MannVenture vs an AI program or agency
An AI program teaches your team to build AI and leaves the capability with them. We build it, run it, and publish the price before you call.
All prices are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
AI programs, AI agencies and MannVenture
An AI program teaches your team to build AI, while we build it and run it for you. Across the four published price lists we checked, a one-time build runs $1,500 to $15,000, a monthly engagement runs $297 to $2,400, and the senior retainers are priced on a call. Ours are $97 CAD a month for the AI Website, $457 CAD a month for all three systems together, and $1,395 CAD a month for Custom AI. If you have staff with the time to learn this and you want the capability in-house, buy the program.
The category and ours, line by line
Their column is read off four firms' published pages and dated. Where a row rests on one of the four rather than all of them, the cell says so. The rows the category wins are ticked in their column.
How it gets built
What it covers
Price and terms
Who it is for
Sources: theactionableai.com/compare/ai-agencies, theautomators.ai/pricing, theactionableai.com/services, aiomelette.com/services, ai-4business.ca/packages and theactionableai.com/compare/ai-courses, checked 22 September 2026. Two of the four label their prices CAD and two print a bare dollar sign with no currency label at all, so every figure above is quoted exactly as printed and none is converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and say so.
What this category sells
Four shapes, and most sellers offer more than one. An audit, which is a scoped read of where AI fits and where it does not. A one-time build, which is a system shipped and handed over, with your team trained to run it: the published timelines are live in 2 to 6 weeks from kickoff and roughly 30 days from kickoff to a live system. A fixed-length program, which is weeks of structured work with your team in the room. And a monthly engagement, which runs from a light managed package up to a senior retainer.
The figures the four of them publish. An audit: $585 CAD for an AI audit. One-time work: $1,500 CAD for a two-week sprint, $950 CAD for a workflow automation project, and $7,000 for a one-time build. Fixed-length programs: $2,500 for three months, $4,500 CAD for a 30-day program and $9,000 CAD for a 90-day program. Monthly work: $297 a month for the entry package, $1,497 a month for the top package, and $2,400 CAD a month, managed. And one build ladder printed in full: “Deployments start at $15,000 for a single flagship at $1M to $5M revenue. $25,000 at $5M+. $50,000 at $10M+ or for enterprise scope. Bundles and ongoing engagements are priced on the scoping call.”
Only the senior retainers refuse a number, and one seller says why: “No price list because no two operators need the same depth of partnership.”
Those are real products at real prices. What none of the four catalogues contains is a line that answers your phone or a website that works the inquiry, which is the part we sell and the reason these are different purchases rather than the same one at different prices.
Sources: aiomelette.com/services, ai-4business.ca/packages, theautomators.ai/pricing, theactionableai.com/compare/ai-courses, theactionableai.com/services and theactionableai.com/chief-agent-officer, checked 22 September 2026. Two of the four label CAD and two label nothing, so each figure is quoted as printed and none is converted. What these same pages say about what agencies, executives and fractional consultants charge is not quoted anywhere on this site: those are one seller’s figures for other people’s prices, and a figure needs the source that published it.
Where a program or an agency beats us
They are ahead of us on four things.
A cohort teaches your team to build.
That is a capability, and it stays in the business after the engagement ends. We sell nothing that does it, at any price. One of the four price lists we checked is built entirely on that idea.
You own what gets built.
Two of the four say so outright, one of them down to the credentials: “You own the code, the accounts, and the credentials at hand-off.” It runs on your accounts, your team can change it, and nobody has to be paid for it to keep working. Ours runs because we run it.
A build is a one-time price.
One number, one project, and what is left afterwards can be small: one firm prints $40 to $180 a month in model usage, billed by the provider. Ours is a monthly price, and over a long enough horizon a monthly price passes a one-time one.
One of them commits you to nothing.
One of the four publishes managed work with no minimum at all: “Managed services run month-to-month. No 6-month minimums, no 12-month lock-ins, no auto-renewal traps.” Only Custom AI answers that, and it is the most expensive thing we sell.
Sources: theactionableai.com/compare/ai-agencies, theautomators.ai/pricing and aiomelette.com/services, checked 22 September 2026.
Six ways to get AI into the business
Sources: aiomelette.com/services, ai-4business.ca/packages, theautomators.ai/pricing, theactionableai.com/services, theactionableai.com/compare/ai-courses and theactionableai.com/chief-agent-officer, checked 22 September 2026. Two of those four label their figures CAD and two label no currency at all, so theirs are quoted exactly as printed and none is converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
What the first project costs
A one-time AI build
$1,500 to $15,000
across three sellers
$1,500 CAD for a two-week sprint at the bottom, $7,000 for a one-time build in the middle, and $15,000 for a single deployment at the top. After it ships the maintenance is yours, and one of the three prints what is left: $40 to $180 a month in model usage, billed by the provider.
Complete System
$6,481
CAD in year one
A one-time $997 implementation fee plus $457 CAD a month. After the first year it is $5,484 CAD a year, price held for twelve months and changing only at each anniversary. All three systems, built and run.
Sources: ai-4business.ca/packages, theautomators.ai/pricing and theactionableai.com/services, checked 22 September 2026. The low figure is labelled CAD and the other two label no currency, so all three are quoted exactly as printed and none is converted. Ours are in Canadian dollars and exclude tax.
Those ranges overlap, and they buy different things. A build is one system, delivered and handed over, and what happens to it after that is your problem or your team’s. Ours is a website, a phone line and a month of marketing that keep running because running them is the thing you are paying for. Which is worth more depends on whether you have the people.
Buy the program if this is you
A program or an agency is the right buy when
- You have staff, and at least one of them has time in the week to build.
- You want the capability to stay in the business after the engagement ends.
- The work is internal and specific, and no packaged product describes it.
- You would rather own and maintain it than rent it.
- A one-time price suits your books better than a monthly one.
Ours is the right buy when
- There is nobody to send to a weekly session, including you.
- You want the website answering and the phone answered this month, not a plan for building one.
- You would rather approve work than produce it.
- You want the running included rather than handed back to you at go-live.
If the first list describes you, buy the program. We would rather you did that than pay us to run something your own team wanted to build.
Questions buyers ask
If you want the capability in-house, do not pay us. A cohort or a course is the right purchase, and it leaves your team able to build the next thing without calling anyone. What we sell is the opposite trade: you never learn it, and you never have to. Most of the owners who buy from us do not have a person to send to a weekly session, and the hour is the thing they have least of.
No. We build the systems and we run them, and what your team does is approve the work. There is no curriculum, no cohort and no weekly call, and we are not going to describe what we do as training, because it is not.
It depends entirely on how long you run it and what happens to it in between. A build is one price and then it is yours to maintain, and the four price lists we checked put that price between $1,500 and $15,000. Ours is $1,395 CAD a month with no fixed term, so you can stop it at the end of any month, and the running is included for as long as it lasts. Both numbers are on the page, so the arithmetic for your own horizon is yours to do rather than ours to assert.
No. $97 CAD a month buys one packaged product: the AI Website, a 5-7 page site whose AI answers, quotes and books. The comparable thing is further up the list. The Complete System is $457 CAD a month and covers the website, the phone and the marketing together; Custom AI is $1,395 CAD a month for work outside the packaged three. They are all on the pricing page.
No. They are the ones that publish real prices, which is why we can cite them. Plenty of firms in this category publish none at all, and one of the four does exactly that with its senior retainer: "No price list because no two operators need the same depth of partnership." If the firm you are weighing will not print a number before a call, that is worth knowing about them and it is the one thing we can say about them without a source.
Possibly, though the published best fit across these four spans a long way. One writes its packages "For small business owners who are ready to move beyond AI curiosity". Another aims at $1M to $50M in revenue. Most of what we build sits at the smaller end of that span. If you have a leadership team, a technology budget and people to train, a program aimed at you is the better purchase and we will say so on the call.
Where to start
All prices are in Canadian dollars. There is no scoping call between you and the number.
The AI Website is $97 CAD a month, the AI Receptionist is $97, the AI Growth Engine is $297, and all three together are $457. Included with the website: 200 AI conversations a month.
Custom AI is $1,395 CAD a month for the work the packaged three do not cover. Month to month. No fixed term and no lock-in.
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