Build It, Hire It, or
Let Us Run It?

Three ways to get AI agents working for your business. One of them doesn't require you to become an AI expert, manage infrastructure, or pray that your engineer doesn't quit.

The Honest Comparison

We're not going to pretend the other options don't exist. Here's what each one actually looks like.

🛠️ DIY
ChatGPT + Open Source
👤 Hire In-House
AI/ML Engineer
⚡ AfrexAI
Managed Agents
Setup Time 2–6 months of fumbling 3–6 months (hiring + onboarding) Under 7 days
Monthly Cost $200–$2,000 in API bills + your time $12,000–$25,000 salary + benefits $5,500–$12,000/mo, all-in
Expertise Needed You become the AI team You need to manage an AI team Zero. We handle everything
Uptime Guarantee None — it breaks, you fix it Depends on your engineer's vacation schedule 24/7 monitoring, guaranteed
Maintenance All on you. APIs change, things break Your engineer handles it (when they're around) Fully managed. Updates included
Customization Unlimited... if you can build it High, but limited to one person's skills Built to your exact workflows
Scale Speed Weeks to months per new agent Limited by headcount New agent in days
Support Stack Overflow and hope Your one engineer (if they haven't quit) Dedicated team, Slack/email

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

The sticker price is never the real price. Here's what actually eats your budget.

🛠️ DIY: Your Time Isn't Free

$8,000+/mo

If you're spending 15–20 hours/week debugging prompts and fixing integrations, that's your $150/hr time. You're paying more than hiring — you're just not writing the check.

👤 Hiring: Turnover Will Hit You

$45,000

Average cost to replace a technical employee. AI engineers stay about 18 months on average. So budget for recruiting every year and a half — and the knowledge that walks out the door with them.

🛠️ DIY: Infrastructure Surprises

$500–$3,000/mo

Cloud compute, vector databases, API rate limits, logging, security patches. It adds up fast. And when something breaks at 2 AM, that's your phone ringing.

👤 Hiring: The Onboarding Tax

3–6 months

Your new AI engineer spends months learning your business before they ship anything useful. Meanwhile, you're paying full salary for someone still figuring out where the codebase lives.

🛠️ DIY: Opportunity Cost

Every hour you spend wrangling LangChain is an hour you're not closing deals, building product, or talking to customers. The real cost is what you didn't do.

👤 Hiring: Benefits & Overhead

30–40%

On top of salary: health insurance, equity, equipment, office space, management time. A $150K engineer costs you $200K+ when you add it all up.

🧮 What's AI Actually Worth to Your Business?

Run the numbers yourself. Our calculator shows the real ROI based on your team size, hourly rates, and the tasks you'd automate.

Calculate Your ROI →

Pick Your Plan

No per-query charges. No surprise bills. Dedicated infrastructure included.

Single Agent

$5,500/mo
  • One dedicated AI agent
  • Dedicated server infrastructure
  • 24/7 uptime monitoring
  • Monthly optimization & tuning
  • Slack/email support
Get Started →

Skip the Learning Curve

30-minute call. We'll look at your operations, tell you what to automate first, and give you a straight answer on whether we're the right fit.

Book a Discovery Call →