Compare · vs DIY Automation (Zapier, Make, n8n)
Zapier and Make are tools. Prudence is a service. Here is the honest comparison, including the cost of the thing nobody quotes for: your time.
| Prudence | DIY Automation (Zapier, Make, n8n) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly licence cost | Prudence £1,195/mo, one flat fee for both modules. Bespoke POA. All-in, including the work to keep it running. | Zapier Professional £19/mo, Team £49/mo. Make.com from £9/mo. n8n self-hosted free (you pay for the server, ~£10 to £30/mo). |
| Your time, initial build | Two weeks of Setup, hands-off for you after a one-hour kickoff and access provisioning. | 60 to 100 hours typical for a meaningful service business workflow. At £40/hour blended that is £2,400 to £4,000 in time cost up front. |
| Your time, ongoing | Effectively zero. We monitor, maintain, debug and adjust. You see the briefing each morning. | Two to five hours a week, every week, debugging, adjusting and maintaining. ~£300 to £800 a month at your blended rate. |
| When an integration breaks | It is our problem. First you hear about it is usually when we tell you it is back. | It is your problem. The tool tells you which step failed; figuring out why is on you. The vendor's support is generic. |
| What it is good at | The commercial spine of a service business: estimates drafted from your rate card at the pitch side, supplier costs caught and recharges drafted at the pay side, all in the tools your team already uses. | Specific, narrow workflows between two or three tools. Personal automations. Internal experiments. |
| Outbound drafts (estimates, recharges) | Included in the £1,195/month flat fee. Estimates drafted in your rate-card system at the pitch side. Recharges drafted in your accounting package at the pay side. Both ready for owner sign-off. | Possible to wire together with effort. Each tool is a separate integration to configure and maintain. |
| Failure mode | Surfaced in the daily briefing. If something stopped working yesterday, we tell you today, with what was missed and what we have done about it. | Silent. Workflows can fail without anyone noticing for days because no one is watching the dashboard. |
