Module 2 · Where tools live: saving, hosting & staying safe

What's actually worth paying for

Here’s the honest bill for everything in this course: about $20 a month, for your Claude plan, and effectively nothing else. No hidden fees, no per-tool charges, no surprise renewals.

The whole bill, itemized

The one real cost is your Claude plan — the AI that does the building — and you can cancel any time; you only really need it in the weeks you’re building. Everything else is genuinely free: Node and Git run programs and save snapshots, GitHub backs up every tool you’ll ever build, and Vercel hosts the rare one that needs to go online. And the tools themselves cost nothing to run — once built, they’re yours, with no subscription behind them.

What that $0/month replaces

This is the quiet advantage of owning your tools instead of renting them. The three tools you’re about to build each stand in for a category of software that normally charges a monthly fee:

• A dedicated proposal platform — you’ll build a proposal generator instead.
• An invoicing platform — the same skills produce an invoice tool you own.
• A reporting or dashboard platform — you’ll build your own numbers dashboard.

Each of those is typically a monthly subscription, and the stack adds up fast. The tools you build do the same jobs for $0/month — and they do exactly what your business needs, because you described them.

When paying more is actually right

There is one upgrade worth considering. Claude’s bigger Max plan ($100–200/month) is only worth it if you end up building for hours every day — a working developer’s pace, not a business owner’s. For everyone reading this, Pro at $20/month is the right call. You can upgrade in one click later if you ever genuinely need to, so there’s no reason to overpay now.