Request an AI automation platform through one of three routes: a free self-service account, a sales-demo form, or an intake using your work. For the latter two, providers say they respond within one to two business days. First conversations usually take 30 minutes. A good request records four things: the first task, its systems, who decides, and when the answer is no.
This page covers forms, subsequent steps, timing, preparation, questions, and stopping. We compared eight providers, Dutch agencies through American platforms, and four self-service pricing pages. The endpoint is a complete request rather than a live task. See starting an administrative automation pilot. All sources were opened September 30, 2026. Intake pages are sales material rather than independent timing evidence.
The short answer
- Three routes: self-service with n8n, Make, UiPath Community, or Copilot Studio; sales demos with DataRobot or Anaconda; or own-work intake with Dutch agencies and Bombos. Deliverables and clocks differ.
- Published response times range from 24 hours, aiagent.nl, to 1-2 business days, Anaconda. Aanloop AI and Bombos promise one business day.
- Five of eight providers schedule 30-minute first conversations; Touch gives 45, Unify 30-60, Bombos fifteen.
- Unify gives a proposal within 2 business days; aiagent.nl emails within 24 hours.
- Sinyo, Aanloop AI, aiagent.nl, and Bombos offer free first conversations. Unify charges €1,000 for two-to-three-week discovery.
- Self-service starts at $0, Make Free, or €20 monthly, n8n Starter paid annually. You configure it.
- Before access to email or software, arrange the written processor agreement required by GDPR Article 28.
- Our position: good requests establish task, systems, decision-maker, and decline conditions. Demo slots and accounts are sales steps.
What happens when you request a platform?
“Try free” creates an account without conversation. “Request demo” usually leads to a salesperson and product tour. “Schedule a conversation” with an agency or guided provider leads to an intake about your work.
These are providers’ promises rather than our measurements:
| Provider | First response | First conversation | Your input | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bombos | Within 1 business day | Fifteen-minute call | Most time-consuming task | Visit and demonstrate using your work |
| Touch AI Agency | Unspecified | 45 minutes, 4-6 processes | Later 90 minutes and access within 5 business days | First agent on day 10 |
| UnifyAI | Unspecified | 30-60 minutes | Processing agreements, exports, access | Proposal within 2 business days |
| Aanloop AI | Within 1 business day | 30 minutes | Company information, FAQs, access | Intake days 1-2, live in 7 business days |
| aiagent.nl | Confirmation within 24 hours | 30-minute video | Unspecified | Email within 24 hours with next steps or no |
| Sinyo Swildens | You choose the time | 30 minutes online | Nothing | Translated: “You may stop afterward” |
| Anaconda | 1-2 business days | 30 minutes | Setup and priorities | Own-workflow demo |
| DataRobot | Expert contacts you | 30 minutes | Goals | Proof of concept, pilot, or roadmap |
September 30, 2026 sources: Bombos, Touch, Unify, Aanloop demo and FAQs, aiagent.nl, Sinyo, Anaconda, DataRobot.
No Dutch page we found compares all three routes. Only aiagent.nl numbers the post-request steps, including “we are not the right provider,” translated.
Can you start without a conversation?
Major tool providers offer accounts without requests, billing per execution or credit. Conversations are needed only for their highest subscriptions.
| Product | Self-service | Published price | Conversation needed for |
|---|---|---|---|
| n8n Cloud | Yes | Starter €20 monthly, 2,500 executions; Pro €50, 10,000; both annually paid; Business €667 monthly | Enterprise |
| Make | Yes, Free | Free $0, 1,000 credits; Core $9, Pro $16, Teams $29 monthly | Enterprise, “Custom pricing” |
| UiPath | Yes, Community “free forever” | No public Standard or Enterprise amount | Standard and Enterprise, “Contact Sales for pricing” |
| Copilot Studio | Yes, also pay-as-you-go | $200 per pack monthly, 25,000 Copilot Credits | Not required |
Sources, September 30, 2026: n8n, Make, UiPath, Microsoft.
Self-service purchases tools. Money is low, time high: someone builds connections, writes rules, and finds errors. Without an IT department, that is the real price. Without such a person, businesses may approach an agency weeks later and start the request again. See building workflows or hiring an agency.
How long until the first conversation and proposal?
Published promises give one to two business days to the first conversation, then another two to a proposal at Unify. Anaconda says “we’ll call you within 1-2 business days.” Aanloop promises one business day to schedule; aiagent.nl confirms within 24 hours; Bombos calls within one business day. DataRobot gives no deadline.
Unify says: “Within 2 working days a proposal is ready in your personal environment.” aiagent.nl sends, in translation, “a short email with concrete next steps, or an honest ‘we are not the right provider’” within 24 hours.
Do not combine different clocks. Touch goes from day 0’s 45-minute conversation through week 1’s 90-minute access walkthrough to day 10’s first agent. Aanloop gives intake days 1-2 and launch day 7. Unify estimates 2-6 weeks for simple work and 3-6 months for complex integrations (May 25, 2026). First-live-task estimates span 7 business days to 6 weeks. These are vendor claims.
The callback clock is the only fair advance comparison. Later timing mainly depends on your access, examples, and decision-maker. See quickly implementing a platform.
What should you prepare for an intake?
Prepare a one-sentence task and weekly hours, real examples, decision-maker, and systems and mailboxes. Unprepared conversations can explore. Sinyo promises, in translation, “No invoice, no preparation required,” but that is exploration.
Our synthesis draws on Touch’s four requirements: access within 5 business days, one contact, ninety minutes of your time, and staff actually using agents (September 30, 2026). Unify asks for processing agreements, exports, and access (UnifyAI, September 30, 2026); Aanloop asks for company information, FAQs, and access (Aanloop AI, September 30, 2026).
| Preparation | Why | Who asks |
|---|---|---|
| One-sentence task, weekly hours, current worker | Defines assignment rather than generic demo | Touch, Bombos |
| Twenty real emails, invoices, files, including difficult ones | Own-work demos are stronger than clean sets | Anaconda’s “actual workflows”; our advice |
| One decision-maker and contact | Prevents stranded proposals | Touch |
| Packages, mailboxes, permission grantors | Access is slowest after conversation | Touch, Unify, Aanloop |
| Processor agreement, training-data rules, exit | GDPR Article 28, before trials | Unify, RFP templates |
| Accepted outcome, including no | Prevents every request becoming a proposal | Touch, aiagent.nl, Sinyo |
For task selection, see first administrative processes and where to begin with AI. Choose weekly email or document work currently taking hours.
What questions should you ask?
Ask questions requiring understanding of your work, and explicitly ask for decline conditions. Institute of AI PM gives over 50 questions in 7 groups, advising “Send it before pricing discussions” (May 9, 2026; sells a course). Kognitos lists 30 (May 26, 2026; sells automation). Eight suffice for a twenty-person business:
- Can you demonstrate my examples? Anaconda promises “a 30-minute walkthrough built around your actual workflows, not a generic product tour.”
- What do you read and write, and what happens without approval? Separate reading, preparation, posting, sending.
- How do I see proposal sources? Kognitos asks: “can you tell me exactly what data the AI accessed, from which systems, with what authorization?”
- Which oversight levels exist? Kognitos lists “auto-approve, async review, synchronous approval.” Ask defaults and who changes them.
- Does your or another model train on my data? Institute of AI PM includes prompts, answers, and files.
- How do I retrieve data when leaving? Its template asks “format, scope, and timeline post-termination.”
- What does it cost, and is it in the proposal? Touch gives prices in conversation; Unify gives fixed-price proposals; UiPath Standard and Enterprise have no public amount.
- When do you decline? Touch declines fewer than four processes in the conversation. A seller with no decline reasons sells accounts.
See testing before automation.
What data and access do you supply, and when?
Only grant email and package access after signing a processor agreement. Limit it to the first task’s mailbox and software area. Reading customer files processes personal data for you. Article 28 requires writing. Legiscope lists subject, duration, nature, purpose, data types, data-subject categories, and controller rights and duties (checked September 28, 2026; sells GDPR software).
Check subprocessors, since AI usually uses another provider’s model. Translated GDPR excerpt: “A processor shall not engage another processor without prior specific or general written authorization of the controller.” Contract terms determine what happens when you object to a new subprocessor (JuridischAdviesVoorBedrijven, August 27, 2026; sells legal advice).
Sequence matters. Unify places processing agreements before building. DataRobot, Anaconda, and UiPath request pages do not mention them. Vendor-data demos differ from own-work intake or trials.
Without IT, grant access like a coworker’s account. You select mailbox and package area; the provider arranges connections with your software vendor. See AI without an IT department.
Are demos and intakes free, and how do pilots differ?
Most first conversations are free; discovery sometimes costs. Sinyo promises no invoice. aiagent.nl starts only after approval, with no obligations beforehand. Bombos offers free, nonbinding fifteen-minute calls. Unify charges €1,000 for two-to-three-week discovery covering where AI saves time and where it does not (May 25, 2026).
Demos show product capability, usually on vendor examples. Intake establishes suitability and initial costs. Pilots run real work for weeks or months with your people approving. DataRobot offers proof of concept, pilot, or roadmap afterward. See trying an AI automation pilot.
Clean-set demo success does not establish suitability for half-English emails, invoices without order IDs, or customers asking three things.
When should a request end in no?
Decline when no recurring task exists, access cannot be arranged within a week, or nobody can review first proposals. Providers do not publish decline frequencies. Touch declines under four recurring processes in conversation; aiagent.nl emails possible rejection; Sinyo allows stopping after thirty minutes.
Our reasoning identifies four stop signals:
- Less-than-weekly work. Setup may exceed work itself.
- Uncooperative third-party access owner. Touch allows 5 business days; otherwise the task stalls.
- No initial review time. Touch asks ninety minutes; Bombos requires proposal approval. Without this, rules are not learned.
- Undocumented knowledge held by an unwilling person. Record it, for example through interviews, first.
An early no is cheap. A no after €1,000 discovery or weeks of setup is expensive. Ask in the first conversation.
What makes a good request? Four fields
Our position: record task, systems, decision-maker, and decline option. Earlier demo slots, accounts, and films are sales material.
Five providers give thirty-minute conversations; the median is thirty. Responses span 24 hours to 2 business days. Differences lie in written outcomes: DataRobot’s plan, Unify’s fixed-price proposal, aiagent.nl’s steps or no, Touch’s processes and agent date. Speed is less distinctive than substance.
After the conversation or proposal, obtain:
- Task: your words and estimated current hours.
- Systems: mailbox, package, area, permission owner.
- Decision-maker: proposal approver and contact.
- Decline option: stop conditions and stopping cost.
Missing one means a demo rather than complete request. Missing all means an account purchase. Access depends on a processor agreement. Providers failing to fill these fields often miss that agreement before viewing email.
Where is this heading?
Requests grow rapidly, with most growth expected from small businesses over the next two years. CBS small-business AI adoption: 11% in 2023, 19% in 2024, 27% in 2025. Businesses with 50-250 people: 20%, 31%, 45%; 250 or more: 42%, 53%, 66% (December 12, 2025). Of AI users, 32% apply it to administration or management. Extending eight percentage points yearly gives about 35% in 2026 and 43% in 2027, our calculation rather than CBS figures.
Response standards move from Anaconda’s 1-2 days to Aanloop and Bombos’s one day to aiagent.nl’s 24 hours. Four of six Dutch providers in the table publish subsequent steps and deadlines. American enterprise platforms and UiPath and Make pricing pages do not.
Our expectation: by late 2027, most Dutch SME providers publish post-request steps with callback times in hours or business days, placing processor agreements before access. New small-business buyers without IT purchase clarity and trust. Response-time competition extends to the path.
This fails if self-service produces working tasks without conversations or small-business growth stalls. CBS’s straight-line extension promises neither.
Bombos aims to keep fifteen-minute calls, own-work demonstrations, and four fields completed before access.
What can this not yet do?
- All times are vendor claims. Nobody independently measures responses or intakes, including us.
- Decline frequencies are unpublished. Ask whether the option is used.
- Good requests do not guarantee execution. Pilots establish capability.
- Access is often slowest and partly external. Vendors or administrators must cooperate.
- Examples omit knowledge held in heads. Someone must ask and record.
- This page does not compare quality. See companies automating administration with AI.
How does Bombos approach this?
Bombos serves fast-growing businesses seeking more work at higher quality with the same team. Leave your number on contact. Within one business day, the person most familiar with your work calls. Fifteen minutes suffice: explain the most time-consuming task; we identify initial possibilities. Free and nonbinding.
For a worthwhile task, we visit and demonstrate your work. If you proceed, an approximately hour-long setup conversation in week one covers mailbox, package data, and reviewer. The first task then proposes. Bombos reads incoming work, finds files, and prepares proposals. You approve, change, or reject in Bombos. Payments, customer messages, and contracts wait by default. Interviews record undocumented knowledge. The pilot is €2,000 for three months, then €1,000 monthly, identical for everyone, leaving no price negotiation.
Your team then teaches the next task without technical skills. We guide the start. See the team and privacy statement.
Sources
Each source was opened September 30, 2026, and each original excerpt appears verbatim in it. Dutch excerpts above are translations.
- Contact, Bombos, own site, read September 30, 2026.
- Touch AI Agency, undated; sells agent development.
- UnifyAI, undated; sells implementation.
- AI implementation costs, UnifyAI, May 25, 2026; sells implementation.
- Aanloop demo and FAQs, undated; sells AI services.
- Conversation, aiagent.nl, undated; sells coaching and implementation.
- Sinyo Swildens, undated; sells scans, training, custom development.
- Anaconda orchestration demo, undated; sells platform.
- DataRobot demo, undated; sells platform.
- UiPath pricing, observed September 30, 2026.
- n8n pricing, observed September 30, 2026.
- Make pricing, observed September 30, 2026.
- Copilot Studio pricing, observed September 30, 2026.
- AI Vendor RFP Template, Institute of AI PM, May 9, 2026; sells a course.
- Agentic AI RFP Template, Kognitos, May 26, 2026; sells automation.
- AI in SaaS, subprocessors and GDPR Article 28, JuridischAdviesVoorBedrijven, August 27, 2026; sells legal advice.
- Article 28 processor agreement, Legiscope, checked September 28, 2026; sells GDPR software.
- AI most used for marketing or sales, CBS, December 12, 2025.