometimes it works against me and I end up doing twice the work for the same money.
Neither is good for the client. A guessed price means someone is losing, and in a long partnership that always comes back. So we talk first, understand the business, and then quote.
What We Charge
We still publish starting prices, because you deserve a number before you call anyone. These are our current prices:
| Plan | Setup | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| AI agent on one channel | from $2,330 | $197 |
| CRM | from $3,500, first month included | $530 |
| CRM plus one AI agent | $4,850 | $620 |
Setup is paid 50% when we start and 50% when we deliver. The monthly plan has a 12-month minimum. The final number depends on your scope, which is exactly why we have the conversation first. If you'd rather have a dedicated person building for you every week, you can also hire an AI engineer.
The Costs Nobody Mentions
This is where a lot of owners get surprised. Some costs come from the platforms themselves, not from us, and we don't cover them:
- AI credits: what the AI model charges for every reply
- Message fees: what the messaging platform charges for certain messages
- Voice minutes: if your agent answers phone calls
We tell every client about these on day one, along with a range based on what we've seen. For AI credits, the range is small. A business handling around 50 conversations a day spends about $12 a month, and we haven't seen one go over $20. Message fees and voice minutes are billed separately and depend on how you use them. If you're weighing an agent on the phone, I compare the costs in AI Receptionist vs Answering Service: Which One Wins the Call?.
How to Know If It's Worth It
Start with the hours nobody covers. We measured two days of a bot we run for a gym in Barranquilla. In that time, 45 different people wrote in, and 29% of their messages arrived before 8 am or after 6 pm, when nobody was at the front desk. Almost half of those people wrote at least once outside business hours.
Two days isn't enough to project a full month, so I won't. But it shows the question to ask: how many of your customers write when nobody is there to answer, and what is each one worth to you?
For a uniform store in Colombia, the answer was clear. As I wrote in what marketing automation is, its bot handled up to 61 conversations in one day and closed about $315 in sales in a single night, sales that used to go to a competitor.
Then do the math for your business:
- Hours your team saves each week
- Sales you lose today because nobody answers in time
- Compare both with what you'd pay each month
If those first two numbers are bigger than the third, it's worth it. If you're wondering what those saved hours mean for your team, read Will Marketing Automation Reduce My Staff?.
What Surprises Clients Most
What surprises clients most is how we work.
We want to understand the business before we touch anything, and we want to be a partner, not one more company on the vendor list. We're a new company, so we have to work hard to build a name and a reputation, and then keep it.
That's also why we'd rather spend 30 minutes understanding your business than send you a number that's wrong.