The Bot Desk
Prices checked Sep 2026
Independent · Advertising funded 32 articles · updated September 9, 2026

Business automation, priced and sourced.

Software robots are sold on demos and billed on meters nobody explains. We read the pricing pages, the license text and the liability clauses, print the date we checked them, and link every source. We do not run a lab, so we never claim we tested anything we did not.

How to automate

Automate Meeting Notes Into Your CRM

Meeting notes never reach the CRM, so the CRM rots. Here is the build end to end — transcript to fields to record — plus the…

SEP 09
8 min
Risk & rules

What Automation Platforms Let You Take With You

Zapier, Make, n8n and Power Automate all publish what you can export and how long they keep your run history. Here is what their…

SEP 09
8 min
Risk & rules

Does the EU AI Act Reach Your US Company?

A US company with no European office can still fall under the EU AI Act, because Article 2 turns on where your system's output is…

SEP 09
9 min
Costs

Make Credits Explained: The Full Price Ladder

Make's pricing page now states the conversion outright: one module action equals one credit. Here is the full USD price ladder at…

SEP 09
8 min
Comparisons

Make vs Power Automate: Credits vs Seats and Bots

Make bills $9/month billed annually for 10,000 credits with unlimited users; Power Automate bills $15 per user per month and $150…

SEP 09
8 min
Costs

What Counts as a Zapier Task (and What Is Free)

A Zapier task is one successful action step, so a five-step Zap with a trigger, a filter and a Formatter step bills 2 tasks per…

SEP 09
9 min
Costs

What Automation Costs a 20-50 Person Company

A 20 to 50 person company should budget roughly $140 to $270 a month in automation software across the three stacks priced here…

SEP 03
8 min
Comparisons

Document AI Compared: Textract, Google and Azure

Amazon Textract and Azure AI Document Intelligence both charge a cent a page for invoice extraction. Google Document AI charges ten…

SEP 03
7 min

Comparisons

All 9 →

Which platform to pick and which to skip, with the billing model spelled out. Every price carries the date it was checked against the vendor's own page.

How to automate

All 7 →

One job per article, start to finish: the real steps, the plan you need to be on, and the point where a human still has to look at it.

What automation actually costs once you read the meter. Tasks, operations, credits, seats and premium connectors, with the arithmetic shown.

Risk & rules

All 6 →

SOC 2, HIPAA, state privacy law and vendor liability caps, from primary sources. Information for buyers, not legal advice.

Platform directory

Full directory →

Every platform we write about, grouped by what it actually is. Links go straight to the vendor's own pricing or documentation page, not to a review.

No-code workflow automation

  • ZapierThe largest connector catalog. Bills per successful action, called a task.
  • MakeVisual scenario builder. Bills per module run, now counted in credits.
  • n8nFair-code, self-hostable. Bills per whole workflow run, not per step.
  • PipedreamCode-first workflows with hosted steps. Bills in compute credits.
  • ActivepiecesOpen-source alternative with a hosted plan and a free self-hosted edition.
  • IFTTTConsumer-oriented, small applet limits, cheapest paid tier of the group.

Microsoft and Google stacks

  • Power AutomateCloud flows. A limited version is seeded with Microsoft 365; premium connectors cost extra.
  • Power Automate DesktopAttended and unattended desktop RPA, licensed separately from cloud flows.
  • Google Apps ScriptFree scripting inside Workspace. Triggers are approximate, not exact-time.
  • Salesforce FlowNative automation inside Salesforce, bundled with the platform.

Enterprise RPA

Document and data capture

AI agent platforms

CRM and helpdesk automation

  • HubSpot WorkflowsGated to Professional and above. Deduplicates contacts by email address.
  • ZendeskIntelligent triage detects topic and sentiment; acting on it needs the Copilot add-on.
  • FreshdeskRule-based automations on every paid tier; AI features are an add-on.

Common questions

What is the difference between workflow automation and RPA?

Workflow automation moves data between systems through their APIs: a form fills a CRM record, a payment creates an invoice. RPA drives the user interface instead, clicking and typing in an application the way a person would, which is what you fall back on when a system has no API. RPA costs far more and breaks when the screen changes.

What is a task, and why does every platform count them differently?

There is no industry standard. Zapier counts each successful action, Make counts each module run, n8n counts one whole workflow run no matter how many steps it has. The same job can therefore cost several times more on one platform than another purely because of how the meter works.

Do I need to know how to code?

For connecting two mainstream apps, no. For anything with branching, error handling or reshaping data, you will end up reading documentation and writing small expressions. The gap between a demo and something you can leave running unattended is mostly error handling.

Is self-hosting cheaper?

Rarely at small scale. A server big enough to run a self-hosted automation platform usually costs more per month than the vendor's entry cloud plan, before you count your own time patching it. Self-hosting wins on data residency and at volume, not on the first invoice.

Can an AI agent send email on my behalf?

Technically yes, and that is the problem. Google's Gmail scope for creating drafts also grants the ability to send, so drafts-only is not enforceable at the permission layer there; Microsoft Graph does separate the two. Either way, any agent that reads a mailbox can be steered by the contents of an email it reads.

Who is responsible when an automation makes a costly mistake?

In practice, you are. Vendor terms of service almost universally disclaim consequential damages and cap direct liability at what you paid, often a few months of fees. Read the cap before you route anything expensive through a platform.