Pay for Wonderful AI Tools at Fair Prices

I watch companies waste thousands of dollars per year on cheap AI tools that don't actually work.

The logic always sounds reasonable: "Why pay $100/month when this other tool does the same thing for $15?"

Because it doesn't do the same thing. Not even close.

Warren Buffett famously said it's better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price than a fair business at a wonderful price. The same principle applies to AI tools, but almost everyone gets it backwards.

They chase the $10/month tool with 47 ‘features’ instead of the $80/month tool that does one thing perfectly. They convince themselves they're being smart with their budget. But they're actually lighting money on fire.

Here's what actually happens when you buy fair AI tools at wonderful prices:

You spend three hours per week fixing its mistakes. You build Zapier workarounds. You assign someone to "manage" the tool. You hold meetings about why it's not delivering results. You eventually abandon it and start over.

Now Consider the opposite. 

A wonderful AI tool at a fair price just works.

It solves the problem you set out to solve without requiring constant supervision. It integrates all relevant information and complimentary systems cleanly. It produces output you can use immediately. It saves you 5-10 hours per week, every week, forever.

When we built Orbit Flows, my team tested every major AI writing assistant on the market. Some were $20/month. Some were free. And yes, some were expensive.

The cheap ones required so much prompt engineering, editing, and quality control that they were slower than hiring an additional full-time writer. The wonderful ones (which cost more) reduced our production time by 60 percent on day one.

I gladly paid $100/month for tools that saved me 15 hours per week. That's $6.50 per hour saved if you do the math. Absolute no-brainer.

But I refused to pay $15/month for tools that “saved me” two hours only to subtly create three hours of cleanup work.

The trap is that wonderful prices feel responsible in the moment. You can show your finance team a tiny line item. You can brag about being scrappy.

But fair tools at wonderful prices don't build a resilient business. They add friction instead of removing it. And friction kills AI adoption faster than anything else.

If you're evaluating AI tools right now, ask yourself one question:

Does this tool eliminate a problem completely, or does it just make the problem cheaper?

If it's the latter, keep looking. Wonderful AI tools at fair prices always win in the long run.

As Buffett would say, price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

Stop optimizing for price. Start paying for wonderful.

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