A small business does not need twenty AI subscriptions. It needs five jobs done: think and draft, design, polish, remember meetings, and stop re-typing things between apps. One good tool per job, and the discipline to stop there.
The stack
| Job | Tool | Entry price |
|---|---|---|
| Think and draft | One general assistant | Free tier; about $20/month paid |
| Design and publish | Canva | Free tier; Pro from about $120/year |
| Polish client-facing text | Grammarly | Free tier; Pro from about $12/month annual |
| Remember meetings | Otter | Free tier; Pro about $8/month annual |
| Connect your apps | Zapier | Free tier; paid from about $20/month |
Fully paid, the whole stack lands around $70 per month. Most companies should start at exactly $0 and let the free-tier limits reveal where the value is.
One assistant, not three
Pick one general assistant and make it a habit: drafts, summaries, brainstorms, awkward emails. Which one matters less than the habit; test two free tiers on real work for a week and keep the winner. This is the tool that compounds, because it helps with every other job on this list.
Canva: the design department you do not have
Templates plus AI generation plus brand kits means a non-designer ships acceptable, on-brand assets fast. Decks, social posts, price lists, signage. It will not win design awards, and that is not the assignment.
Grammarly: the last line before send
It works everywhere you type and the free tier already catches the embarrassing errors. If your team writes to clients in English as a second language, the paid tier stops being optional; one avoided embarrassment a month covers it.
Otter: meetings that leave a trace
Join, transcribe, highlight, summary in the inbox. The discipline it enforces (decisions written down, action items visible) is worth more than the transcript itself. Announce the recording and get consent; in Switzerland and the EU that is not optional politeness, it is the law.
Zapier: the intern who never quits
Every small business has a task someone re-types daily: form responses into the CRM, invoices into a spreadsheet, orders into a Slack channel. Zapier connects nearly everything to nearly everything. When flows get complex or volumes high, compare with Make, which is cheaper at volume but demands a more technical mind.
What to skip (for now)
Specialized marketing suites, avatar video generators and per-seat AI add-ons on every SaaS you rent: each has a real buyer, and a five-person company is usually not it. Add a sixth tool when a specific, named bottleneck demands it, not because a demo was impressive.
Our recommendation
Start with all five at $0. After a month, pay for the one whose limit you hit first; that is your bottleneck telling you where the money goes. For most small teams the order ends up: assistant first, Canva second, the rest only when they earn it.