My $100 Lindy Experience
I wanted to see if Lindy’s AI automation platform could solve two pain points: answering calls when I’m busy and generating new business leads on autopilot. By the end of the weekend, I’d learned more about testing automation tools than I ever expected—and spent $100 proving what doesn’t work.
What Did Lindy’s Automation Really Cost?
Setting up Lindy wasn’t just a matter of signing up.
To unlock the AI phone feature, I had to pay for a $35/month account upgrade and add a $10/month AI phone line. Then came the integrations—Outscraper at $35/month for lead data and Firecrawl at $20/month for website insights.
Grand total: $100/month before a single call was answered.
On paper, that price didn’t seem bad. If the phone agent worked, $45/month for a virtual receptionist is fair. The extra integrations were fine—I’d use them in other projects. But none of that matters if the tech doesn’t work.
How Did the AI Phone Agent Perform?
This was the first red flag.
Despite completing every setup step and rebuilding the agent multiple times, the phone line never worked. The first calls returned busy signals, later attempts failed with a “cannot be completed as dialed” message.
Each test burned credits from my account. Each rebuild took time. And still, no working phone agent.
What About Lead Generation?
The lead generation system wasn’t any better. I ran into:
- API authentication failures even though my keys were valid.
- Data formatting errors that stopped test runs.
- Conflicts when running different automations at once.
Every failed attempt used up more credits. The system has yet produced a single usable lead.
For small business owners, that means no ROI and no leads. If you’re serious about growth, you may be better off with a proven local SEO campaign that drives real calls and web form submissions.
The Agent That Vanished
The moment that really killed my confidence? My entire phone agent disappeared from the dashboard—phone number, knowledge base, everything I had configured and paid for. There was no undo, no rollback, no explanation.
The Support Experience
As I write, Support tickets are still unanswered and that’s a problem. When your business relies on an automated service, downtime without a support plan can cost real money. This is why we recommend managed website support with guaranteed response times.
Lessons for Business Owners Testing Automation
Here’s what this experience taught me:
- Test reliability, not just features. Fancy dashboards mean nothing if calls fail to connect.
- Check support hours.“Always-on AI” means nothing if help is weekday-only.
- Know the credit policy. If you pay for usage, make sure failed runs don’t count against you.
- Start small. Get one feature working before connecting multiple services; a lesson I learned and now share with you.
According to Gartner’s 2024 automation platform report (and who doesn’t love a good Gartner report–am I right people?), infrastructure reliability impacts project success rates more than feature count. That finding lines up with my experience: stability beats bells and whistles.
The Real Cost of This Experiment
I lost hours of my work day time chasing fixes, burned through credits while troubleshooting their system, and had to chase down support to even ask for compensation.
That kind of friction makes you think twice about trusting automation for anything business-critical. And yet–I will STILL try to tame this AI beast as he’s going nowhere.
Bottom Line
Lindy’s promise is good, but the execution didn’t hold up.
A working AI phone service at $45/month would be a great value. A working lead generator would pay for itself. But when the core product fails and support can’t respond quickly, it’s not ready for prime time.
Before you commit to any automation platform, test it hard, document every problem, and confirm support can meet your needs when something goes wrong. The right technology isn’t the most advanced—it’s the one that actually works.
If you’re exploring automation to grow your business, consider starting with a solid website strategy consultation to identify which tools and systems actually solve problems instead of creating new ones.
Need some help with your website strategy? Give me a call–someone will answer and it might even be an AI Agent assuming we can wrestle this solution into submission. We look forward to hearing about your project and how we might be able to to play a role in your success!
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