Small businesses use AI to draft social posts, emails, blog outlines and ad copy, and to generate or edit images. An AI assistant produces the first draft, a design tool turns it into finished visuals, and marketing automation sends it to your audience. Every piece still needs a person to check facts, brand tone and image rights before it is published.
Which categories a job needs is Editorial assessment; the tools, prices and dates are Verified data.
Prices are each vendor’s published entry plan, recorded from its own pricing page and dated. The example column prices a team of 10: only per-user prices are multiplied; flat and per-account prices are shown as published. Change the team size in the finder.
An AI assistant drafts, summarises and researches, and business plans keep your data out of model training.
| Tool | Entry price (as published) | Billing unit | Example: team of 10 | Free plan | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Free plan; Business from $20/seat/mo (annual, 2-seat min) | Per seat | $200/mo$20 × 10 seats | YesYes — Free plan for individuals | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Claude | Free plan; Team from $20/seat/mo (annual, 2-seat min) | Per seat | $200/mo$20 × 10 seats | YesYes — Free plan for individuals | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Gemini | Included in Google Workspace from $7/user/mo (annual) | Per user | $70/mo$7 × 10 users | YesFree Gemini app for personal Google Accounts; business use via Workspace | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Copilot Chat free with Microsoft 365; Copilot Business $21/user/mo add-on (annual) | Per user | $210/mo$21 × 10 users | YesCopilot Chat included with eligible Microsoft 365 business plans | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
Design tools turn templates and AI into finished graphics, presentations and video for marketing, or into product and website designs.
| Tool | Entry price (as published) | Billing unit | Example: team of 10 | Free plan | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canva | Free plan; Business $20.83/user/mo ($250/year) or $25 monthly; Pro $12/mo for 1 person | Per user | $208.30/mo$20.83 × 10 users | YesYes — Canva Free, 1 person, 5 GB | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Adobe Express | Free plan; Teams $7.99/user/mo (annual, 2-seat min); Premium $9.99/mo for 1 person | Per user | $79.90/mo$7.99 × 10 users | YesYes — Adobe Express Free, no card | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Figma | Free Starter; Professional Full $16/seat/mo (annual), $20 monthly; Collab $3 | Per seat | $160/mo$16 × 10 seats | YesYes — Starter, 3 design files | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
Marketing automation runs follow-up emails and nurture campaigns without manual sending.
| Tool | Entry price (as published) | Billing unit | Example: team of 10 | Free plan | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | From $15/mo (1,000 contacts) | Per account per month, billed annually (1,000 contacts) | $15/moFlat per account per month, billed annually (1,000 contacts); includes 1 login, so more logins need a higher plan or extra users | NoNo free plan — trial available | Sep 14, 2026Vendor pricing |
| HubSpot | Free tier, from $7/seat/mo | Per seat | $70/mo$7 × 10 seats | YesYes — free CRM for up to 2 users, no card required | Sep 17, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Klaviyo | From $20/mo | Per account per month, priced by active profiles | $20/moFlat per account per month, priced by active profiles | Yes250 active profiles / 500 emails + $5 of SMS/MMS credit per month | Aug 11, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Mailchimp | From $13/mo | Per account per month (up to 500 contacts) | $13/moFlat per account per month (up to 500 contacts); includes 3 logins, so more logins need a higher plan or extra users | Yes250 contacts / 500 sends per month | Sep 18, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Keap | Starting at $299/mo | Per account per month; extra users $39/month each | $299/moFlat per account per month; extra users $39/month each; includes 2 logins, so more logins need a higher plan or extra users | NoNo free plan — limited free trial (no card required; 25 email sends, no payments or texts) | Sep 14, 2026Vendor pricing |
Social media tools schedule posts across networks from one place and report on what worked.
| Tool | Entry price (as published) | Billing unit | Example: team of 10 | Free plan | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hootsuite | Standard $99/user/mo (annual; 10 social accounts) | Per user | $990/mo$99 × 10 users | NoNo — 14-day free trial | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Buffer | Free for 3 channels; Essentials $5/channel/mo (annual) | Per connected channel per month, not per user; billed annually ($6 monthly); Essentials is 1 user | $5 per channel/moPriced per channel, not per login; multiply by how many you have | YesYes — 3 channels, 1 user | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
| Sprout Social | Essentials $79/seat/mo (annual; 5 profiles) | Per seat | $790/mo$79 × 10 seats | NoNo — 30-day free trial | Sep 19, 2026Vendor pricing |
It depends on what you create most. Text-heavy marketing needs a strong writing assistant, while visual content needs image generation or a design tool. The 4 AI assistant tools we track (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft 365 Copilot) are compared in the table above with verified entry prices.
Give the assistant your brand guide, the offer and the platform, and ask for several short options. Pick one, edit it into your own voice, pair it with an approved image and schedule it. Check any facts, prices or dates in the post.
Look at image quality for your style, editing controls and, most of all, the terms for commercial use. Try the same brief in a few tools and keep a record of which images you used and where.
AI speeds up drafting, but someone still has to decide the message, check accuracy and judge what fits your customers. Treat it as a way to produce first drafts faster, not to hand over the whole job.
We start from the job, not the product. The phrasings people search for this job (for example “best ai tool for small business marketing”) come from our research into how small and mid-size teams describe it. Which software categories the job takes is our editorial judgment. Every tool, entry price, billing unit and date comes from HelpCompare’s open dataset, recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page; nothing is estimated, and where a vendor publishes no price we say so. We take no affiliate commissions and publish no scores of our own. See our methodology or download the data from Open Data.
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