How to Build an AI Automation Stack for Your Business

Last updated: February 2026

“AI automation” sounds like enterprise software that costs $50K/year. It doesn’t have to be. With the right combination of tools, a solo operator or small team can automate workflows that used to require dedicated staff — for under $100/month.

This guide is for people who want to actually build automations, not just read about them. By the end, you’ll have a working stack.

What an AI Automation Stack Actually Is

It’s three layers:

  1. Trigger — something happens (email arrives, form submitted, schedule fires)
  2. AI Processing — an LLM reads, analyzes, decides, or generates
  3. Action — something gets done (email sent, data updated, notification pushed)

That’s it. Every AI automation, from simple to complex, follows this pattern.

The Core Tools

Automation Platform: Make.com or n8n

You need something to connect tools together. These are your options:

Make.com (formerly Integromat) — $9/month

  • Visual workflow builder (drag and drop)
  • 1,000+ app integrations
  • Built-in AI modules (OpenAI, Claude, etc.)
  • Best for: non-technical users, quick setups

n8n — Free (self-hosted) or $20/month (cloud)

  • Similar to Make but open-source
  • Can self-host for free on a $5/month VPS
  • More flexible for custom logic
  • Best for: technical users who want full control

Zapier — $20/month

  • The most popular option, but also the most expensive per task
  • Simpler than Make/n8n but less powerful
  • Best for: people already using it

My recommendation: Make.com if you’re not technical, n8n self-hosted if you are.

AI Brain: OpenAI API or Claude API

Your automations need an LLM to do the thinking. Both work well:

OpenAI API (GPT-4o-mini): $0.15 per million input tokens. Cheap, fast, good enough for most automation tasks. This is your workhorse model.

Claude API (Haiku): $0.25 per million input tokens. Slightly better at following complex instructions. Good alternative.

Cost reality: Most automations use tiny amounts of tokens. Processing 100 emails per day with GPT-4o-mini costs about $0.50/month. It’s essentially free.

Data Storage: Airtable or Google Sheets

Your automations need somewhere to read from and write to:

Airtable — Free tier (1,000 records) or $20/month

  • Better for structured data and relational lookups
  • API is clean and well-documented
  • Best for: CRM-like data, inventory, project tracking

Google Sheets — Free

  • Everyone knows how to use it
  • Good enough for most automation data needs
  • Best for: simple lists, logs, reports

5 Automations You Can Build This Weekend

1. AI Email Triage ($0.50/month)

What it does: Reads incoming emails, categorizes them (urgent/normal/spam/sales), drafts responses for routine ones, flags important ones for your attention.

Stack: Gmail → Make.com → OpenAI API → Gmail/Slack

How to build it:

  1. In Make.com, create a Gmail trigger (“watch for new emails”)
  2. Send the email subject + body to OpenAI with this prompt: 
    Categorize this email as: URGENT, NORMAL, SALES, or SPAM.
If NORMAL or SALES, draft a brief, professional response.
Return JSON: {"category": "...", "draft_response": "...", "summary": "..."}
  3. Route based on category:
    • URGENT → Slack notification to you
    • NORMAL → Draft response saved to Gmail drafts
    • SALES → Log to Airtable for follow-up
    • SPAM → Archive

Time to build: 30-45 minutes Monthly cost: ~$0.50 in API calls + Make.com base plan

2. Content Repurposing Pipeline ($2/month)

What it does: Takes a blog post and automatically generates social media posts, email newsletter snippet, and SEO meta description.

Stack: RSS/Webhook → Make.com → OpenAI API → Buffer/Mailchimp/CMS

How to build it:

  1. Trigger: new blog post published (via RSS or webhook)
  2. Fetch the full article text
  3. Send to OpenAI with prompts for each output:
    • “Write 3 Twitter/X posts highlighting key points (under 280 chars each)”
    • “Write a 2-sentence email newsletter teaser”
    • “Write an SEO meta description (under 160 chars)”
  4. Post to Buffer (social), save to Mailchimp draft (email), update CMS (meta)

Time to build: 1 hour Monthly cost: ~$2 in API calls

3. Customer Feedback Analyzer ($1/month)

What it does: Collects reviews/feedback from multiple sources, analyzes sentiment and themes, generates a weekly summary report.

Stack: Typeform/Email/App Store → Make.com → OpenAI API → Airtable → Slack

How to build it:

  1. Collect feedback from your sources into Airtable (via Make.com integrations)
  2. Daily: batch process new feedback through OpenAI: 
    Analyze this customer feedback:
- Sentiment (positive/neutral/negative)
- Category (bug/feature request/praise/complaint)
- Key theme (1-3 words)
- Priority (high/medium/low)
  3. Store analysis in Airtable
  4. Weekly: generate summary report and post to Slack

Time to build: 1-2 hours Monthly cost: ~$1 in API calls

4. Lead Qualification Bot ($3/month)

What it does: When a new lead comes in (form submission, email inquiry), AI evaluates fit based on your criteria and routes accordingly.

Stack: Typeform/Website → Make.com → OpenAI API → CRM/Email

How to build it:

  1. Trigger: new form submission or inquiry email
  2. Send lead info to OpenAI with your qualification criteria: 
    Based on these criteria, score this lead 1-10:
- Company size: prefer 10-500 employees
- Industry: prefer SaaS, e-commerce, fintech
- Budget indicator: prefer $5K+/month
- Urgency: prefer immediate need
Return: {"score": N, "reasoning": "...", "suggested_action": "..."}
  3. Route based on score:
    • 8-10: Immediate notification + auto-schedule meeting (Calendly link)
    • 5-7: Add to nurture sequence
    • 1-4: Polite auto-response, add to low-priority list

Time to build: 1-2 hours Monthly cost: ~$3 in API calls

5. Competitor Monitor ($5/month)

What it does: Monitors competitor websites, social media, and news for changes and updates. Sends you a weekly digest.

Stack: Make.com (HTTP module) → OpenAI API → Airtable → Email/Slack

How to build it:

  1. Schedule: weekly HTTP requests to competitor pages (pricing, features, blog)
  2. Compare current content with last saved version (stored in Airtable)
  3. If changes detected, send to OpenAI: 
    Compare these two versions of [competitor]'s pricing page.
What changed? Is this significant? What does it mean for us?
  4. Compile all changes into a weekly digest
  5. Email or Slack the digest to your team

Time to build: 2-3 hours Monthly cost: ~$5 in API calls

Total Stack Cost

ComponentMonthly Cost
Make.com (Core plan)$9
OpenAI API (all automations)$5-15
Airtable (free tier)$0
Google Sheets$0
Buffer (free tier)$0
Total$14-24/month

For under $25/month, you have an AI-powered automation stack that handles email triage, content repurposing, customer feedback analysis, lead qualification, and competitor monitoring. Try hiring a human to do all that.

Common Mistakes

Over-automating. Not everything should be automated. If a task requires nuance, judgment, or empathy (like responding to an angry customer), keep a human in the loop. Automate the boring stuff, not the important stuff.

No error handling. AI outputs are probabilistic. Sometimes the JSON is malformed. Sometimes the categorization is wrong. Build error handling into every automation — fallback routes, human review queues, retry logic.

Set and forget. Review your automations monthly. Check the AI outputs for quality drift. Update prompts as your business changes. Automations rot if you don’t maintain them.

Starting too complex. Build one automation. Get it working. Live with it for a week. Then build the next one. Don’t try to automate everything at once.

Getting Started

Pick the automation that would save you the most time this week. Build it. If it’s the email triage bot, you’ll save 30+ minutes per day starting tomorrow.

The tools are cheap. The setup is straightforward. The only cost is the 1-2 hours to build it.

Stop reading about AI automation. Go build one.

Tools mentioned: Make.com | n8n | OpenAI API | Airtable