€Understanding costs

Four, and they behave completely differently:

1. Fixed costs per period. Licence or subscription — predictable, only change when the contract changes.
2. Usage-based costs. AI evaluations, search services, sending via third-party services. They rise with use.
3. One-off costs. Setup, data import, training, migration.
4. Costs outside the invoice. Domain, mailbox, occasionally a service provider — and above all the working time in your own business.

Point 4 is the largest item and appears in no quote. Depending on size, an introduction costs between one and ten working days — spread out, but real.

Anyone comparing quotes should put all four types side by side. A low base price with a high usage share can be more expensive than a higher fixed price.

With three steps that together make up most of it:

1. Set budgets. A monthly upper limit for every chargeable service. Without a limit, usage carries on even if someone accidentally starts twenty searches.
2. Search more precisely rather than less often. Fewer search terms, narrower location, a smaller number of results. One good search costs less than three bad ones.
3. Look at the usage. Once a month, on the overview. An outlier always has a cause — usually a run that someone started several times.

What does not help: not using the features at all to save money. Anyone who switches off the AI to save ten euros and then works two hours by hand has miscalculated.

Think in terms of proportions: what did the usage achieve?

Per request, and the size of the request determines the price. A short text suggestion costs fractions of a cent; evaluating a long job description costs considerably more.

What drives costs:

• Long inputs. A twelve-page PDF costs more than a paragraph.
• Repeated runs. Every attempt costs, including the failed one.
• Bulk processing. Having a hundred profiles rated at once is a hundred requests.

What costs nothing: using the interface, maintaining contacts, sending campaigns, writing templates.

The practical advice: cut the input down to the essentials. That not only lowers the costs but also improves the result — an AI that reads thirty pages gives a less precise answer than one that gets one page.

Five, and all five only appear during operation:

1. Your own working time. By far the largest item — introduction, maintenance, training new colleagues.
2. Data import. If the source data is messy, that is a project of its own.
3. Domain and mailbox. Small, but they run elsewhere and are forgotten in comparisons.
4. Service providers for individual questions. A solicitor for the terms and conditions, a photographer, someone for deliverability.
5. The migration itself. Running in parallel means paying for both for a while.

What you can do: write down one line per item before deciding — even if the figure is an estimate. An estimate that is written down is better than a figure that is missing.

In substance: the term and what happens at the end.

• Licence with a fixed term: you pay for a period. After that it has to be renewed, otherwise use ends.
• Subscription: continues until cancelled, usually billed monthly or annually.

What counts in both cases is not the name, but:

• What happens at the end? Access gone — data gone? Or can the data still be exported?
• How long is the notice period?
• What is included, what costs extra?
• Does the price rise automatically?

Ask these four before signing. The price is the figure people compare; the answers to these four questions are what you notice later.

That is the most important question before any signature, and the one asked least often.

What you should have clarified:

• Can I get my data out? In which format, how complete, until when.
• How long do I have access after the end? A period of a few weeks is usual and sensible.
• When is it deleted? And: is it deleted?

What you should do yourself, regardless of promises: shortly before the end of the contract, export whatever you want to keep — contacts, companies, documents, website as HTML. And open the export file once and look at it.

An export file that nobody has looked at is not a backup but a hope.

In Aurora Hive Sales, a number of accounts is included in the plan, and it is counted. Once that number is reached, no further account can be created — so nothing is charged on the quiet.

Each additional account can be booked on top. What it costs is stated in your quote, not in this help. In the Agentur Plus plan, there is no limit.

What you should never do: share accounts. A shared account makes any traceability impossible, and in a dispute that is exactly the information that counts. The money saved is out of all proportion.

Two things to check before booking more:

• Accounts that have never been used. The user list on the overview shows who has never signed in.
• Anyone who should only change something occasionally may not need an account at all — for websites, the editor directly on the page is often enough.

Three things, once a quarter:

1. Is the scope right? Are you paying for accounts that no longer exist? For modules nobody uses?
2. Does the usage fit? A jump without an identifiable reason should be clarified, not paid and forgotten.
3. Are the details correct? Company name, address, VAT identification number. An invoice with wrong details can cost you the input tax deduction.

What is often overlooked: employees who have left. An account that was not switched off continues to be charged, and is also a security problem.

Check this together with the annual review of accounts. Both together take twenty minutes.

Not by the price, but by three comparisons:

1. What did it cost before? Not just software — also the hours spent maintaining lists, searching, asking around, duplicate work.
2. What has been added? Orders that would not have come about without the systematic outreach. Only those who take notes know this figure.
3. What would the loss be worth? What happens if nobody knows any more what was discussed with a customer?

For a small business, a rough rule of thumb applies: if a system brings one additional order a year or saves one hour a week, it pays for itself in most cases.

What is not a valid comparison: a spreadsheet that costs nothing. The spreadsheet costs time; it just costs nothing on the invoice.

Not try everything out — but complete one real process.

Specifically:

1. Import fifty real contacts, not sample data.
2. Write one real template.
3. Run one small, real campaign to people you may write to.
4. Work through the replies — note, follow-up, follow up.
5. At the end, take honest stock: did it deliver what it was supposed to?

What says nothing in a trial: clicking through all the areas. Every system looks good in a demonstration.

What happens with Aurora Hive at the end of the 14 days is something you do not need to ask about — it is fixed:

• The instance switches to read-only mode. Viewing, searching and exporting continue; saving and sending do not.
• No contract comes about by itself. Without your confirmation, nothing happens.
• Nothing is deleted automatically. About two months later, a notice comes in text form; the instance is only taken down after that, and only when a human triggers it.
• If you take it over, the same instance with the same data continues to run.

Also expect smaller quantities to apply during the trial — among other things, an upper limit on recipients per sending run. It is enough for point 3 of the list above.

Seven points — they are rarely all included, and that is exactly what you should ask about:

1. What is included, what costs extra?
2. Term and notice period.
3. Price adjustment — automatic, and if so, how?
4. Usage-based components and whether there are upper limits.
5. Setup and data import — included or charged by effort?
6. Support: what, how fast, at what times?
7. What happens at the end — data export, access period, deletion.

Points 3 and 7 are the ones that cause the most trouble later and are least often raised in the conversation.

Ask in writing and keep the answer. A promise in a sales conversation is not a promise.

Two things that go beyond the price:

Budget. A club plans on an annual cycle. Usage-based costs are hard to map in that — which is why budget limits are not just useful here but necessary. Set them before someone discovers a feature.

Resolutions. Who may sign a contract? In clubs, that is the board, often with amount limits in the articles of association. A subscription that exceeds the limit needs a resolution — even if the monthly amount looks small. Calculate it over the contract term.

And the practical tip: a change on the board must not take the access with it. Access data belongs to the club, not to the person — in a password manager to which at least two people have access.