Let’s talk numbers. You’ve got a team of 20-50 people, and everyone’s saying you need AI. But you’re not swimming in VC money, and you don’t have an IT department of 30. What can you actually afford?

Here’s a realistic AI stack that’ll cost you around $500/month. Not thousands. Not “enterprise pricing.” Just practical tools that’ll make your team more productive without breaking the bank.

The Foundation: ChatGPT Team ($25/user for 5 users = $125)

Don’t buy it for everyone. That’s where SMBs go wrong.

Get ChatGPT Team subscriptions for your power users—your marketing lead, your senior developer, your ops manager, and maybe two others who are constantly drafting content or solving complex problems. Everyone else can use the free tier for basic questions.

Why Team over Plus? The shared workspace means people can actually learn from each other’s prompts instead of reinventing the wheel 50 times over.

Document Intelligence: Notion AI ($10/user for 10 users = $100)

If you’re already on Notion (and you should be), their AI add-on is stupidly cheap at $10 per user. You don’t need to buy it for everyone—just the folks who are constantly writing docs, meeting notes, or project briefs.

The AI can summarize long threads, draft meeting agendas, and help standardize your documentation. It’s not fancy, but it works where your team already lives.

Customer Support: Zendesk AI (starting at $49/month)

According to SmartCompany’s 2025 research, Australian SMBs are seeing 30-40% reduction in response times with AI-assisted support. That’s real money saved.

Zendesk’s AI agents can handle your tier-1 questions—password resets, basic product info, order status checks. Your actual humans focus on the complex stuff. Even the basic plan gives you auto-responses and ticket categorization that’ll save hours each week.

Sales Intelligence: HubSpot’s Free CRM + AI Tools ($0, with $50 add-ons)

HubSpot’s free tier is shockingly good. The AI email writer, meeting scheduler, and lead scoring are all included at no cost for small teams.

You might want to spend $50/month on their Sales Hub Starter just to get better automation, but test the free version first. Many 30-person companies run on it for months before needing to upgrade.

Internal Search: Glean Lite ($75/month for 50 users)

This one’s a sleeper hit. Glean indexes all your company knowledge—Slack, Google Drive, Notion, everything—and gives you one search bar that actually works.

Your team wastes probably 2 hours per week hunting for that one doc someone wrote six months ago. Glean’s AI finds it in seconds. At $75/month, that’s cheaper than one person’s hourly rate.

Content Creation: Canva Pro with AI ($100/month for 5 users)

Your marketing team needs to pump out social graphics, presentation decks, and the occasional flyer. Canva’s AI background remover, Magic Write, and template suggestions are all included in Pro.

Buy it for your marketing, HR, and sales folks. Everyone else can stick with the free version.

What to Skip (For Now)

AI coding assistants beyond GitHub Copilot’s free tier. Unless you’ve got a dev team of 10+, the paid versions aren’t worth it yet.

Custom AI models. You’re not OpenAI. Pre-built tools will handle 95% of what you need.

“AI-powered” analytics platforms. Most of these are regular analytics with an AI sticker slapped on. Google Analytics is still free.

When You Need Expert Help

Getting the stack right is one thing. Making sure your team actually uses it? That’s another.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the options or want to make sure you’re not wasting money on tools that’ll sit unused, AI consultants Brisbane specialists can help you right-size your AI investments. They’ll audit what you’re actually using, cut what you’re not, and show your team how to get real value from what you’re paying for.

The Reality Check

This $500/month stack assumes you’re strategic about who gets what. The biggest mistake SMBs make? Buying enterprise seats for everyone because it “seems fair.”

It’s not about fairness. It’s about ROI. Your receptionist probably doesn’t need a $25/month ChatGPT subscription. Your head of product definitely does.

Start small. Add seats when people are actually asking for access, not preemptively. According to the Tech Council of Australia’s SMB report, companies that scale their AI tools gradually see 60% better adoption rates than those who roll everything out at once.

What Success Looks Like

After three months with this stack, you should see:

• 2-3 hours saved per person per week
• Faster customer response times
• Better documentation (because people actually write it now)
• Less time in meetings (thanks to AI summaries)

If you’re not seeing those results, you’re either using the wrong tools or your team needs better training. Both are fixable.

The goal isn’t to have the fanciest AI stack. It’s to spend $500 in a way that saves you $5,000 worth of time. Keep that ratio in mind, and you’ll be fine.