How Much Does It Cost? Is It a Good Deal?

It’s hard to give a blanket yes/no on whether “Make is a good deal.”

The truth is: yes, if you do it right, Make is an AMAZING deal. You can get incredible data for a fraction of a cent that you’d otherwise have to pay a VA $0.05 per lead for.

BUT this isn’t always the case, and it can vary wildly.

Cost Factors:

Operation Usage (Ops): Make.com typically charges per “operation,” AKA each action or step your automation takes will count toward your monthly credit usage.

Loops Add Up: Every loop or iteration costs credits, so automations that process high volumes of data can use up a lot of credits quickly.

Cost Per Lead (CPL): Your true CPL is a reflection of how many credits your automation uses per lead, which can be surprisingly cost-effective if well-optimized. (I’ll show you how to calculate CPL in a later lesson.)

On top of that, you have to pay for external services sometimes. E.g. if your automation is firing off a ChatGPT conversation, you have to pay OpenAI for that usage. BUT in my experience, the main cost is typically the make operation costs moreso than the external services they call.

At the time of recording, Make’s cheapest plan is $10.59/mo for 10,000 operations, which means each op costs $0.001059.

And thus, if it takes 5 ops to process one lead, your Cost Per Lead (CPL) is a $0.005 (AKA a half of a cent)

Why Some Automations Are a Good Deal:

Efficient CPL: When built to minimize operations, automations can drastically reduce CPL compared to paid lead databases. My ChatGPT enrichment automation, for example, is much cheaper than comparable services like Clay. (~$0.01 for mine vs. ~$0.15 for Clay, I believe it was)

Batching Can Reduce Costs: Batching actions, when possible, means fewer operations, lowering CPL significantly compared to running automations one-by-one. In the case of the ChatGPT Operation, the CPL went from $0.005 to $0.001 thanks to batching.

Potential Cost Pitfalls:

Overuse from Inefficiencies: Inefficient automations with extra loops or repeated steps can drain credits fast, potentially making automations more expensive than hiring a VA.

Unexpected Usage Spikes: Small misconfigurations (like triggering extra loops) can lead to sudden spikes in credit usage — I’ve used up hundreds of credits in seconds from simple missteps!

(Note to self: always add a 1 second delay to the end of repeater loops 😂 — more on this later)

Bottom Line:

Automations can be a fantastic value, especially if designed efficiently. But if they’re not, costs can escalate, so keeping an eye on CPL and credit usage is key.