In this market, prices are rare. Many providers work with a free intake followed by a quote, which means you only find out after two conversations whether you're in the right range. We'd rather put the amounts that are fixed on our pricing page, even if that means some people drop off before they call.

That's not transparency as a virtue. It's filtering: if this is far outside your range, neither of us gains anything from an introductory call.

01 / the answerWhat does an AI system cost?

A system has no public price; it proceeds by invitation. After a conversation in which we ask through the process, we name one fixed price, with no quote process. What does have a fixed price is listed at datadriftdigital.com/prijzen.

02 / the structureWhy three amounts and no packages?

Because a package assumes we know what you need. With a bottleneck-based approach it's the other way round: you start with the work that costs the most, and its scope determines the price. Three questions determine which class you fall into, and they're questions about your situation, not about our services.

You'll hear those three questions again in the first conversation, framed as process questions. They're not there to push you into a class but because, without the answers, we can't name a price we can also deliver on.

The price depends on your bottleneck, not on a package you choose.

03 / the monthly itemWhat do you pay monthly, and for what?

For management, and that's different from renting. With renting, your access stops the moment you stop paying. Here, the maintenance stops: your accounts, your data and your documented way of working remain yours and keep existing. What falls away is that we keep it running.

That maintenance covers the work you don't see as long as things go well. A supplier changes its connection and something needs adjusting. Your offering changes and the instructions behind it need to follow. A better model comes out and the tuning gets recalibrated. And someone checks whether it's still running, which for a chain connected to multiple systems isn't an upsell but a condition.

That's why management isn't optional for the two larger classes. For the smallest form, you may skip it, and then we also say what that means: if something breaks, that's a new assignment, not a warranty case.

04 / the catchWhat's not included?

Three things, and they're listed here because otherwise you'd find out afterwards.

• Model usage runs on your own account. We set up the connection with the AI provider in your name and keep an eye on usage, but the bill goes to you. That's deliberate: this way you see what it costs and there's no markup from us in between. Expect tens to several tens of euros per month, and it scales with usage.
• External data sources you pay at cost. If a job needs data from outside, we pass it on without margin, with a monthly cap that you approve beforehand. We don't fold such a variable cost into a fixed price, because then we'd carry a risk we'd have to pass on to you.
• Work outside the agreed scope we arrange separately, before it starts. Within the scope it's a fixed price with a measurable delivery criterion.

05 / the marketHow does this compare to what others charge?

Anyone looking around in the Netherlands finds three price levels. At the bottom, one-off jobs: one workflow, built and delivered, usually without management. At the top, implementation projects, often with a minimum number of employees before you qualify. In between, agencies that publish a range, where the upper end belongs to larger businesses than the ones we serve.

We sit in the middle, and that's a deliberate choice. Above the bottom, because we don't sell a one-off workflow but a working chain with management and a delivery criterion. Below the agency projects, because we solve one bottleneck and don't sell a programme. That's not a discount, it's a different unit.

For us, the revenue isn't in the first bottleneck but in the second and third. That's also the most honest reason to start small: if the first build delivers nothing, there's no second, and then both of us have lost little.

06 / the limitWhen is this too expensive for you?

If your leak is smaller than the bill. Work it out: how often does the work recur, how long does it take each time, and who does it. If you come out at a few hundred euros a month in wasted time, you won't earn back a built system plus management, and you shouldn't do this.

There's another limit that's less about money. If your bottleneck is at the front end, too few customers rather than too much manual work, no system will solve that. Then a system is the most expensive way to let that problem persist.

In both cases we say so in the conversation. That's not noble but practical: a client who doesn't earn it back is a dissatisfied client six months later.

07 / the alternativeWhat does it cost if you don't do it this way?

The question of what an AI system costs only has meaning next to a second question: what does the alternative cost? There are three, and all three have a price.

• Building it yourself. It's technically possible. The tools are open source, the documentation is public, and anyone who dares needs only a few hundred euros a year in server costs. The cost, then, isn't in the money but in the attention: someone at your business has to build it, understand it, and keep maintaining it when something breaks on a Tuesday morning. Expect a few weeks of work for the first chain, and after that a few hours a month that nobody had planned for. If you can spare that, by all means do it yourself. We mean that.
• Hiring an agency for a single job. For a one-off automation or integration, you pay a one-time amount, depending on how many systems need to connect. That's a fair price for a real piece of work. Watch two things. One-off jobs stack up: three integrations at three different times means three start-ups, three explanations and three invoices. And what you buy is the integration, not the maintenance: that comes back the moment something changes in one of the surrounding systems.
• Doing nothing. The cheapest option on the invoice, until you count the hours. Take six hours a week of manual work: receipts, preparing files, typing the same answer again. Convert that to what an hour of your or your employee's time costs and you have an amount per year. That amount appears on no invoice and shows up in no bookkeeping, and precisely because of that it's so easy to do nothing about it.

Note the difference from the comparison above. In 05 / the market we put ourselves next to other AI builders; here we put building next to not building. What we sell sits between those three: you're not buying the time of someone who builds it, but the result that comes out of it, with documentation so you can carry on with it yourself later. What does have a fixed price is listed on our pricing page; a system proceeds by invitation.

08 / the payback timeWhen do you earn it back?

A worked example with the assumptions included, so you can replace them with your own figures.

Say: a small build, plus the management that comes with it; you'll hear those amounts in the conversation. The bottleneck is six hours of manual work per week. At an internal hourly rate of €75, that's €450 a week, or roughly €1,950 a month in time spent on work where nobody is making a decision.

Two things usually make a sum like that too good to be true. So we factor them in right away.

That makes the sum short: the build cost divided by what you keep net per month is the number of months. Plug in the amounts from the conversation alongside your own hourly rate, and you have your payback time. From the moment the build cost is recovered, only the management fee stands against the time saved.

You earn it back with the hours you keep net, not with the hours you save gross.

Put the honest counterpoint next to that straight away. If those six hours a week aren't converted into something that generates money (more customers, faster delivery, fewer mistakes), you earn nothing back. You've then gained time that you spend on something else. That can be a perfectly good reason, but then don't call it an investment.

And if you don't know which six hours they are: that's what the free diagnostic conversation is for. Thirty minutes, no obligation, and sometimes the outcome is that you're better off cancelling two subscriptions and changing nothing else.

This text was produced with AI assistance and checked and approved for publication by a human.