# Hire Someone to Set Up an AI Chatbot: What It Costs and How Not to Get Burned

You've decided you want an AI chatbot on your business website, and you've decided you'd rather pay someone who knows what they're doing than spend your weekends on it. Smart. But the market for "someone" ranges from a $10 gig that ghosts you to a $3,000 agency invoice for a widget that answers three questions. Here's how to hire right.

## What you're actually buying

A done-for-you chatbot setup has four parts, and you should expect all four:

1. **The bot itself, built and embedded on your site.** Not a demo link — working on your actual pages.
2. **Trained on YOUR business.** Your services, prices, FAQs, hours, policies. A bot that only knows generic answers is worse than no bot.
3. **Lead capture wired up.** When the bot can't answer or the visitor wants a human, it collects a name and contact and gets it to you. A bot without capture is a toy.
4. **A walkthrough so you can run it.** You'll need to update prices and add new FAQs eventually. If you can't touch it without the freelancer, you don't own it.

If a proposal doesn't include all four, it's incomplete. If it can't explain any one of them in plain English, walk away.

## The real price range

Based on what freelancers and small shops are actually charging:

- **$50–$150** — freelancer setup on a no-code platform (Tidio, tawk.to + AI, CustomGPT-style tools), trained on your content, embedded on your site. Delivery in days. This is the sweet spot for most small businesses — a "from $100" 24-hour chatbot listing is exactly this tier, and it covers everything a typical business website needs.
- **$300–$800** — multi-channel setup (website + WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger), CRM integration, custom lead-qualification flows. For businesses where the website is a serious lead engine.
- **$1,000–$3,000+** — custom development: React frontends, vector databases, API integrations with your internal systems. You almost certainly don't need this. If your need is "answer my 20 most common questions and capture leads after hours," this tier is a $2,000 solution to a $99 problem.

Beware the agency quote that frames a no-code widget build as "custom AI development." The bot your business needs can be built on free-tier platforms — what you're paying for is someone else's weekend, not proprietary technology.

## Questions to ask before you hire

- **"What will my monthly cost be after you're done?"** Get the number. Most small business bots cost $0–$30/month in platform/AI usage. If they can't answer, they haven't thought about your wallet.
- **"Who pays for the chatbot platform?"** You should own the accounts — the builder account and the AI key should be in your name. Never let a setup lock you into someone else's subscription.
- **"Can I update the answers myself?"** If the answer is no, or it requires their hourly rate, you're renting, not buying.
- **"What happens when it gives a wrong answer?"** Listen for a real process (conversation review, knowledge-base updates) rather than hand-waving.
- **"Show me one you've built."** Click it. Ask it a hard question. If there's no live example, you're paying to be the practice client.

## The DIY comparison (honest version)

The DIY path costs about $29 and a weekend — it's real, and it works. Hire only if one of these is true:

- Your time is worth more than the setup fee (a weekend of your time > $99? Then hire.)
- You'll never get around to it. A bot that's "going to get set up someday" captures zero leads.
- You want it done right the first time and never think about it again.

What's irrational: paying $2,000+ to an agency for what a $99 done-for-you setup delivers. The technology is the same free-tier stack either way — the agency markup buys you meetings, not a better bot.

## Watch for these red flags

- **No live demo or portfolio.** Standard at this price.
- **"Custom AI development" language for a simple FAQ bot.** Translation: inflated pricing.
- **Monthly "maintenance" retainers you didn't ask for.** A well-built bot needs 30 minutes a month of your time, not a $200 retainer.
- **They keep the accounts.** If the builder login and API key aren't yours, you're hostage.
- **Vague timelines.** A standard business-site bot is a days-long job, not a months-long project.

## The $99 version of all this

The **AI Growth System** is done-for-you: I build the chatbot on your site, train it on your actual business content, wire up lead capture, and hand you the keys — with a live demo you can try before anything's final. $99, one time, and you own every account. If you'd rather start smaller, the **Website Audit** ($49) tells you whether your site is even ready to convert the traffic a bot would bring in.

**[Get the AI Growth System →](/setup/)**

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_Originally published at [https://graveyard-shift-digital.pages.dev/hire-someone-to-set-up-ai-chatbot/](https://graveyard-shift-digital.pages.dev/hire-someone-to-set-up-ai-chatbot/) by Graveyard Shift Digital._