AI Small Business Playbook

Home › Cost simulator

Interactive tool · Canadian small business

What should AI cost your business?

Pick your business type, answer 3 quick questions, and build a realistic AI stack item by item. Every price comes from a real product with a labeled source — and every tool is shown next to the staff hours it replaces, with the wage math visible.

Start building your stack

1 · Pick your business type

The questions, the suggested stack, and the hours math reconfigure for each type.

2 · Answer 3 quick questions

We build a realistic starting stack from your answers — everything stays adjustable below.

Drives call volume and how much phone time you lose.
Missed reservation calls are pure leakage.
Decides whether invoice capture helps you.

Your wage baseline

Every "hours replaced" figure below is converted with this number — change it to match your reality.

Wage + overhead, or your own effective rate.

3 · Build your AI stack

Tick what you'd actually use. Price tiers adjust per tool.

Official vendor's own price Reported reputable third-party Estimate our reasonable estimate Quote-based no published price
Zero-effort path: fills in a normal configuration. A starting point — not a recommendation. Adjust to match yours.

✅ Essentials — the core stack

Tools with a proven small-business track record. Start here; most shops need only 2–3 of these.

💡 Nice to have

Genuinely useful for some, a luxury for most. Same honest pricing, visually de-emphasized.

Your running total

Monthly AI cost$0
Staff hours freed / month0
Value of freed time$0
Est. net monthly$0

Estimates from published pricing (see confidence labels). Freed time only becomes money if you redeploy it — serve more customers, cut overtime, drop a shift. Prices change: verify before you buy.

Read this before you spend a dollar

  • Start with one tool, not six. Every successful small-business AI story looks the same: one well-defined workflow, a measurable baseline, a human in the loop.
  • Free tiers first. Most tools above have a free plan — run the free tier for a month and measure the hours before paying.
  • Most "AI" wins are software wins. Salon no-shows fall 25–40% from automated SMS reminders — a 2015 technology. AI phone answering is the upgrade, not the foundation.
  • Your data is the blocker, not the model. An agent is only as good as the records feeding it. Clean item lists and digital invoices come before agents.

Picked a tool? Run the ROI math.

Take the monthly cost from your stack above and plug it into the ROI calculator with your own hours — it'll show estimated payback time and net benefit.

Open the ROI calculator

Sources & access dates

All prices verified or re-verified on 2026-09-28. "Official" = the vendor's own page; "Reported" = reputable third-party; "Estimate" = our clearly-labeled reasonable estimate; "Quote-based" = no published SMB price — get a quote.

  • ChatGPT Plus US$20/mo; free tier — official (OpenAI Help Center).
  • Shopify Magic: $0, included with every Shopify plan — official (Shopify App Store listing).
  • GlossGenius Standard US$24/mo, Gold US$48/mo — official (glossgenius.com blog, 2026).
  • Tidio: Free $0; Starter ~US$29/mo; Growth from ~US$59/mo — official (tidio.com blog, 2026).
  • 7shifts: free Comp plan for small teams; Essentials ~US$40/mo/location; Pro ~US$80/mo/location — reported (ontheclock.com, posusa.com, emergent.sh, Sep 2026).
  • Slang.ai Core ~US$399/mo per location — reported (cloudtalk.io, maple.inc, G2, Sep 2026). Entry-tier phone agents ~US$66–79/mo (Goodcall-style); Dialzara from US$29/mo — reported (cloudtalk.io, Sep 2026).
  • Stockbot inventory forecasting: free plan; paid ~US$9–25/mo — reported (taranker.com, commoninja.com, 2026).
  • Otter.ai: Basic free; Pro ~US$17/mo per user — reported (castmagic.io, ecommerceparadise.com, MeetGeek, Sep 2026).
  • Mailchimp: Free (250 contacts); Essentials from ~US$13/mo; Standard from ~US$20/mo — reported (sendx.io, justpricing.com, smtpedia.com, Sep 2026).
  • Vagaro ~US$24–30/mo; Square Appointments free for solo — reported (glossgenius.com blog, cherdigitalanalytics.com, 2026).
  • QuickBooks/Xero AI invoice capture: $0 extra, built into plans — reported (widely documented; research 2026-09-28).
  • Scandit ShelfView: from ~US$199/mo starting tier — reported (published pricing tier; research 2026-09-28).
  • Hours-replaced figures: estimates unless noted — e.g. 42-seat Portland restaurant saved 10 staff hrs/wk at $89/mo (Medium, Jun 2026); scheduling 2–4 manager hrs/wk is a vendor-adjacent rule of thumb.
  • AI review-response drafting: quote-based — no published small-business benchmark found.

Most AI tools bill in USD — your card statement will show the CAD equivalent at its own rate.