AI and automation, in plain language.
A short guide to what AI and automation can actually do for a small company, how you get started, and what the words mean. Written for an owner who is not a developer. You do not have to read all of it, and you do not have to learn anything to use it.
What it can actually do.
AI is not one thing. It is a lot of different tools that share a characteristic: they can do something that requires judgement, because they have learned patterns instead of calculating. That is why they are good at what is repetitive and clear, and poor at anything that needs you to notice whether a result is correct. Here are four places where it works.
Keeping the customer
A welcome email, a follow-up after a purchase, a reminder about an abandoned basket. That kind of thing runs in the background all the time, and it is often the fastest thing to get a return on. A welcome sequence alone can recover 10-15 percent of the baskets that would otherwise be forgotten.
Answering the same thing again and again
Opening hours, prices, shipping, returns. Those questions can be answered around the clock. When a question is too hard, it goes to a person. Most businesses find that 50-70 percent of ordinary questions can be answered automatically.
Finding patterns in the numbers
Which products sell together, when your customers buy, which channel actually brings paying customers, and who is about to leave. Those are the questions that end up in a spreadsheet and get answered by feel.
Getting past the blank page
Posts, newsletters, product descriptions. Not to replace your voice, but to get past the blank page. You give it your ideas and your style, and you get a draft you can edit. Three hours of writing becomes half an hour of editing.
How to get started, in five steps.
This is the order I would follow if it were my own company. Start with one thing. Get it running. Then move on.
Find one task you do every day
Not the whole department. One task. The one you do because you did not choose it. When that runs, you have a finished thing you can show, and a feeling for what it cost. That feeling is what makes the next one happen.
Connect your tools
You have a CRM, mail, a calendar, a shop, a stock system. When they talk to each other, something happens automatically that you would otherwise have to remember: a new customer enters the CRM, gets an email, and a task lands in the calendar. It does not require a developer. It requires a willingness to draw lines between the fields.
Put an AI layer on top
Once data is moving, AI can make it sensible. An assistant that reads your FAQ and answers in plain language. An email written from what the customer bought. A dashboard that summarises the week and tells you what to look at. This is where the difference between automated and merely automated appears.
Build on, one at a time
Automate lead capture from web to CRM. Get it running reliably. Then automate invoice reminders. Then customer satisfaction surveys. Each one saves a few hours a month, and after half a year those hours are a working week.
Keep it secure
The more tools talk to each other, the more data moves around. Use a password manager. Turn on two-factor authentication wherever it exists. Take backups. And never share API keys or passwords — treat access to your system the way you treat access to your bank account.
The words you will run into.
No prior knowledge assumed. If you need a definition that is not here, ask — it is not a silly question.
Large Language Model. A model trained on large amounts of text that can understand, summarise and write. Think of a very well-read assistant who can write, explain and answer.
A digital handshake between two programs. When your CRM talks to your mail tool, it happens through an API. It is what lets tools work together as one system.
Getting a computer to do a repetitive task so you do not have to. Like a rule: "when a new customer signs up, send a welcome email and create them in the CRM".
An AI program that can act on its own — answer questions, write reports, analyse data. A chatbot replies. An agent acts.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation. A method where the AI looks up your own documents before it answers. That means the answer is based on your business rather than on general knowledge.
A way of turning words into numbers, so a computer can work out that "winter coat" and "warm jacket" mean something similar. It is the basis of a search that understands what you actually mean.
A database that stores information by meaning rather than by keyword. That is how it finds the right document even when you used different words than the original.
A sequence of automatic steps that happen in order. "Form submitted → customer created in CRM → welcome email sent → task added to calendar".
A series of connected steps that data flows through. A lead pipeline can move someone from "visitor" to "subscriber" to "meeting booked" to "customer" without you touching it.
One screen with the numbers that matter, gathered in one place. Sales today, new leads, open tasks. Instead of checking five tools you look at one. Like the instrument panel in a car.
The instruction you give the AI. A good prompt is specific. Instead of "write about my service" you can write "write three paragraphs about my garden waste removal, aimed at homeowners over 60, with a free estimate offer".
Training a general model further on your own data until it becomes a specialist in your field. Like taking a capable new hire who knows a bit of everything and teaching them everything about your specific business.
Tools that are free. Every one of them checked.
Below is what I use or recommend when a client asks whether they can do it themselves first. Every single one was checked today, and it says exactly what the free version gives you. Where a free version has a catch, it is marked — I will not put a clock in a client's head without saying so.
Bookkeeping and payments
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Billy Vendor page ↗
Danish accounting software with invoicing, VAT and bank reconciliation
What the free version actually gives Free: 0 kr. per month, 3 invoices and 10 expense receipts per month
For owners, no code
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Dinero Vendor page ↗
Danish accounting software with invoicing and a bookkeeping assistant
What the free version actually gives Free: 0 kr. per month, unlimited entries and invoices
For owners, no code
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Zoho Books Vendor page ↗
Accounting with inventory, invoicing and automation
What the free version actually gives Free: 1 user plus 1 bookkeeper
For owners, bookkeepers
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QuickBooks Free Vendor page ↗
Accounting software for one-person businesses
What the free version actually gives Free forever: 1 bank account, 2 invoices per month, no expiry date
For sole traders
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e-conomic Vendor page ↗
Accounting software for small and medium businesses
What the free version actually gives No free plan — a 14-day trial, then 249 kr. per month from day 15
For owners, bookkeepers
Careful Trial only — not free
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Stripe Denmark Vendor page ↗
Payments with Danish cards, DKK and VAT handling
What the free version actually gives No monthly fee — you only pay per transaction
For owners, web shops
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Erhvervsstyrelsen — e-invoicing Vendor page ↗
The rules on e-invoicing and approved accounting systems
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For bookkeepers
Automation without code
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n8n Vendor page ↗
Workflow builder with hundreds of integrations
What the free version actually gives The Community edition is free to self-host and has no limits
For owners, technical
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Make Vendor page ↗
Visual scenario builder with 3,500+ apps
What the free version actually gives Free: 1,000 credits per month
For owners, no code
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Zapier Vendor page ↗
Automation with ready-made Zaps
What the free version actually gives Free: 100 tasks per month, two-step Zaps
For owners, no code
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Power Automate Free Vendor page ↗
Cloud flows inside the Microsoft environment
What the free version actually gives Free licence: 6,000 runs per day, standard connectors only
For owners on Microsoft 365
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Activepieces Vendor page ↗
Self-hosted open-source automation
What the free version actually gives MIT licence, free to self-host
For developers
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Windmill Vendor page ↗
Code-based workflow and script platform
What the free version actually gives AGPLv3, free to self-host
For developers
AI assistants
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ChatGPT Free Vendor page ↗
Assistant with web access, images, data analysis and file upload
What the free version actually gives Free tier with unlimited text chats
For owners, no code
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Le Chat (Mistral) Vendor page ↗
Assistant with web search, file handling and image generation
What the free version actually gives Free tier, no card required
For owners, no code
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Gemini Vendor page ↗
Google's assistant in Search, Docs and Gmail
What the free version actually gives Free tier with compute-based limits
For owners on Google
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Google AI Studio Vendor page ↗
Workbench for Gemini models with an API key
What the free version actually gives Free API key, no credit card needed
For developers
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Mistral Vendor page ↗
European model provider with API and chat
What the free version actually gives Free mode: API access without a credit card
For developers
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Ollama Vendor page ↗
Runs Llama, Qwen, Gemma and DeepSeek locally on your own machine
What the free version actually gives MIT licence, free, no limits
For owners with their own PC
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NotebookLM Vendor page ↗
Chat with your own uploaded sources
What the free version actually gives Free: 100 notebooks, 50 sources per notebook
For owners, no code
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Microsoft Copilot Vendor page ↗
Copilot in Edge, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
What the free version actually gives Free for personal Microsoft accounts
For owners on Microsoft 365
Documents and invoices
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Tesseract OCR Vendor page ↗
Open-source OCR engine for images and scanned PDFs
What the free version actually gives Apache 2.0, free
For developers
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Docling Vendor page ↗
Converts PDF and Office files to markdown and JSON, tables included
What the free version actually gives MIT licence, free
For developers
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Marker Vendor page ↗
Converts documents to markdown with high accuracy
What the free version actually gives Apache 2.0
For developers
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RAGFlow Vendor page ↗
RAG engine with built-in document understanding
What the free version actually gives Apache 2.0, free to self-host
For developers
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Azure Document Intelligence Vendor page ↗
Pulls fields out of invoices and forms
What the free version actually gives Free: 500 pages per month
For developers
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Google Cloud Vision Vendor page ↗
Image recognition and text extraction
What the free version actually gives Free: 1,000 units per month
For developers
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Surya Vendor page ↗
OCR and table detection in 90+ languages
What the free version actually gives Apache 2.0
For developers
Data and dashboards
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Baserow Vendor page ↗
No-code database, a drop-in Airtable alternative
What the free version actually gives Open source, free to self-host
For owners, no code
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Twenty CRM Vendor page ↗
Open CRM, the open alternative to Salesforce
What the free version actually gives AGPLv3, free to self-host
For sales, technical
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Metabase Vendor page ↗
Business intelligence and dashboards on your own data
What the free version actually gives AGPL, free open-source edition
For owners of the data
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Redash Vendor page ↗
SQL dashboards with several data sources
What the free version actually gives BSD 2-Clause, free
For developers
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Airbyte Vendor page ↗
Pipeline from 600+ sources into destination databases
What the free version actually gives Elastic License 2.0, free
For developers
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Listmonk Vendor page ↗
Self-hosted newsletter and mailing list
What the free version actually gives AGPLv3, free
For marketing
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Supabase Vendor page ↗
Hosted Postgres with auth and API
What the free version actually gives Free: 2 projects, 500 MB each
For developers
Careful Projects pause after 7 days of inactivity
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NocoDB Vendor page ↗
A database API over your own data schema
What the free version actually gives Free to self-host
For developers
Marketing and analytics
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Brevo Vendor page ↗
Email marketing and automated flows
What the free version actually gives Free forever: 300 sends per day, up to 100,000 contacts
For marketing
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HubSpot Free CRM Vendor page ↗
CRM with contact data, pipeline and tasks
What the free version actually gives Free: 1,000 contacts and companies, no expiry date
For sales
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Umami Vendor page ↗
Cookie-free web analytics, self-hosted and in the cloud
What the free version actually gives Hobby: 100,000 events per month
For marketing
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PostHog Vendor page ↗
Product analytics and session replay
What the free version actually gives Free: 1,000,000 events per month
For marketing, technical
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Looker Studio Vendor page ↗
Free dashboards and reporting
What the free version actually gives Free with built-in Google connectors
For marketing
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Google Trends Vendor page ↗
Search trends and topic comparison
What the free version actually gives Completely free
For marketing
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Meta Ads Manager Vendor page ↗
Ad tool for Facebook and Instagram
What the free version actually gives Free to use — you only pay for the ads
For marketing
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Matomo Vendor page ↗
Web analytics with full control of the data
What the free version actually gives Free to download and self-host
For marketing, technical
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Plausible Vendor page ↗
Cookie-free web analytics with no consent banner
What the free version actually gives AGPL, free to self-host
For marketing
Careful Only a 30-day trial in the cloud — the free version has to be self-hosted
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Mailchimp Vendor page ↗
Email marketing and campaigns
What the free version actually gives Free: 250 contacts, 500 sends per month
For marketing
Careful Only reaches a small test list
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Google Ads Keyword Planner Vendor page ↗
Keyword research and bid guidance
What the free version actually gives Free, but requires an ad account with payment details
For marketing
Careful Requires payment details on the account
Design and content
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Tally Vendor page ↗
Form builder
What the free version actually gives Free: unlimited forms and unlimited responses
For marketing
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Canva Vendor page ↗
Design tool for presentations, social media and print
What the free version actually gives Free: 5 GB storage, 20 AI uses per month
For marketing
Careful Transparent background and bulk export need Pro
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Figma Starter Vendor page ↗
Design and prototyping tool
What the free version actually gives Free: unlimited drafts, 150 AI credits per day
For designers
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Coolors Vendor page ↗
Colour palette generator
What the free version actually gives Completely free
For marketing
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Google Fonts Vendor page ↗
Free typefaces for web and print
What the free version actually gives Completely free, all open source
For designers
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draw.io Vendor page ↗
Diagram and flowchart tool
What the free version actually gives Apache 2.0, free in the browser and as a desktop app
For owners, no code
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Excalidraw Vendor page ↗
Sketching block with a hand-drawn look
What the free version actually gives MIT licence, free
For owners, no code
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Penpot Vendor page ↗
Open-source design platform
What the free version actually gives Free, open source
For designers
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Inkscape Vendor page ↗
Vector graphics and SVG editor
What the free version actually gives Free, open source (GPL)
For designers
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Unsplash Vendor page ↗
Free photos for web and print
What the free version actually gives Free, commercial use allowed
For marketing
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Proton Vendor page ↗
Mail and file storage with encryption
What the free version actually gives Free: 1 GB mail, 5 GB Drive
For owners
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Ghost Vendor page ↗
Self-hosted blogging and newsletter sending
What the free version actually gives MIT licence, free to self-host
For marketing
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Airtable Vendor page ↗
Table database with forms and automations
What the free version actually gives Free: 1,000 records per base, 1,000 API calls per month
For owners, no code
Courses
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Elements of AI Vendor page ↗
AI for everyone, no code
What the free version actually gives Free, about 6 weeks, self-paced
For beginners, non-technical
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Google AI Essentials Vendor page ↗
The basics of AI and prompting
What the free version actually gives Free, under 5 hours, 5 modules
For beginners
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AI Prompting for Everyone Vendor page ↗
Andrew Ng on writing good prompts
What the free version actually gives Free, 3-7 hours
For beginners, non-technical
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AI for Everyone Vendor page ↗
Andrew Ng's foundation course in AI
What the free version actually gives Free access, about 9 hours — the certificate costs money
For beginners
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DeepLearning.AI Short Courses Vendor page ↗
Many short courses in AI and machine learning
What the free version actually gives Free, 30 minutes to 2 hours per course
For beginners to intermediate
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Hugging Face — Agents Course Vendor page ↗
Build your own agents
What the free version actually gives Free, 8+ units
For beginners to experts
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Prompting Guide Vendor page ↗
Model-agnostic prompting course, with worked examples
What the free version actually gives Free, about 2 hours
For beginners to intermediate
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Microsoft Learn — Copilot Vendor page ↗
Automate processes with Copilot
What the free version actually gives Free, 5 modules
For beginners, Microsoft 365 users
Danish and EU rules
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Datatilsynet — AI Vendor page ↗
The Danish regulator's rules on AI and GDPR
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners
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Digitaliseringsstyrelsen — AI Vendor page ↗
Denmark's official AI site with guidance
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners
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AI Act Service Desk Vendor page ↗
EU platform for finding out whether the AI Act applies to you
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners, legal
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AI Act — timeline Vendor page ↗
When each AI Act rule applies
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners, legal
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Forbrugerombudsmanden Vendor page ↗
Danish regulator for marketing, prices and consumer rights
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners
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EDPB — GDPR for small businesses Vendor page ↗
The European regulator's tool for small businesses
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners
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Skat.dk — VAT registration Vendor page ↗
Official Danish guide to VAT registration
What the free version actually gives Free public information
For owners
Prices and limits change. Everything above was read off the vendor's own page on 2 November 2026. If a link no longer works, tell me and I will fix it or drop it.
Shall I find the task for you?
It takes half an hour. We look at your week, and I tell you what can be automated and what it costs.