In this episode of the Doing It Online podcast, host Kate McKibbin walks listeners through the complete, budget‑friendly AI technology stack that powers HelloFunnels. She explains why a small set of off‑the‑shelf tools can replace a developer and custom infrastructure, detailing each component, its role, and its monthly cost. The stack centers on Anthropic’s Claude (both web and desktop Cowork versions) for AI reasoning, Airtable and ClickUp as the data and execution “business brain,” Zapier as the integration glue, GoMarble for ad and market intelligence, Whisperflow for voice‑to‑text dictation, and Slack as the communication hub for AI agents. Kate breaks down the pricing – Claude $97, Airtable $40 (often already paid for), ClickUp (usually existing), Zapier ~$20 extra, GoMarble $60 (optional), Whisperflow $9, Slack free – showing the total can stay under $200 per month, often under $100 for existing tool users. She also notes alternatives (e.g., Notion) and invites listeners to a behind‑the‑scenes video for a visual walkthrough.
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If you've ever looked at all the AI talk happening online and thought to yourself, cool, but I don't have a developer, I don't have thousands of dollars to spend on some custom build, and honestly, I have no idea where to even start, I have really good news for you. The AI tech stack we are using to run our whole business here at HelloFunnels right now is genuinely budget-friendly, and by budget-friendly, I mean under $200 a month tops, which when you consider how much you might need to invest in hiring the multiple team members it replaces is, trust me, a steal. And no, we're not running it on some extra computer that has to sit in the corner of my office. It is a small handful of tools that you've probably already heard of. In fact, that you might already be paying for and using, and they do absolutely everything we need. So in today's episode, I'm walking you through every single tool inside our AI tech stack. What each one does, what each one costs, and why it made the cut. Hey, hey there, I'm Kate McKibbin from hellofunnels.co and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Today we're getting nerdy in the most practical way possible because I get asked about this constantly. What tools, what costs, what setup do you actually need to start using AI in a meaningful way in your business? And honestly, the answer is way less complicated and a lot cheaper than most people think. Let's get into it. Okay, so the first tool and the absolute centerpiece of everything we're doing is Claude. Now Claude has two versions that we use, and this is something I think trips people up. There is the web version, which is just plain old Claude in your browser, right? And then there is Cowork, which is a desktop app-based version. Now I use both of them, not because I'm being fancy or trying to overcomplicate things, but because they each do a slightly different job for me. So have a slightly different purpose. The way I think about it is this: web-based Claude is for everything I might need to be able to access on the go. So if I'm traveling, if I'm out for a walk and I wanna dictate an idea into something, if I'm on my phone, if I'm on a different device than my desktop, that's web. Cowork is for anything that needs to actually run on its own in the background or on a schedule. Things that need to run every day, every week, every month, things that need to be running while I'm doing other stuff. Basically anything that needs to be more autonomous. You can't schedule things on the web version yet, and you can't see scheduled things on the web version either, also yet. I'm sure that'll change in a week and a half. So that's the main difference for me right now. Now we use projects a lot and we have these set up inside Claude for each of our main departments at HelloFunnels. And we have skills built for, for each different tasks and processes that get run inside those departments. The skills can actually be used across either version, which is really handy, but the projects themselves are basically duplicates. So on our web-based side, I have a project called, for example, Marketing Department On The Go. And in our co-work side, we have a project called just the Marketing Department. Same general purpose, same setup, same background information in both. Just one of them is for when I'm out and about. The other one is for the stuff that needs to be running on its own. Back at HQ. Cost-wise, my Claude plan is just $97 a month. There are higher plans than that, and I'll be honest, I pretty much never run out of tokens at this level right now, but I wouldn't be opposed to going up a level if I needed it. Okay, next tool is Airtable. Airtable is what I call part one of our business brain, and if you listen to last week's episode where I went deep on the AI business brain that we've set up, you'll already know that the business brain is what makes this whole AI system actually really useful instead of just being a fancy Google replacement. Airtable holds all of our data. It's our sales data, our product data, our marketing data, our client data, our client activity, all of it. It is a central database that our AI system pulls from whenever it needs to know something about what's currently going on in the business, and it costs us around $40 a month. But, and this is a really big but, we were already paying for Airtable long before any of this AI stuff existed. So the actual cost of using Airtable as part of our AI brain is basically nothing for us. And if you are starting from scratch, that is a $40-ish a month line item that you would need to plan for. If you're already on Airtable, congratulations, you've got a massive head start. All right, tool number 3 is ClickUp, and ClickUp is part 2 of the business brain. So if Airtable is the data side, ClickUp is the doing side. This is where our promotion plans live, our marketing plans, all of our SOPs, all of our operational stuff, all of our content tasks, plans, and actually content. And Claude has direct access to both Airtable and ClickUp, which means whenever I ask it to do something, it can pull from either of those depending on what it needs. Same story on the cost side. We were already using ClickUp before the AI stuff, so it's not an extra spend for us. And quick side note, if you are starting fresh and you don't wanna pay for both Airtable and ClickUp separately, Notion can actually do both parts of these jobs in one tool. I personally think Notion is great. The only reason we're not using it is because we already had everything set up in Airtable and ClickUp and they work great for us. So the thought of moving over just to have them all in one platform was just crazy. Didn't make sense. All right. Tool number 4 is Zapier, Zapier, depending on which part of the world you're from. And we genuinely could not have done this without Zapier. Zapier. What Zapier does for us is it gets data into Airtable from all the places where there isn't a direct integration. So things like new sales coming in from Thrivecart, new leads, new client activity, new funnel actions as those leads move through our funnels. All of that gets pushed into Airtable through some strategic Zaps. Now we were already using Zapier again for other things in the business. So we just bumped it up one plan level to handle the extra volume. That ended up being about an extra $20 a month for us. Again, if you're starting from scratch, your Zapier cost will just depend on how much you are using it, but it's not a crazy expensive tool if you structure your zaps strategically. Okay. Tool number 5, and this one is technically optional, but I would not want to live without it now. That is called GoMarble. GoMarble costs us about $60 a month. And what it does is it pulls in all of our ads data and ads performance, plus competitive research, market research, and even social media research. Research. So if you are running ads, this tool is unreal. It feeds all of that information into our daily briefings, weekly briefings, and even our content creation process. It's basically how we know what is actually working in our ads, what our competitors are doing, what topics are hot right now in our space, and what we should probably be talking about right now. If you are not running ads at all, you could probably skip this one for the moment, but if you are running ads or you wanna add that layer of intelligence to your business, it's so worth the extra spend. Tool number 6 is Whisperflow. This is just a quick one, again, optional. Whisperflow is a voice-to-text tool, so it lets me dictate into pretty much anything on my computer, which means instead of typing every brief, every prompt, every brain dump, I just talk. And I talk pretty fast, so it's a big time saver. Although a little PS, dear Whisperflow team, if you're listening, your accuracy on the Australian accent has slipped a little bit lately. If you could fix that, that'd be great. Okay. The very last piece of our AI puzzle is Slack. Now Slack is not an AI tool exactly, but is how our AI agents actually communicate with us. All of our AI agents have their own Slack users. So when an agent finishes a task or has a question or has flagged something that needs my attention, it just pops up in Slack like a message from another team member. And this is a personal preference thing, but I really like keeping my work stuff in one container and my life stuff. Somewhere else. I know some people have their AI agents messaging them on WhatsApp or even via text message, and personally that would drive me absolutely crazy. So Slack is where it all lives for us. It just makes everything feel calm and contained. And yes, we are on the free plan, so this one costs you nothing. Okay, so let's actually do the maths on what all of this costs. My Claude plan, $97 a month. The extra Airtable costs we were because of AI, zero, because we were already paying for it. but for most people, between $20 to $40 if you're starting from scratch. Same with ClickUp, zero extra. And I would say most people listening to this should have some kind of CRM that would be suitable, but if not, Notion's a great option. Zapier, about $20 extra a month in usage. Flow Marble, totally optional, $60 a month. Whisperflow, $9 a month, and Slack, totally free. So if you are already running a few tools in your business, the actual extra cost of building out an entire superpowered AI business setup is going to be well under $200 a month, if not under $100. That's it. No giant tech budget, no developer, no custom build, no extra computer running in the corner of your office needed. Not yet anyway. Just a small handful of tools doing very specific jobs, freeing up hours, if not days, of your time and making everything in your business better. So that is our entire AI tech stack. Claude doing the heavy lifting, Airtable and ClickUp as our business brain, Zapier as the glue, GoMarble for ads and intelligence, WhisperFlow for dictation, and Slack as a communicator. Whole thing, as I mentioned, well under $200 a month. So if you wanna actually see how it all works together, what the pieces look like, what the business brain looks like, what the workflows look like, how Claude is pulling all that data from Airtable and ClickUp in real time, go and grab the special behind the scenes video I recorded. It's the easiest way to wrap your head around what this could look like in your own business. The link is in the show notes. It's totally free. Is only up for a limited time. I'd love you to take a look. Alrighty, that's it for today, guys. I'll catch you all in the next episode.
