The Complete, Budget-Friendly AI Toolkit for Small Businesses – Part 1

Part 1: The Three Core Tools Every Small Business Should Set Up First

This is Part 1 of our three-part guide to building a practical AI toolkit for your small business. No technical skills required, no enterprise pricing, no hype or complexity.

Part 1 (this one): The three core tools that deliver the most immediate value
Part 2: Completing your toolkit with supporting tools, optional extras, and budget alternatives
Part 3: Making it all work, with implementation plans, industry-specific advice, sample prompts, and troubleshooting

What this guide covers

There are six AI tools that together form a solid foundation for any small business. Three are paid, three are free. The total cost comes to around $70 per month, and the full setup takes about five to six hours. You can do it in a weekend or spread it across a few weeks.

You don’t need technical skills. You don’t need to understand how AI works. You just need to follow the setup steps and start using the tools.

Here’s the full toolkit at a glance:

Tool	Cost	Setup Time	What It Does
ChatGPT Plus or Gemini Advanced	$20/mo	15 mins	Writing, analysis, brainstorming, problem-solving
Canva Pro	$13/mo	30 mins	Graphics, social posts, presentations, marketing materials
Tidio Starter	$29/mo	45 mins	Website chat, messaging, customer enquiry automation
Setmore or YouCanBookMe	Free	30 mins	Online appointment scheduling
NotebookLM	Free	20 mins	Ask questions about your own documents
Shortwave	$7/mo	15 mins	AI-powered email management

We’ve organised them into three groups based on when you should set them up:

Foundation Tools (set up first): Your AI assistant, design studio, and customer communication hub. These are the three we cover in this post, because they deliver the most immediate value.

Supporting Tools (add when ready): Scheduling, document intelligence, and email management. These round out your capabilities. Covered in Part 2.

Optional Extras: Video repurposing and translation tools for specific needs. Also covered in Part 2, along with budget alternatives if the full toolkit is too much right now.

Each tool section follows the same format: what it is, what it costs, how long setup takes, practical applications, setup steps, and tips for getting more value.

Tool 1: The AI Assistant

Your AI brain for writing, thinking, and analysis.

Tool: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, or Gemini Advanced Cost: $20/month Setup time: 15 minutes

Why it matters

The foundation of this entire toolkit is a subscription to a large language model. That’s the technical term for AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. You’ve almost certainly encountered the free versions of these tools. The paid versions are substantially more capable.

For $20 per month, you get access to the most advanced AI models, faster response times, the ability to upload files and images for analysis, and features like web browsing and code interpretation. More importantly, you get reliable access without hitting usage limits during your busiest periods.

This single tool handles an enormous range of tasks that would otherwise require either significant time investment from you, hiring freelancers, or going without. It is genuinely a Swiss Army knife for knowledge work.

Practical applications

Here is how a typical small business owner might use this tool in a given week.

Writing customer communications. A customer sends a complaint. Instead of spending twenty minutes crafting the perfect response, you paste their message into the AI, explain the situation briefly, and ask it to draft a professional, empathetic reply. You review it, make a few tweaks, and send. What took twenty minutes now takes five.

Creating job postings. You need to hire someone. You describe the role to the AI: what the job involves, what skills matter, what kind of person would fit your culture. It produces a job ad that would have taken you an hour to write from scratch. You adjust it to match your voice and post it.

Drafting proposals and quotes. A potential client wants a proposal. You give the AI the key details of the project, what you are offering, and the pricing. It structures a professional proposal with appropriate formatting, clear language, and logical flow. You add the specifics and send it off.

Understanding contracts and legal documents. Someone sends you a contract to review. You upload it and ask the AI to summarise the key terms, explain what the termination clause means, flag anything unusual, and compare it to standard contracts it has seen. It is not a replacement for a lawyer on important deals, but it helps you understand what you are looking at.

Analysing business data. You export sales figures from your POS system or Shopify. You upload the spreadsheet and ask questions: “Which products sold best last month?” “How does this month compare to the same period last year?” “What trends should I be aware of?” The AI gives you plain English answers without requiring any knowledge of Excel formulas or data analysis.

Brainstorming and problem solving. You are stuck on a decision. You describe the situation to the AI: “I’m trying to decide whether to hire an employee or keep using contractors. Here’s my situation…” It asks clarifying questions, suggests angles you had not considered, and helps you think through the trade-offs.

Generating social media content. You need to post on Instagram or LinkedIn but cannot think of what to say. You describe your topic and the AI drafts several options. You pick the best one, tweak it, and post. What used to be an agonising thirty minutes becomes a quick five-minute task.

Writing marketing copy. You need text for your website, an email campaign, or a brochure. Instead of staring at a blank page, you describe what you need and let the AI produce a first draft. You then edit and refine until it sounds like you.

Which one to choose

There are three main options at roughly the same price point. All are capable. The choice depends on your situation.

ChatGPT Plus from OpenAI ($20/month) is the most popular option. It has the largest user base, the most tutorials available, and it integrates with the most third-party tools. If you are not sure which to pick, this is the safe default. The ecosystem around it is simply larger, which means more help is available when you get stuck.

Gemini Advanced from Google ($20/month) is Google’s equivalent. The main advantage is if you already work primarily within Google’s ecosystem: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar. Gemini integrates directly with these tools, which can be convenient. It also bundles access to NotebookLM premium features, which might matter if you use that tool heavily.

Claude Pro from Anthropic ($20/month) is often considered the strongest for nuanced writing and complex reasoning tasks. If your work involves detailed analysis, careful writing, or anything requiring subtle judgment, Claude tends to produce higher quality output. The trade-off is a smaller ecosystem with fewer integrations and tutorials.

Our recommendation: For most small businesses just getting started with AI, we recommend ChatGPT Plus. It is the most versatile, the best documented, and the easiest to find help for when you need it. You can always switch later once you better understand your needs.

OpenAI Review from $20/mo

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Setup steps

Go to chat.openai.com (or the equivalent for your chosen tool)
Create an account
Subscribe to the paid tier
Download the mobile app for on-the-go access
Bookmark for quick access

Getting better results

A few principles for getting more value from whichever AI you choose.

Be specific about what you want. Instead of asking “write me a marketing email,” try “write me a marketing email for my landscaping business announcing our spring clean-up special, targeting homeowners in suburban areas, keeping the tone friendly but professional, and including a clear call to action to book a quote.”

Provide context about your business. The AI knows nothing about you unless you tell it. Explain who your customers are, what your business does, what tone you typically use in communications. The more context it has, the better its output.

Ask for options. Instead of requesting one response, ask for three alternatives. This gives you choices and often surfaces ideas you would not have thought of yourself.

Do not accept the first output. The AI’s initial response is a starting point, not a finished product. Ask follow-up questions, request changes, push for improvements. The value comes from the conversation, not from the first answer.

Use it to improve your own writing. Write a first draft yourself, then ask the AI to improve it. This often produces better results than asking it to write from scratch, because your draft provides context and direction the AI would not have otherwise.