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We officially plan to be open on December 1st, 2026. We're having FREE CALLS and ESTIMATES. Call now and you'll be one of the first people in line when we officially launch. We'll send emails as it gets closer to the date with more updates. Thank you, and I look forward to working with you. -Tommy

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Free AI or paid AI? What a small business actually needs.

By Tommy Samson, Founder. October 2026. 4 minute read.

A fair first question is "Do I really need to pay for this?" For the setups we do, yes.

The free version is for trying it

Claude's free plan is good for getting a feel for it. You can chat, keep up to five projects, connect a few of your apps, and use skills. But it won't do any work on its own.

The setups that save real time lean on features the free plan doesn't have. The biggest one is scheduled tasks: Claude doing work on its own every morning or every Monday, without you sitting at the computer. That's a paid feature.

What the paid plans add

PlanPriceWho it's for
Free$0Trying Claude out. Chat, up to five projects, connections and skills.
Pro$20 a month, or $17 a month paid yearlyOne person who wants Claude doing real work: scheduled routines, Claude in your web browser, deep research, the Excel and Word add-ins, plugins, and more usage.
Team$25 a seat a month, or $20 paid yearlyA business with staff. Shared projects, skills rolled out to everyone at once, and admin controls.
Enterprise$20 a seat a month plus usage, 20-seat minimumLarger organizations, and offices with stricter security or compliance needs.

For most small businesses, the answer is Pro for a one-person shop and Team for a business with staff. You pay Anthropic directly. We never mark it up.

The privacy setting to check

Every Claude plan has a privacy setting that controls whether your conversations can be used to improve future models. It's easy to miss. We check it on day one, along with who can see what in a shared team.

If your office handles patient information, talk to us before you put anything into any AI tool. That takes a plan and a written agreement built for it, and we'll tell you up front what's allowed.

What about ChatGPT?

ChatGPT has similar free and paid tiers, and if your team already lives in it, we'll set that up instead. For most small businesses, I recommend Claude. It's excellent at reading long documents, writing in your voice, and running routines in the background with your email, calendar and files.

The short version

The free plan is a test drive. Real time savings come from a paid plan, about $20 a month per person, set up around your business. That's what we do. Be first in line or take the free 2-minute AI check.

Prices and features from claude.com/pricing and the Claude Help Center as of October 2026. They change, so check the current page before you buy.

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