Practical, checkable research on running a small office with an AI assistant: which tools own which jobs, what an executive assistant really costs, and which admin tasks automate cleanly. Every number is sourced or shown, so you can take the tables to your own budget meeting.
Sunsama costs $17 per user a month billed yearly ($204 a year) or $22 monthly, with no free plan and a 14-day trial that needs no card. Its own pricing page still prints an older $25 figure in one FAQ answer. Here is the current price, how team billing and cancellation work, and what Sunsama costs against Akiflow and Motion for 1 to 10 people.
Fyxer costs $37 per person a month on Pro and $64 on Team billed annually, and Superhuman Mail costs $25 on Starter and $33 on Business. Both price lists changed in 2026 and most comparisons still print the old ones. Here are the current plans, what Fyxer credits cover, what a team of 5 or 10 pays in a year, and which tool fits which office.
Vimcal costs $25 per user a month billed yearly or $35 monthly, and Vimcal EA costs $68.75 a month billed yearly or $85 monthly per assistant. Here is what each plan includes, what an EA team pays in a year, and when an AI assistant is the better buy.
Hiver costs $25 per user a month on Growth, $55 on Pro and $85 on Elite billed yearly, or $35, $65 and $95 monthly, with AI agents and Copilot included on every plan. Plans start at two seats and grow in blocks of five past five users, so a team of seven pays for ten. Here are the yearly totals for 2 to 25 seats and how the bill compares with Front.
Claude Team costs $20 per member a month billed annually or $25 monthly for a Standard seat, and $100 or $125 for a Premium seat with five times the usage. Here is what a team of 2 to 150 pays in a year, why most offices need only one or two Premium seats, and how Enterprise billing differs.
Notion AI is no longer an add-on. Full Notion AI comes with Business at $20 per member a month billed yearly or $24 monthly, Free and Plus get only a limited trial, and Custom Agents cost $10 per 1,000 credits. Here is what a team of 5 to 50 pays and when it is worth it.
tl;dv costs $18 per seat a month on Pro and $29 on Business billed annually, or $29 and $39 billed monthly, and the Free plan records without limit but summarizes only 10 meetings. Here is every plan, the real annual discount, what a team of 5, 10 or 25 pays, how seats are counted, and how tl;dv compares with Otter, Fireflies, Fathom and Read AI.
Blockit AI starts at $145 a month, or $999 a year, for 40 scheduled meetings on Lite. Infinity removes the cap at $495 a month or $4,740 a year, Enterprise starts at $20,000 a year, and Free covers 15 meetings. Here is every plan, the cost per meeting, when Infinity beats Lite, what a team pays and how Blockit compares with Howie, Calendly, Reclaim and OfficeAgent.
Howie AI starts at $25 a month for 1,250 shared credits and scales to $2,500 a month for 150,000, with unlimited teammates, a $20 add-on for an assistant address at your domain and quoted Enterprise pricing. Howie does not publish what a credit buys and works with Google Calendar only. Here is the full ladder, the yearly cost of each step, example team budgets and how it compares with Calendly, Reclaim, Motion and OfficeAgent.
Read AI costs $15 per user a month on Pro, $22.50 on Enterprise and $29.75 on Enterprise+ billed annually, or $19.75, $29.75 and $39.75 monthly, plus a Free plan capped at 5 meetings a month. Playback is Enterprise only, SSO and HIPAA are Enterprise+ only with a five-license minimum, every license in a workspace must share one plan, and there are no refunds. Here is what a 5, 10 or 25-person team pays in a year and how it compares with Otter, Fireflies and Fathom.
Prialto sells managed assistants in units of 55 hours a month, and its pricing table lists $1,600 per unit per month, about $29 an hour, with a 90-day minimum per unit and a $250 setup fee that is waived on a one-year agreement. A full-time dedicated assistant starts at $3,600 a month and enterprise programs of ten units or more are quoted. The $1,500 figure most reviews print still appears in Prialto's own FAQ, so get the rate in writing. Here is what the first quarter and a full year really cost, and how to buy fewer units.
Time etc charges $390 a month for 10 hours, $760 for 20, $1,480 for 40 and $2,160 for 60 hours of a dedicated US virtual assistant, which is $39 down to $36 an hour, tracked by the second. There is no setup fee and no notice period to cancel. Over a year that is $4,680 to $25,920. The $360 and $660 figures many reviews still quote are out of date. Here is which plan fits, how rollover works, and how to cut the hours you buy.
BELAY publishes no pricing: no plans page, no hourly rate, no packages, just a form and a custom quote. What BELAY does publish is the market it sits in, and its own FAQ puts US virtual assistants at $1,200 to $3,000 a month and $30 to $75 an hour, with a dedicated assistant at $2,000 to $5,500. The specific BELAY rates circulating online come from rival agencies and disagree with each other. Here is what is documented, what moves your quote, and how the total compares with the alternatives.
SaneBox costs $9.49 a month for Snack, $15.99 for Lunch and $42.99 for Dinner on monthly billing, or $65, $109 and $319 a year, and a two-year prepay brings them to $4.54, $7.46 and $22.04 a month. Each plan is capped twice, by mailboxes (1, 2 or 4) and by how many SaneBox features you may switch on (2, 6 or all). The free trial is 7 days, not the 14 many reviews print, and education, non-profit and government buyers get 25 percent off. AI reply drafts exist but the pricing page does not say which plan includes them.
Sintra AI is a bundle of 12 chat-based AI helpers for marketing, sales, support and light admin, sold as one workspace plan at $48.50 a month on the current sale ($97 regular) or $15.60 a month billed as $187.20 for a year, with 250 credits a month shared by the whole workspace. Nine of the twelve helpers are marketing, sales or content roles. It is a good buy for a solo owner who wants occasional posts, copy and ideas, and a poor buy for daily inbox, calendar and document work, because the meter charges one credit per email read and the helpers stop when the pool runs out. No SOC 2 or HIPAA claim appears on the site, and the fair use policy rules out several uses the marketing implies.
Fireflies AI costs $10 per seat per month on Pro and $19 on Business billed annually, or $18 and $29 billed monthly, and Enterprise is $39 per seat on annual contracts only. Transcription is never charged in credits, but the AI features are: each workspace gets a one-time grant of 20, 30 or 50 AI credits shared by the whole team, not a monthly allowance, and after that credit packs from $5 for 50 credits renew every month. When a paid team runs out, Fireflies automatically subscribes it to the next credit tier, and the usage dashboard that would show who spent the credits is Enterprise-only. New Free accounts since September 1, 2026 need auto-join on for unlimited transcription.
Sintra X costs $97 for a month, $177 for three months or $624 for a year at regular prices, billed upfront, and the pricing page currently shows sale rates of $48.50, $23.60 and $15.60 a month. Individual helper plans are no longer sold. Every plan includes all 12 helpers and 250 credits a month shared by the whole workspace, with no rollover. Sintra publishes what each action costs: retrieving an email is 1 credit, a scheduled task 1 to 20 or more, a 15-second UGC video about 40. Top-ups are recurring and non-refundable, and the 14-day refund has to be requested from support.
Fyxer costs $49 per person a month on Pro and $99 on Team, or $37 and $64 billed annually and charged upfront for the year. There is now a Free plan, but it does not sort your inbox or draft replies. Fyxer introduced these plans in September 2026 with a monthly credit allowance of 3,000 per Pro seat and 6,000 per Team member, and the older $30 Starter and $50 Professional prices that most articles still quote are legacy plans. Two things still decide the real bill: the 14-day trial can convert to a paid plan for every seat in the workspace, and Fyxer's own billing documentation names the setting "Automatically add users for this domain" as the most common cause of unexpected charges.
Lindy costs $29.99 per user per month on Plus, $99.99 on Pro and $199.99 on Max, with Enterprise quoted individually. The tiers are separated by credits rather than features: 3,000 per user on Plus, 15,000 on Pro, 35,000 on Max, and none of them roll over. Two facts contradict most of what currently ranks for this query. Lindy no longer has a free plan, having removed it when the Plus, Pro and Max lineup arrived in early 2026, so guides telling you to start free are out of date. And the per-user price means little on its own, because a single complex workflow can burn ten or more credits per run and the model you pick can move your effective cost by a factor of ten.
Microsoft Copilot is $18 per user per month for Copilot Business on an annual commitment, or $30 for the enterprise seat, and both are add-ons that need a Microsoft 365 licence underneath. The headline is the easy part. The $18 is promotional, first-year only, and reverts to $21 at renewal. And there is one licensing fact almost every comparison gets wrong, including an earlier version of this page: Microsoft 365 Business Basic does qualify for the add-on, which puts the real entry price at $25.00 per user per month rather than the $41.50 everyone quotes. Every figure verified at Microsoft on September 2, 2026.
Acuity Scheduling costs $16, $27 or $49 a month billed annually, across Starter, Standard and Premium, with no free plan and only a 7 day trial. The number is the easy part. Acuity bills per calendar rather than per user, in bands of 1, 6 and 36, so a five person salon and a two person tutoring outfit pay exactly the same, and the price does not move at all until you cross a band. There is also one Premium only feature that quietly triples the bill for a large group of US buyers who would otherwise sit on the cheapest plan. Every figure verified at the vendor on September 1, 2026.
Shortwave email is $30 per seat per month on Business, $45 on Premier and $120 on Max, billed monthly with no annual discount and a free plan hidden on a second tab. The tiers barely differ on features: almost everything is ticked at $30, and what you buy going up is allowance. Two ceilings decide your plan and neither is in the headline, including a five year limit on how far back AI search can reach on the cheapest paid tier. There is also one requirement that makes the whole price list irrelevant for a large share of US businesses. Every figure verified at the vendor on August 31, 2026.
Motion costs $19 or $29 per seat per month for a team on annual billing, or $29 and $49 billed monthly, and the number that decides your real bill is not the seat price, it is the AI credit allowance underneath it. Pro AI includes 7,500 credits a seat each month and Business AI includes 15,000, after which you pay overage at 25 cents or 19 cents per 100 credits. That metering is missing from almost every comparison article, and it is why two teams on the same plan get very different invoices. A solo buyer pays more per seat than a team, $29 or $39 annually. Every figure read off the vendor, plus the honest case for who should not buy it.
Otter.ai costs $0, $8.33 or $19.99 per user per month billed annually, but the number that decides which plan you need is not your team size, it is how many minutes you record. The trap sits between Pro and Business: 1,200 minutes a month sounds generous until you work out that six hours of meetings a week is about 1,560, at which point the cheapest paid plan does not fit and the next one costs 2.4 times more. Otter also meters three things beyond minutes that almost nobody notices, including AI Chat queries at 20 a month on the free plan. Here is every price verified on August 30, 2026, the break-even calculation, and which plan actually fits.
QuickBooks Online already issues purchase orders, but only on Plus and Advanced, which is the most common reason a US small business goes shopping for software it does not need. The real limit is different: QuickBooks issues purchase orders without enforcing them, so anyone with access can commit money, nothing checks a budget at the moment of request, and the receiving leg of a three-way match is not something the ledger polices. Four procurement systems add that enforcement and write back into QuickBooks for $950.40 to $15,000 a year. Here is exactly what each one syncs, why the number that decides your quote is not your headcount, and the four signs you have outgrown the built-in feature.
An accounting firm buying client onboarding software is usually buying something it already owns, because every practice management system on the US market ships with a client portal. The real question is whether your onboarding problem is storage or chasing. Canopy is also the one product in this comparison that meters per client, so your bill tracks your client list rather than your team, which is the opposite of how the wider portal category prices. Here is what a five-person firm pays across seven options, why Content Snare's active-request metering makes tax season and not client count decide your tier, and the three situations where a second portal genuinely earns its place.
Vendor management software costs between $479.88 and $125,000 a year, and that 260x gap is a difference in scope rather than quality. Genuity is $39.99 a month with unlimited users, VendorCore $99 with no contract, Precoro $499, and Venminder lists its third-party risk platform at $125,000 for twelve months. Half the category publishes nothing at all. Here is the real cost at 25, 100 and 400 vendors, plus the seven different metering units that make two quotes in this category almost impossible to compare.
Only two of the nine board portals US boards commonly shortlist publish a price at all. Boardable is $20.99 to $35.99 per user per month billed annually; BoardPro is $1,650 to $4,400 a year for the whole board with unlimited users, plus US$825 for every subcommittee. That difference in metering, not features, is what decides your cost: at a twelve-person board the per-board option saves $1,568 a year, but add three standing committees and the order flips. Here is the arithmetic at 5, 12 and 20 members, with every figure read off the vendor pricing page in August 2026.
The per-employee headline price is the wrong number to budget from, because every vendor in this category meters on a different unit. BambooHR bills a flat $250 a month for teams of 25 or fewer whatever the headcount, Gusto charges a base fee plus a rate per person, Homebase charges per location with unlimited employees, and Connecteam sells blocks of 30 users. At ten employees the same shortlist ranges from $0 to $250 a month, and the cheapest option is not the one with the lowest advertised rate. Every figure verified at the vendor in August 2026.
Reclaim AI is worth it if your calendar is the thing that is broken, and it is not worth it if your calendar is fine. That line is why the reviews are so split. Every plan priced and verified, the broad OAuth scope nobody reads, the HIPAA gap, why people keep asking whether it is shutting down when they are thinking of a different company, and the honest Motion comparison.
Superhuman Mail is $25 per member per month on Starter and $33 on Business, both billed annually, or $30 and $40 billed monthly. The Superhuman suite now has a Free plan and a $12 Pro plan, but neither includes Mail. The headline $25 is the wrong number for most buyers: Auto Drafts, Ask AI and CRM integrations are all Business features, so the plan the glowing reviews describe costs a third more than the one people quote. Every tier priced against Shortwave, Missive and Copilot, plus why the company itself is now called Superhuman.
Fathom is free for unlimited recording, transcription and instant AI summaries, with paid tiers from $16 to $25 per user per month billed annually. The headline price is not the useful number: the CRM sync most buyers actually want sits on the $25 tier, and Team at $15 undercuts Premium at $16. Every plan priced against Otter and Fireflies, plus the licences you may already be paying for.
Most US businesses paying an overseas contractor owe no US withholding, and the reason is the sourcing rule rather than a treaty: for services, the place the work is performed decides where the income comes from. Which W-8 form to collect, when the 30 percent actually applies, what you file at year end, and the classification mistake that costs real money.
Meeting summaries and AI notetaking are included with eligible paid Zoom Workplace plans and consume no AI credits. The paid tier changed in 2026: Zoom sunset the $12 Custom AI Companion add-on on June 1 and replaced it with ZoomMate, reported from about $20 per user per month with 2,200 pooled credits. Here is which half you actually need.
Federal law lets a participant record, but roughly a dozen states require consent from everyone on the call, and a few of those apply the rule only to phone or only to in-person conversations. Here is the state-by-state picture, what a transcript legally counts as, and the consent checklist that keeps an office out of trouble.
Notetakers, planners and assistants are three different products at three price points, and most buyers compare the wrong two. Verified July 2026 pricing for Otter, Motion and Calendly, the per-seat versus per-office math that flips at team scale, and the hidden costs nobody quotes.
Most follow-up advice confuses two different jobs: sending an outbound sequence to a cold list, and chasing a live client thread that went quiet. The second is a tracking problem, you cannot template your way out of it, and it is the one that actually costs a small business money.
A loaded human EA runs $65,000 to $88,000 a year. A managed VA service runs $1,380 to $2,600 a month for capped hours. An AI executive assistant runs $149 to $399 a month. The full cost table, and the honest cases where each one wins.
Scheduling ping-pong, inbox triage, meeting notes, invoice entry, follow-up chasing: 14 admin jobs that eat 10 to 20 hours a week in a small office, what automating each one looks like in practice, and the hours you get back per task.
For a team already living in Microsoft 365, Copilot at $18 a seat usually earns its keep on Excel and Teams alone. The honest breakdown: what it costs all in, the two features that justify it, the ones that underwhelm, and the admin work it still will not touch.
A human VA costs $36 to $50 an hour through US agencies; an AI assistant runs a few hundred a month. But price is the least interesting difference. Here is what each is genuinely bad at, with verified 2026 rates and a task-by-task way to split the work.
Teams has AI meeting features, but intelligent recap requires a Teams Premium license at $10 per user per month or Microsoft 365 Copilot at $18, and two admin policy settings decide whether you get the full feature or a stripped version of it. Here is what each license unlocks, what it costs at real headcounts, and the part none of them do.
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