Buying AI: How to Evaluate a Tool or a Vendor Before You Pay
Every week another “top ten AI tools” list appears, and six months later half of them have changed. You do not need a list — you need a method that works on tools not built yet.
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01 — Overview
Overview
You are not buying a tool — you are buying a change in how you work, and the subscription is its cheapest part. The meter does not start at the price: it starts at who will learn it, which process changes, who reviews its output, and what happens the day you want out.
And I say first when not to buy. I sell systems and build tools, and chapter one carries an explicit list: when you cannot write the problem as a number, when the process was never decided, when you have not exhausted the free tier, or when the demo impressed you before you knew your problem. Chapter three goes further — four routes cheaper than paying, and the cheapest is doing nothing.
The chapter that separates this from any general buying guide is the fourth. In an accounting system a feature exists or it does not; in an AI tool performance is not fixed — the same tool is excellent on one input and weak on another, and you are seeing the input the seller chose. The answer is twenty real inputs of your own, and asking where it errs rather than how much.
02 — What you will learn
What you will learn
Why “a solution looking for a problem” is the most common way money is lost here
The baseline: four numbers measured in two weeks before you speak to any vendor
Writing a success criterion while you are still neutral — and why it must be capable of failing
Four routes cheaper than buying, including auditing the AI features you already pay for
Why AI demos mislead more than others: performance is not fixed, and you see the seller’s chosen input
The twenty-input test, and the number that matters: what it got wrong that you only caught by comparing
“Where does it err?” rather than “how much?” — and why a tool that admits it does not know is worth more
The three-year cost including the largest hidden item: the time spent reviewing the output
If a tool needs a human to check every output, you did not buy a tool — you bought a job
The contract clause most buyers do not know: notice before the provider changes the model underneath you
The pilot with three outcomes, not two — and why an extension needs a limit
The auto-renewal trap, the export test in the first month, and a five-blank exit paragraph
03 — The chapters
The chapters
- When Not to Buy — and the Rule That Condenses the Book
- Write the Problem as a Number: The Baseline and the Success Criterion
- Four Cheaper Routes Before You Pay
- The Demo Is Built to Succeed: How to Vet a Claim
- The Cost Over Three Years, Not Monthly
- The Data: What You Get in Writing Before You Pay
- The Pilot: How to Test Before You Commit
- The Contract: What Gets Written Before You Pay
- Adoption: The Tool Nobody Uses
- Measuring After the Purchase: Did It Actually Work
- Dependency and Exit: Before You Become a Captive
- The Full Audit: 40 Questions and the Decision Sheet
04 — What you get
What you get
12 chapters + a 20-term glossary
A 40-question audit + a decision sheet
Names no tool and no vendor, deliberately
Print-ready PDF included (~46–58 pages)
05 — How subscribing works
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06 — Questions, answered
Questions, answered
Does it recommend particular tools?
It names none, deliberately — and that is the point. A list of names expires within a season; the questions you vet a vendor with do not. What you get is a method that works on tools that do not exist yet: the twenty-input test, the three-year calculation, the contract clauses, and the audit.
You sell systems. Is this book neutral?
Judge it by chapters one and three. The first says when not to buy, including when a demo impressed you before you knew your problem. The third gives four routes cheaper than paying — fixing the process, upgrading a plan you already have, exhausting the free tier, and doing it by hand — and states plainly that the cheapest solution wins, even when it is “nothing”. A buying guide with no chapter telling you not to buy is a sales brochure.
How does it differ from “Your Data and AI”?
That course answers what may be put into a tool day to day — twelve data and privacy questions. This book answers a different question: what do I get in writing before I pay? Chapter six points at those twelve rather than repeating them, and adds what belongs to purchasing alone — getting the answers into the terms or the contract, because a verbal answer in a demo is worthless.
I already bought tools. Is it too late?
No, and chapters nine to eleven are written for exactly that. The thirty-day check tells you how many seats you pay for against how many are used. Chapter ten measures whether it actually worked and closes the auto-renewal trap — one calendar entry prevents three years of renewing by silence. And chapter eleven has you export your data while you still can walk away painlessly.
How do I pay and get access?
There is no online payment on this site. Send the request form, I contact you personally, we arrange payment (cash or local transfer), then you get a one-time activation code for one device with lifetime access.
07 — Send your request
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