A complete lead follow up system costs $1,000 to $5,000 to build and $50 to $300 a month to run in 2026. For most service businesses that is less than the value of one deal a month currently lost to slow replies. Here is the full breakdown, including what pushes the price to either end of that range.
The three costs that make up the price
1. The build
The one time cost of designing, building, and testing the system: connecting your lead sources, writing the reply logic, setting up routing rules, and testing against real enquiries. A single channel setup (say, website forms only) sits near the bottom of the range. A brokerage pulling from two portals, a website, and social ads with per agent routing sits near the top.
2. Platform fees
The tools underneath charge monthly. Typical 2026 numbers: workflow platform $20 to $100 (or near zero if we self host n8n for you), SMS and WhatsApp sending $10 to $100 depending on volume, and an AI voice agent $50 to $150 if calls are in scope. Most clients land between $50 and $300 a month all in.
3. Maintenance
Automations break when an app changes its API or someone renames a CRM field. Budget either a small care plan or nothing at all: our builds ship with error alerts and documentation, and 30 days of support are included. You are never obligated to keep paying us for the system to keep working.
The break even math
Work it out for your own numbers:
- Leads you receive per month, times
- the share currently getting a reply later than one hour, times
- your close rate, times
- your average deal value.
That is the monthly revenue exposed to slow follow up. For a brokerage with 400 monthly enquiries, even a modest improvement in contact rate covered a mid range build within three weeks. The case study numbers show that math in the wild.
What moves the price up
- Many lead sources with inconsistent data (each portal parses differently)
- Voice in scope: an AI phone agent adds build and platform cost
- Complex routing: territories, languages, round robin with caps
- An old CRM with a weak or missing API
What keeps it cheap
- Starting with one channel and expanding after payback
- Using your existing CRM instead of migrating
- Self hosted n8n when monthly fees matter more than setup polish
The honest comparison: hiring instead
A part time person answering leads evenings and weekends costs more per month than the entire system does per year, still sleeps, and still takes holidays. Automation is not a replacement for your team; it is the only economical way to be first to every lead at 10 pm on a Sunday.
This post covers one system. For pricing across every kind of automation, tier by tier, read how much AI automation costs in 2026. If you want the exact number for your business rather than a range, that is literally what our free audit produces: a written roadmap with a fixed quote per automation. See what a full system includes on the lead automation service page.