The vendor call checklist

Before the call: have these three ready

• A measured baseline. The current cost of the process in hours per week or dollars per month, measured rather than estimated. Without it, nobody can prove the automation worked.
• A named owner on your side. Someone who gets told when a run fails and has the authority to decide what happens next.
• The decision the output is supposed to change. Name the moment someone acts differently because of it, or the project risks working perfectly and helping nobody.

Ask every vendor

1. Is the price fixed before anything starts? Hourly billing gives nobody a structural incentive to solve it the simple way.
2. Do you own everything at the end? Workflows, credentials, accounts and docs, in your own name from day one, or you are renting continued access.
3. Is there real documentation, not just a Loom video? A recording goes stale the moment the system changes and is useless at 11pm when it breaks.
4. What happens when it breaks after delivery? Ask specifically who gets notified and how, and what support period is included.
5. Can you actually verify their track record? Ask for specifics: how long, roughly how many systems, references you can call.

Ask if the platform is self-hosted (n8n and friends)

Only relevant when the platform can run on infrastructure someone owns, unlike a pure SaaS tool.

1. Whose name is the account in, and what does a transfer look like in days?
2. If your workflows run on their instance, how do they read the Sustainable Use License on that arrangement?
3. Will you be on your own instance or share one? Which n8n edition, and who holds editor access today?
4. Which accounts authorize each connection, and is a written credential inventory part of the deliverables?
5. Whose provider keys pay for model usage, per client or shared, and whose phone does the spend alert reach?
6. What exactly is in an export, what is not, and is there a restore runbook they have actually tested?
7. What documentation ships at handoff, and is it in scope or billed separately?

Walk away if you hear

• "The instance stays on our account," with no transfer plan attached.
• "Documentation is a Loom video," in place of a written handoff.
• A refusal to put credential ownership in writing.
• "We've helped hundreds of businesses," with no specifics you can check.
• Everything they show is a demo or a proof of concept, nothing running in production.
• No named owner and no support plan for after delivery.
• Every recommendation is the same platform, regardless of the problem.
• "We'll check the logs periodically," instead of real monitoring and an alert.