Disclosure: we are Fortitude Media and we sell the AI Departments priced on this page, so read our placement of them with that in mind. Our figures are our published prices. Market figures are typical UK ranges, stated as ranges, not quotes.
Last checked: 20 July 2026.
The short answer
A Fortitude AI department costs between £115 and £249 a week, billed monthly, cancel anytime. Inbound is £115, AI Analyst £139, Customer Care £159, Outbound Calling £185, New Business £199, Online Marketing £229 and the Web Team £249. Over a year that is roughly £6,000 to £13,000 per department. The work each one does is conventionally bought as a salary (£22,000 to £55,000 a year plus employment costs), an agency retainer (£2,000 to £10,000 a month) or an outsourced desk (per call, per ticket or per agent). The honest comparison is not "AI is cheaper than people", it is that AI now does the routine majority of these jobs well, so paying full human rates for the whole job is paying yesterday's price for it.
The price list, in one table
| Department | Weekly price | A year, roughly | What it replaces or relieves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inbound | £115 | £5,980 | Reception cover, an answering service, missed-call callbacks |
| AI Analyst | £139 | £7,228 | The reporting day of an analyst or a fractional FD's data work |
| Customer Care | £159 | £8,268 | The routine two thirds of a support desk's queue |
| Outbound Calling | £185 | £9,620 | Telesales days, quote chasing, renewal calls |
| New Business | £199 | £10,348 | The prospecting and outreach half of an SDR's job |
| Online Marketing | £229 | £11,908 | The always-on portion of a digital agency retainer |
| Web Team | £249 | £12,948 | A site build plus the retainer and content freelancers that follow it |
All prices are weekly, billed monthly, cancel anytime. Multi-department programmes are scoped through a £3,500 AI Operations Review, credited against your first three months.
What the alternatives cost
Stated as typical UK ranges, because that is what they are. Your quotes will vary by sector and city.
| The conventional route | Typical cost | The shape of the spend |
|---|---|---|
| Full-time receptionist | £22,000 to £28,000 a year plus around 25 to 30 per cent employment costs | One person, one location, working hours only |
| Answering service | Commonly £1 to £2.50 per call plus monthly fees | Messages taken, rarely questions answered |
| SDR (sales development rep) | £30,000 to £45,000 base plus commission, tools and management time | Three to six months to ramp; the role turns over often |
| Telesales agency | £250 to £450 a day, or £150 to £400 per booked appointment | Bursts of activity, quality varies with the caller |
| Support agent | £24,000 to £30,000 a year plus employment costs | Working hours; queues grow at night and weekends |
| Outsourced support desk | Roughly £1,200 to £3,000+ per agent per month depending on location | Your tone of voice is the first casualty |
| Digital marketing agency | £2,000 to £10,000 a month retainer | Monthly cycles, meetings, and a report at the end |
| Web agency build | £20,000 to £50,000 up front, then £500 to £2,000 a month support | The site is newest on launch day and ages from there |
| Data analyst | £35,000 to £55,000 a year plus tooling | Often consumed by report assembly rather than analysis |
Why the arithmetic works
The gap between £115 a week and a £32,000 loaded salary is not a discount. It is a different cost base. AI does the reading, drafting, calling, logging and reporting that consumed most of those human hours, at close to zero marginal cost, around the clock. What remains genuinely human, judgement on the hard cases, relationships, accountability, stays human: every department has a named person accountable for its outcomes, and everything ships through an approval queue until you choose otherwise.
Two rules keep the comparison honest. First, an AI department replaces the routine majority of a function, not the whole of it. Customer Care resolves the repetitive two thirds of tickets and drafts the hard third for your people. New Business does the researching, writing and chasing; your closer still closes. If a vendor tells you AI replaces the entire function including the judgement, be suspicious. Second, the fair unit is the outcome. Price an answered enquiry, a booked meeting, a resolved ticket, a published page through each route, and compare those.
The costs people forget to count
- Recruitment and ramp. A hire takes weeks to find and months to reach speed. A department goes live in days and does not resign.
- Management. Every hire consumes someone's hours. A department reports weekly in writing and escalates by exception.
- Coverage. Salaries buy working hours. Enquiries, tickets and buying research happen at 9pm and on Saturdays.
- The stack. SDR tools, call software, reporting seats and agency ad-hoc fees stack £100s a month on top of headline prices. Department prices include the machinery.
Where the money argument does not apply
We would rather lose you to the right option than win you into the wrong one. If your enquiries are rare and each one is worth six figures, a named human should answer every time, and our Inbound department is the wrong spend. If your sales motion is three relationship dinners a year, New Business will not improve it. If you need a one-off creative campaign, a good agency is the right buy and we will say so. And if a function is your company's soul, the thing customers choose you for, keep it human and point the AI at everything around it. The Department Discovery exists to catch exactly these cases before you spend anything real: £1,500, two calls, a written map of where the leaks actually are, credited in full if you go ahead.
How to buy this well
Start with one department, not seven. Pick the one where the leak is measurable this quarter: missed calls, unworked pipeline, a slow queue, a stale site. Run it in AI Assisted mode until the approval queue has earned your trust, then promote action types to Autopilot one at a time. Judge it monthly on the outcomes report every department sends: what it handled, what it saved, what it learned. Cancel if it stops earning its keep; the pricing is weekly precisely so the risk stays with us.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI department cost in the UK?
Fortitude AI Departments cost £115 to £249 a week depending on the function: Inbound £115, AI Analyst £139, Customer Care £159, Outbound Calling £185, New Business £199, Online Marketing £229, Web Team £249. Billed monthly, cancel anytime. A department year runs roughly £6,000 to £13,000 against £24,000 to £120,000 for the conventional equivalents.
Are there setup costs?
Onboarding starts with a Department Discovery at £1,500: two calls and a written map of where time and money leak, with a ranked shortlist of departments. It is credited in full against your first four weeks, so if you go ahead the diagnosis effectively costs nothing. Multi-department programmes run through a £3,500 AI Operations Review, credited against your first three months.
Is an AI department really cheaper than hiring?
For the routine majority of these functions, yes, by roughly three to five times on typical UK salary and agency figures, because AI does the reading, drafting, calling and logging at near-zero marginal cost around the clock. The honest caveat: it replaces the routine majority of a role, not the judgement. Complex cases still route to humans, and a named human stays accountable for every department.
What does "weekly pricing, cancel anytime" actually mean?
Prices are quoted per week and billed monthly, and you can cancel at any time without a notice period or exit fee. The pricing is structured that way deliberately: if a department stops earning its keep, you stop paying for it, so the risk of underperformance sits with us rather than you.
Do I need to buy all seven departments?
No, and we advise against starting that way. Start with the single department where your leak is most measurable this quarter. Most clients add a second department only after the first one's monthly report has proved the pattern.