Automation & AI
AI Automation and Workflow Engineering
We design, build, host and maintain the automations that take repetitive work off your team permanently.
What is ai automation & workflows?
Workflow automation connects your applications, databases and APIs so repetitive work happens without a person doing it. We build on n8n, Zapier and Make, and where a rule is not enough we add AI agents that read unstructured documents, classify intent and take actions in your systems. RegalBit Solutions has been building these systems since 2017 for clients across India, the USA, the UK, Canada, France, Israel and Australia.
Most businesses do not have an automation problem. They have a copy and paste problem. Someone downloads a report and retypes it into a spreadsheet. Someone checks an inbox and updates a CRM. Each step takes four minutes, and nobody notices that it adds up to two working days a month.
We start with the arithmetic rather than the tool. An audit produces a simple table: process, frequency, minutes per run, people involved, annual hours, error rate, automation difficulty. That table usually surprises the owner, and it makes the decision obvious. You automate the top three rows and ignore the rest.
The build then uses whatever fits. Self hosted n8n where volume is high or data has to stay in your infrastructure, Zapier or Make where the team is non technical and volume is modest, and custom code where the logic is genuinely complex. Being tool agnostic is the point: we have talked clients out of an automation platform entirely when a scheduled database query would do the job better.
Where automation gets interesting is AI. n8n has native OpenAI nodes, so a workflow can read an unstructured invoice email, extract the line items, classify the supplier, draft a reply and file the record, with no human in the loop. We have built exactly this, including a context aware sports analytics chatbot for Ref Analytics and an internal knowledge assistant inside Slack.
What a workflow looks like
This is what an automation actually looks like
Six nodes. A form submission is validated, checked against existing records, written to your CRM, alerted to the right salesperson on WhatsApp and acknowledged to the enquirer, inside sixty seconds with nobody involved.
Deliverables
What we build
Automation audit and process map
Every manual process documented with the annual hours attached, scored on impact and difficulty. Yours to keep whether or not you proceed.
Production workflows
Built and tested against real data, with error branches, retries and logging. Not a demo, something that runs unattended.
Self hosted n8n deployment
Docker based n8n on your own server with HTTPS, automated backups, queue mode where volume needs it and version pinned upgrades.
AI agents grounded in your data
Retrieval over your own documents so the model cites a source instead of inventing one, with accuracy measured against a test set before launch.
Monitoring and alerting
Failed executions raise a WhatsApp, email or Slack alert within seconds, with the payload attached so the cause is obvious.
Documentation and handover
Annotated workflow diagrams, a written runbook and a session with your team. You own everything, including the credentials.
Comparison
n8n, Zapier or Make: an honest comparison
| n8n (self-hosted) | Zapier | Make.com | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Server cost only, unlimited executions | Per task, scales steeply | Per operation, cheaper than Zapier |
| Data location | Your server, your country | Vendor cloud (US) | Vendor cloud (EU) |
| Setup difficulty | Higher, needs an engineer | Lowest | Low to moderate |
| Custom code | Full JavaScript and Python nodes | Limited code steps | Limited code steps |
| Native AI nodes | Yes, OpenAI and LangChain | Limited | Limited |
| Best for | Volume, custom logic, data control | Small non technical teams | Mid volume visual builders |
Process
How a ai automation & workflows project runs
Written scope and a fixed quote before anything is built, then visible progress at every stage.
- 1
Discover
A scoping call. We map the processes consuming the most hours and identify which are genuinely automatable, including when the honest answer is that a process needs fixing before it needs automating.
- 2
Design
A workflow diagram showing triggers, transformations, destinations and failure paths, plus a written scope, a quote and a timeline. You approve before anything is built.
- 3
Build
Workflows developed against a staging environment with sample data, including the error branches. You watch progress in a shared instance, not in a status email.
- 4
Deploy
Self hosted setup on your infrastructure with HTTPS, backups and monitoring, or deployment into your existing cloud account. Credentials are yours from the start.
- 5
Support
Thirty days of support after go live, then an optional retainer covering monitoring, API changes and new workflows as you find more to automate.
Concrete examples
Twenty processes we can automate for you
These are real workflow shapes we have built. If any of them describes a job somebody on your team does by hand, it is a candidate.
- 01Website form submissions into your CRM, with an instant WhatsApp alert to the sales owner
- 02Invoice PDFs read by AI and pushed into Tally, Zoho Books or QuickBooks
- 03Daily sales reports assembled from several sources and delivered before you open your laptop
- 04New orders synced to a courier partner with a tracking message sent to the customer
- 05Lead enrichment: an email address in, company size and profile out
- 06Job applications sorted, scored against the role and shortlisted
- 07Appointment reminders over WhatsApp with confirm and reschedule replies handled automatically
- 08Google Reviews monitored, with negative reviews escalated immediately
- 09Inventory reconciled between a marketplace and your internal system
- 10Support email classified by intent and routed to the right person
- 11Contract renewal reminders raised at sixty, thirty and seven days
- 12Bank statement lines matched against invoices for reconciliation
- 13Customer onboarding triggered end to end by a single form submission
- 14Competitor price monitoring with an alert when a threshold is crossed
- 15Meeting recordings transcribed, summarised by AI and filed with action items
- 16CRM to billing platform sync, removing all manual finance data entry
- 17Abandoned cart follow ups over email and WhatsApp
- 18Purchase orders approved through a multi step chain with an audit trail
- 19Attendance and leave data pulled into payroll each month
- 20GST invoice data compiled and validated ahead of filing
Technologies
What we use
Named, specific and current. We list what we have shipped, not what we have read about.
- n8n (self-hosted & cloud)
- Zapier
- Make.com
- OpenAI API
- LangChain
- Docker
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Webhooks
- WhatsApp Business API
- Google Workspace APIs
- Supabase
Who this is for
You will get the most from this if…
Operations teams drowning in data entry
Orders, leads or invoices arrive by email or form and someone retypes them into a CRM, ERP or spreadsheet every single day.
Businesses hitting a subscription ceiling
Your task count grew, the automation bill grew faster, and you now pay more for the connector than for the software it connects.
Companies with data that cannot leave
Healthcare, legal or financial data that must stay in your own infrastructure. Self hosted n8n solves this cleanly.
Engineering rates
What this costs
We publish a rate band rather than a project price, because a project price without a scope is a guess. Once we understand the work we convert it into a fixed written quote, so you carry no open ended risk.
AI Automation & Workflows
From $10 / hour
Typical band: $10 to $30 per hour
Rate depends on whether the work is workflow configuration, custom node development or AI engineering. Projects can be quoted as a fixed scope instead once we have mapped them.
Why us
What makes this different from the other quote you are getting
An eight person engineering team, with a dedicated designer and a dedicated tester, shipping production software since 2017. The person who scopes your project is the person who builds it.
- Every workflow ships with error handling and alerting. If it fails at three in the morning, you know at one minute past.
- We self host n8n properly, with Docker, HTTPS, automated backups, queue mode and version pinning, not a bare install that dies at the first traffic spike.
- We are software engineers who automate, not automators who found a tool. When a workflow needs a real API, a database migration or a custom node, we write it.
- You own everything from day one: the server, the credentials, the workflow definitions and the documentation. No lock in.
Questions
AI Automation & Workflows, frequently asked questions
n8n is an open source workflow automation tool. The core difference is hosting and cost: n8n can run on your own server, so you pay for the server rather than per task executed. At low volume Zapier is simpler. Past roughly ten thousand tasks a month, self hosted n8n is dramatically cheaper and gives you full control over where your data sits.
Our engineering rates start from ten US dollars an hour and vary with the specialism required. Most focused automation projects are small, two to three weeks of work, and we can convert an hourly estimate into a fixed written quote once we have mapped the processes. There is no charge for the scoping conversation itself.
Self host when you have meaningful volume, when data residency matters, or when you need custom nodes and unrestricted code execution. Use the cloud version when volume is low, you have no infrastructure team, and convenience outweighs cost. We deploy either, and we will recommend the cloud version when it is genuinely the better call.
Every workflow we build includes error branches and alerting, so failures surface immediately rather than silently. Thirty days of support are included after go live. Most clients then move to a retainer because third party APIs change, but you are never obliged to, and you hold all credentials and source.
Yes, through the official WhatsApp Business API. We use the official API rather than unofficial libraries, so your number is not at risk of being banned. Appointment reminders, order updates, lead alerts and two way conversational flows are all standard.
It will if it is not grounded. Every assistant we build retrieves from your actual documents and is instructed to decline rather than speculate when the answer is not in the source material. We test that behaviour explicitly against an evaluation set before launch and report the accuracy figure.
Yes, since 2017. We have delivered projects into the USA, the UK, Canada, France, Israel and Australia. We keep overlapping hours, sign NDAs before scoping and assign all intellectual property to you on payment.
AI Automation & Workflows where you are
Related services
- Integrations & API DevelopmentStripe, Razorpay, HubSpot, Salesforce, WhatsApp and the rest of your stack, connected properly and monitored.
- Backend & Database EngineeringAPIs and data models built to stay up: typed, tested, indexed, monitored and documented.
- Web DevelopmentWeb platforms engineered to load fast, rank well and still be running years after launch.
Ready to talk about ai automation & workflows?
A free 30-minute call. We will tell you what is feasible, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.
Engineering since 2017 · Clients in 7 countries · Rates from $10 per hour