FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

    What you probably want to know.

    Honest answers to the real questions. Yours not listed? Email us directly.

    How we work together.

    Process, timeline, and what to expect from us.

    We respond to your request within one business day. Then we schedule a 45-minute intro call. The full pre-track, from self-check to findings session, takes about a week. No sales pitch, no mandatory follow-up. Sometimes the outcome is that we're not the right fit, and we'll tell you that too.

    It depends on the engagement. In Focus we build one system end to end within six weeks: one week of kick-off, then four to five weeks of building.

    In Scale you start with a two-week kick-off plus roadmap. The first system is usually live within four to six weeks, with more added month by month. In Embed we build several systems in parallel, with first deliveries from week four.

    For everything: a live system isn't a finished system. From go-live we keep sharpening every month based on what we see in production.

    We stay involved. Every month we review logs, tune prompts, and ship small improvements based on what we see in production. That's included in your engagement, no separate fees.
    Yes. For every go-live we run a walkthrough session with the people who'll use the system daily. We explain what it does, what it doesn't do, and when they should call us. After that they get a short written handover they can share with new colleagues.

    Pricing and terms.

    Fixed monthly rates, no hidden hours.

    Three ways of working together with fixed monthly rates:

    Focus: from €3,500 per month. For one clear bottleneck.

    Scale: from €5,500 per month. For multiple systems that connect to each other.

    Embed: custom. For multiple systems at once and us as part of your team.

    No setup fees, no hidden hours, no extra costs for maintenance. Everything is on the pricing page.

    Automating an operation isn't a sprint. The first weeks are mostly building. The real results come once systems are running and we keep sharpening them based on what we see in production.

    The system that went live in week 8 is twice as sharp by month 6. That's where the value sits. At the end of your 12 months you're free to stop, switch, or continue. After that we work month-to-month with 30 days' notice. No automatic renewal.

    We deliberately build against this. You see concrete output within the first four weeks, and you have a monthly review where we honestly reflect on whether the direction is right. If it's really not clicking, we look for a solution together. Not via a formal SLA process, but by talking directly about what is and isn't working. Specific exit terms live in the contract we draft for your engagement.
    No. No setup fee, no hidden hours, no extra invoices. You pay monthly what we agreed, nothing more. If your AI usage exceeds the bandwidth we agree upfront, we pass through the overage at cost, no margin: you see the provider invoice 1-to-1.

    Ownership, data and security.

    Who owns what we build, and how we handle your data.

    You do. All systems, prompts, configurations and code we build for you are your property. Stop after 12 months, and you get a full handover: documentation, access, everything. No vendor lock-in.
    Honest: that risk exists with every vendor. What we've built in against it: every system runs on your own provider accounts (Anthropic, OpenAI, Supabase, AWS), not ours. Code and configurations are pushed monthly to a repository you own. If Optivate stops tomorrow, your systems keep running and you have everything another party needs to take over.
    Operational data (logs, configs) is hosted in the EU. LLM calls go through Anthropic and OpenAI; we enable their zero-retention settings where available, so prompts and outputs don't linger with them. Inside Optivate, access is limited to the team members working on your engagement. We work GDPR-compliant and sign a data processing agreement before we have a single conversation.

    Three layers built in. First: for sensitive actions like financial bookings or outbound customer communication, there's always a human in the loop. The system suggests, a team member presses send. Second: we log every decision, so we can reconstruct exactly what happened.

    Third: if a meaningful mistake occurs, we help fix it directly. We see ourselves as part of your team, not an external vendor hiding behind an SLA. For specific risk profiles (medical, legal) we agree extra safeguards upfront.

    Is this for us?

    A few honest filters.

    Indicatively from €1M revenue. Below that the business case is usually too thin: the time you save through automation needs to pay back. Above it there's almost always a strong case.

    We come from entrepreneurship ourselves and previously built companies to serious revenue. We don't build prototypes for pitches or "AI strategy" decks, but systems that run in production. Proven results in weeks. See the cases.

    The biggest difference sits in how we start. A dev agency gets a brief and builds. A consultant makes a deck. We first talk to the people doing the work, that's where we find what others miss. Only then do we start building.

    Almost always. We integrate with Shopify, HubSpot, Mollie, Klaviyo, bol.com, Stripe, OpenAI and 30+ other tools. No migrations, no new platforms: we build on top of what already runs. Full list on the integrations page.

    QUESTION NOT LISTED?

    Just ask.

    We respond fast, usually within half a workday. No tickets, no forms, just people replying.

    hello@optivateai.com

    Or first browse our approach and cases for more context.