How it works
You never pay for a promise. The call is free. The written assessment is free. The first dollar you spend buys a document you keep, and it counts toward the project. Here is each stage in detail, and exactly what you walk away with.
You book a time on our booking calendar and spend half an hour on a call with one of our engineers — the person who would actually design your automation, not a salesperson working from a script. You describe the work that eats your team's week: who does it, which programs it runs through, where it goes wrong, and what it holds up when it falls behind. The engineer asks the questions that matter for automation: where the judgment calls live, where the data comes from, and what "done correctly" means in your business.
What this stage gets you: an expert read on your workflow at zero cost and zero obligation. If your problem is not a good fit for automation — some aren't — you hear that on the call, in plain words, and you've lost nothing but 30 minutes.
After the call, our engineers write your assessment. It states what OpenRed can do to automate your workflow and solve your issue: which parts of the work can run themselves, which parts should stay with your people, and how the automated version would operate day to day.
The assessment also puts real numbers on the next two stages: the cost of a detailed roadmap, and a fixed price for the build itself. Nothing is vague and nothing is "starting at."
What this stage gets you: a decision document. Even if you stop here, you know what is automatable in your business, what it would cost, and what it would save — in writing, at no charge.
If the assessment makes the case, the next step is a detailed roadmap with interface mockups. This is where the plan becomes concrete: every workflow step mapped, every integration named, the order of construction, and mockups showing the screens and summaries your team would actually use — so you can react to something visible before anything is built. The roadmap is $250, paid up front, and credited in full toward the project — if you proceed, the roadmap cost you nothing.
The roadmap is not take-it-or-leave-it. Read it, tell us what you actually meant, and we revise it — there is no second $250. As the scope sharpens, the build price at the bottom updates with it, cheaper or more expensive, before you commit to anything.
What this stage gets you: a build plan you own. It removes the two classic risks of custom work — discovering mid-project that the scope was wrong, and paying for software that doesn't match how your team works. If you take the roadmap to another developer, it's still a complete specification. It's yours.
We build the automation on the OpenRed platform, test it against your real work — real documents, real data, real edge cases — and run it alongside your current process until it earns your trust. Every automation includes human review steps where your people approve output before it goes anywhere that matters. The price is fixed and stated in the assessment, minus the $250 roadmap credit. It does not change after we agree on it.
What this stage gets you: a working automation, handed over with training for your team and documentation of what was built. You own it — it runs in the cloud under your own accounts, not ours, and there are no per-seat fees or platform subscriptions attached to it.
Most clients start their first automation and quickly find the second: once invoice entry runs itself, the weekly reporting looks automatable too. We support what we built, extend it as your business changes, and take on the next workflow when you're ready. Work after delivery is priced your way: re-estimated as its own new fixed fee, or run as an hourly engagement — a six-month contract, for example — when you'd rather keep an engineer on tap than scope each piece. The services page explains both.
What this stage gets you: a standing engineering capability without hiring one — your automations keep working, keep improving, and keep multiplying.
Your total commitment before the first paid dollar: one 30-minute call. Your total risk at the first paid stage: $250, refunded in practice by the project credit. That structure is deliberate — we would rather prove value in stages than ask for trust up front.
Why staged
The call and the assessment answer this for free. Not every workflow is a fit, and finding that out should never cost money.
The roadmap answers this for $250 — with mockups you can react to before a line of the build exists.
One fixed number, in writing, before the build starts. The credit comes off it. No surprises at delivery.
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