Fair questions. Straight answers.

Free: the 30-minute assessment call with an engineer, and the written assessment that follows it — including the real numbers for what a build would cost. The first thing that costs money is optional: a detailed roadmap with interface mockups for $250, credited in full toward the project if you proceed. The build itself is one fixed price, agreed in writing before work starts, minus that credit. The full sequence is on the how-it-works page, and our pricing guide compares these numbers to what the market charges.

A complete build plan — stage 3 of the process: every workflow step mapped, every integration named, the order of construction, and interface mockups showing the screens and summaries your team would use — so you react to something visible before anything is built. If the roadmap misses what you meant, tell us and we revise it — there is no second $250, and the build price updates as the scope changes. You own the document either way; if you proceed with the project, the $250 comes off the price, making the roadmap effectively free.

Yes — every scoped build is a fixed price. It is stated in your assessment, the roadmap credit comes off it, and it does not change after we agree on it. If the build takes longer than we scoped, that cost is ours. Hourly billing only enters after your project is delivered and you want more: follow-on work is either re-estimated as its own new fixed fee or run as an hourly engagement, such as a six-month contract — described on the services page.

No. We build everything, test it on your real work, and train your team to use it. Your part is a 30-minute call and telling us when something feels off.

Your data stays in your accounts and your tools. Your automation runs in the cloud under your own accounts, with access you grant, and you can revoke that access at any time. We do not sell data, and we do not use your business's data to serve other clients. The specifics for your build are written into the roadmap and the engagement agreement before you sign anything. Site-level data handling is covered in our privacy policy.

Any system can make mistakes, including the manual process you run today. We design for this directly: the OpenRed platform checks every step's output before the next step consumes it, and every automation includes a review step where a person approves work before it goes out. During handoff we run the automation alongside your current process until you trust it.

Every build includes a support window after handoff — if something we built stops working in that window, we fix it at no charge. The platform also heals common failures on its own: when a delivery fails or a data source changes shape, it routes back and retries instead of stopping silently. Beyond the support window, we offer ongoing support and extension, and either way you are never stuck with a black box: we document what we built and you own it.

Our own OpenRed platform — an agentic orchestration layer we built and run in production, described on the services page — connected to the software you already run: your email, your accounting system, your CRM, your spreadsheets. The roadmap tells you exactly what we chose for your build and why.

A developer sells you their time, and the diagnosis costs as much as the cure. Here the diagnosis is free — the call and written assessment tell you what is worth building before you spend anything — and the build is a finished, working automation at a fixed price, running on a platform that already exists rather than software written from zero. The full comparison — consultant vs. developer vs. do-it-yourself tools — is on the blog.

What we automate is the repetitive part of the work — the typing, sorting, copying, and chasing. Your people keep the judgment calls and the customer relationships, and get their hours back for them. Most of our clients automate because their team is stretched, not because they want a smaller one.

Yes, with one adjustment: for larger scopes the assessment becomes a project estimate, then a fixed fee for the defined scope. As the work delivers and the next phase takes shape, each phase is either re-estimated as its own fixed fee or run as an hourly engagement. The free call is where we figure out which fits — details on the services page.

Yes. Those are the industries we know best — the case studies show worked examples — but the work we automate — reading documents, drafting responses, moving data between programs, checking for errors — looks the same in most businesses. The free call will tell you honestly whether your workflow is a good fit.