Paid AI assistants have settled at a familiar price. Checked on October 25, 2026, Claude Pro costs $20 a month on monthly billing, or $17 a month with an annual plan, according to Anthropic, while OpenAI’s help centre puts ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month too. The harder question is what to actually use them for.
For most small businesses the answer is not grand automation. It is the repetitive reading and writing that eats into an evening: quotes, replies, supplier terms, policies and spreadsheets that nobody fully understands. Below are five practical uses, plus the data protection basics to sort out first.
Both main assistants handle these jobs well. If you would like a fixed term rather than a rolling subscription, Claude plans from AIwithBitcoin are one option. It is an independent seller of official AI plans, not affiliated with Anthropic or OpenAI, and delivers Claude as an official claude.ai gift link for three, six or twelve months, with no auto-renewal and a full refund if delivery takes longer than 24 hours.
1. Draft Customer Emails and Quotes Faster
Paste in the customer’s message with a few bullet points of what you want to say, and ask for a reply in your usual tone. A plumber can turn rough notes into a clear quote covering the work, materials and timings. A shop owner can answer a late-delivery complaint politely in a minute rather than twenty.
Pro tip: keep a short house style note, for example British spelling, no jargon and a first-name sign-off, and add it at the start of each chat. Claude’s Projects feature lets you store instructions like this so you are not retyping them every time.
Always read the draft before it goes out. Assistants can get details wrong, and the email is sent under your name.
2. Summarise Long Documents Before You Reply or Sign
Supplier contracts, tender packs, lease renewals and council letters are often long and dense. Upload the document and ask for a plain-English summary, a list of deadlines and anything unusual, such as an automatic renewal clause or a long notice period. It is a quick way to see which pages need a careful read.
A summary is not legal advice, though. Use it to decide which clauses to raise with your solicitor or accountant, not as a replacement for them.
3. Get Your Spreadsheets Working Properly
Plenty of small firms run on a spreadsheet that one person built years ago. An assistant can explain what an existing formula does, write a new one from a plain description such as “total sales by month for each product”, or suggest how to tidy messy columns of dates and postcodes. Upload the file and you can also ask for a short written summary of the figures.
Did you know? Asking the assistant to explain each step of a formula makes it far easier to check now and to fix later when the sheet changes.
4. Write Website Copy, Job Adverts and Simple Policies
A blank page is often the hardest part. Use an assistant for a first draft of a product description, an About us page, a job advert or a returns policy, then edit it with your own details and voice. For anything with legal weight, such as employment terms or consumer rights wording, check the final text against GOV.UK guidance or a professional adviser.
5. Prepare for Meetings and Tidy Up Afterwards
Before a meeting with a lender, landlord or large customer, ask the assistant to list likely questions and draft short answers from your notes. Afterwards, paste in rough notes and ask for a summary with actions, owners and dates. It is a five-minute habit that keeps a small team on the same page without another tool to learn.
Check Data Protection First
Anything you paste into an AI tool is shared with the provider, so UK GDPR still applies. The Information Commissioner’s Office publishes guidance on AI and data protection, last updated on 15 March 2023, and its page now says the guidance is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act. Until a revised version appears, a few habits cover most of the risk:
- Leave out customer names, addresses and account details unless you have a clear lawful basis for including them.
- Check each provider’s settings on whether your chats are used to train its models, and switch that off where you can.
- Use a business tier when several staff will handle customer information, so access and billing are managed centrally.
- Write a one-page note on which tools staff may use, and for what.
Choosing the Right Plan
For one person, a personal tier is usually enough. Heavier users can step up to Claude Max, which Anthropic prices from $100 a month. For teams, Anthropic lists a standard Team seat at $20 a month billed annually, or $25 monthly, with central administration and no model training on your content by default. OpenAI’s pricing page says ChatGPT Business is priced per user per month and starts at two users. These vendor pages showed US dollar prices when checked, so confirm the figure in pounds before you commit.
If ChatGPT suits your work better, ChatGPT plans at AIwithBitcoin cover Plus and Pro for accounts registered in the UK. The plan is set up on your own account, usually within a few hours, and you should cancel any existing ChatGPT plan first so the two do not run side by side.
The Bottom Line
The best uses of AI in a small business are the everyday ones: replies, summaries, formulas and first drafts. Start with one task you repeat every week, keep personal data out of your prompts and check every output before it reaches a customer. Used that way, an assistant can save hours each month without changing how you run the business.
