How to Automate Your Entire Business for Under $120/Month

The $120/Month Automation Stack

Most "automation" articles are vague. This one has exact costs, exact tools, and exact configurations.

Here's the full stack I use to run a business with zero employees:

| Tool | Purpose | Monthly Cost | |------|---------|-------------| | n8n (self-hosted on Railway) | All workflow automation | $5 | | Supabase (free tier) | Database + Auth + Storage | $0 | | Claude API (Anthropic) | AI for content, support, sales | ~$30 | | Resend | Transactional email | $0 (free tier) | | Vercel | Website hosting | $0 (hobby tier) | | Plausible | Analytics | $9 | | Telegram Bot | Notifications + admin | $0 | | Total | | ~$44/month |

Yes, the base cost is $44. The remaining $76 of the $120 budget is buffer for Claude API usage spikes and optional tools.

What Gets Automated

1. Lead Capture ($0 incremental cost)

• Saves to Supabase leads table
• Runs Claude to score the lead (0-100)
• If score > 70: sends a Calendly link via email
• If score < 30: adds to nurture email sequence
• Notifies me on Telegram with lead details

Total setup time: 2 hours. Runs 24/7 without intervention.

2. Customer Support ($10-20/month Claude costs)

• Classifies the ticket (billing, technical, how-to, bug)
• Searches our knowledge base using embeddings
• Drafts a response with Claude
• If confidence > 80%: sends automatically
• If confidence < 80%: sends to me on Telegram for approval

This handles ~70% of support tickets without me touching them. The remaining 30% take me 2 minutes each because Claude already drafted a response.

3. Content Creation ($15-20/month Claude costs)

• Generates 3 LinkedIn post options
• Generates 2 tweet options
• Saves them to the content_schedule table
• Notifies me: "Today's content ready for review"

I spend 5 minutes reviewing and publishing. On Fridays, it also compiles a newsletter from the week's best content.

4. Daily Reporting ($0 incremental cost)

• Pulls metrics from Supabase (revenue, signups, support tickets)
• Claude analyzes trends and anomalies
• Sends a summary to Telegram

I know exactly how the business performed without opening a single dashboard.

The Architecture

Landing Page (Vercel)
  → Lead Form → n8n webhook → Supabase + Claude scoring

n8n (Railway, $5/month) → Daily: content generation, scheduling → On event: lead scoring, support responses → Weekly: SEO articles, newsletter, analytics report

Supabase (free tier) → Database: leads, orders, content, metrics → Auth: user accounts → Storage: product files

Claude API (~$30/month) → Content Machine: 5 posts/day → Support Agent: ~200 tickets/month → Sales Bot: lead scoring → SEO Engine: weekly articles ```

Getting Started

The fastest way to replicate this stack:

1. Start with the blueprint. Our Business Automation Blueprint: Zero to Autopilot walks through every step with configurations and templates.

1. Deploy n8n on Railway. Takes 5 minutes with our Docker template.

1. Set up Supabase. Create tables, enable RLS, configure auth.

1. Connect Claude API. Average cost: $0.003 per content generation, $0.001 per support response.

1. Build workflows incrementally. Start with daily reporting (easiest), then add lead scoring, then content, then support.

What Doesn't Get Automated

• Strategy decisions — AI suggests, you decide
• Complex sales conversations — AI qualifies, you close
• Product development — AI generates, you curate
• Brand voice calibration — Review AI content weekly to maintain consistency

The goal isn't to remove yourself entirely. It's to remove the repetitive 80% so you can focus on the strategic 20%.

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