What actually drives the cost
"Automation" isn't a product with a price tag — it's a label for dozens of very different projects. A script that sends one reminder email costs almost nothing to build. A system that connects a CRM, an accounting platform, and a quoting tool, handles conflicting records between them, and needs someone to review it monthly is a different project entirely, at a different price, even though both get called "automation." The real cost drivers are concrete: how many systems have to talk to each other, how much of the data is clean versus needing to be untangled first, how many exceptions the process has beyond its happy path, and how much ongoing review the result actually needs.
Why "it depends" isn't a dodge
Anyone who quotes a firm number before looking at the actual workflow is guessing, not pricing. Two providers — one quoting $500, another quoting $15,000 — can both be telling the truth, because they're describing two different builds for two different problems, not two prices for the same thing. The only honest way to price a project is to look at the specific workflow first. Everything before that is a placeholder.
The one real number we can point to
We're not going to pretend to know what other shops charge. Here's the one number we can actually stand behind: Mavryn's paid Workflow Audit starts at $2,000 CAD for a one-week engagement that maps one workflow end to end and hands back a fixed price for the recommended build. That's a starting price for the audit itself, not a project estimate — the build that follows depends entirely on what the audit finds, which is the whole point of doing it first instead of guessing.
Two ways to get your own number
If you already know exactly which process is costing you money, the paid Workflow Audit is the fastest way to get a fixed price on fixing it. If you're not sure yet where to even look, start with the free 20-minute review instead — it exists specifically for that earlier question, before anyone's ready to commit to a scoped engagement.