One limit up front. Self serve prices are public, so you will see exact figures below. Done for you is a custom quote after a free call, so it has no number here. What you can compare is what each route asks of your calendar.
10 min
to a first version, self serve
14 days
to launch, done for you
15 min
of transcription a month on Free
$39
a month for Pro, billed monthly
Figures from the Personify pricing page.
Key takeaways
- Self serve starts free, and a working Second Self can be live in about 10 minutes.
- Done for you is a flat quote after a free call, with launch in about 14 days.
- The Free plan includes 15 minutes of transcription a month, so a single three hour recording does not fit in one Free month.
- Self serve takes your hours every week, because you upload content, set guardrails, and read real conversations.
- You can start on self serve and move to done for you later.
How to decide
The build decision sets how you spend your first 90 days. Build it yourself and you keep full control, and you do every iteration. Hand it off and you pay a quoted fee, and the team does the setup work. You review the result.
The price tag is only part of the cost. The other part is the hours you take away from selling or coaching. A solo coach who bills by the hour and loses a few of them each week to setup has paid for the Second Self in time, even when no money left the account.
That makes your own hourly value the first number to work out. Here is an illustration with made up figures, so swap in yours. Say you spend 5 hours a week on setup and tuning, and an hour of your time is worth $50. Over 90 days, about 13 weeks, that is 65 hours, or $3,250 of your time. Pro for the same three months is $117 at $39 a month. If your own figures come out far lower, DIY is cheap. If they come out far higher, a quote is worth asking for. For a wider look at what a Second Self is before you build one, see the guide to the AI coaching clone.
Your time over 90 days
5 h a week × 13 weeks = 65 h
65 h × $50 an hour
$3,250
Pro for the same three months
$39 a month × 3 months
$117
Your time (illustration)
Pro, billed monthly
What self serve costs in money and time
Self serve is the default path on Personify. You start on the Free plan with no credit card. A six step setup wizard walks you through the build instead of leaving you with a blank screen.
Here is what the plans give you:
Free: $0 with no credit card. It includes 100 AI messages a month, 10 knowledge sources, and a hosted share page with widget and embed.
Pro: $39 a month billed monthly, or $29 a month billed annually at $348. It adds unlimited conversations and documents, Stripe Connect so you can charge for access, a custom domain for your share page, and a free 1:1 onboarding call.
The Free plan limits shape your time more than they shape your budget. Transcription is 15 minutes a month on Free and 240 minutes a month on Pro. A three hour course recording runs 180 minutes, so it does not fit inside a Free month. If your teaching lives in video and audio, you will either spread the upload across a year of Free months or move to Pro early. Ten knowledge sources on Free also push you to combine files and choose the strongest material first.
Free plan, per month
One three hour recording
Pro plan, per month
Now the work itself. A realistic build has three jobs:
- 01
Content upload. Course material, FAQs, email templates, and transcripts. Messy or thin material means hours of fixing before the answers get good, and the cleaner your content, the more your answers rest on your own words.
- 02
Guardrail tuning. The product lets you set topics to avoid and never say rules. Deciding what your Second Self should refuse or redirect is where most of the quality comes from. You write the rules, ask awkward questions, then adjust.
- 03
Testing and refinement. You ask it what a client would ask, catch the misses, and feed it more material. Clients ask things you did not anticipate, so block a recurring slot after launch. Even a short weekly session keeps answers close to what you would say. For more on getting value once it is live, see maximise coaching impact.
Ten minutes gets you a first draft. We do not publish an hour count for the rest, because it depends on how much content you have and how tidy it is. A folder of ten clean documents is an afternoon. Years of untranscribed video is a project. Count your own material before you commit. The true cost is higher than the word free suggests.
Spoken replies in your own voice come only with a Second Self we build for you. The self serve app answers in text. For a step by step build, see implementing AI coaching.
What done for you includes
Done for you is the full service path. A team takes your content and builds the product around it. It is quoted on a free call, because the work scales with how much content you have and how much cleanup it needs.
Here is what that covers:
Training: The team trains your Second Self on your books, courses, articles, and recordings.
Voice cloning: Your voice cloned at 97% likeness, built from a supervised recording session.
Your own app: A branded app on your own domain, where your users sign up, log in, and keep their conversation history.
Payments: Payment integration wired up for you, with your own tiers, trial periods, and subscription management.
Everything around it: A landing page, waitlist capture, emails from your domain, and an admin dashboard.
A named contact: A dedicated manager through launch and after.
Launch takes about 14 days. You hand over your material once and review the result. You are not running each iteration yourself.
On DIY you can build parts of this yourself, and Pro gives you Stripe Connect and a custom domain for your share page. The difference is who spends the weeks. Pick done for you when you would rather review a finished product than assemble one.
First 90 days compared
The first 90 days is where the two routes pull apart. The table sets them side by side.
| Factor | DIY self serve | Done for you |
|---|---|---|
| Money | Free to start, Pro at $39 a month billed monthly | Flat quote after a free call |
| Time to first version | About 10 minutes | About 14 days to launch |
| Who does the setup | You, using the six step wizard | The team builds, trains, and launches |
| Voice replies | Text only | Voice cloned at 97% likeness |
| Your own domain and app | Custom domain for your share page on Pro | Your own branded app on your own domain |
| Support | Free 1:1 onboarding call on Pro | Dedicated manager through launch and after |
Plan details and timings from the Personify pricing page.
Both routes run on the same engine, the one behind every Personify plan. What changes is the product built around it and who does the building. For the economics of running one at volume, see coaching at scale.
When DIY makes sense
Pick DIY when most of these are true:
- Your content is already organised. Transcripts, FAQs, and frameworks in one place mean a fast build.
- You like iterating. Tuning answers is satisfying if you enjoy the craft and a chore if you do not.
- Your calendar has slack. Setup and tuning ask for steady attention over several weeks.
- You want to learn how it behaves before you scale it.
- Budget is tight, and you would rather spend time than cash.
DIY is the wrong call when your teaching sits in years of video with no transcripts, when your time is worth more than the quote, or when you want voice replies from day one. If you are starting a coaching business from scratch, building it yourself also teaches you the product. The guide to starting a coaching business with AI covers that ground.
The hybrid route, DIY now and done for you later
You do not have to choose once. The lowest risk route is often to start self serve and upgrade later.
Start free and build a rough version. Put it in front of a few clients and read what they ask. You learn what your Second Self needs, and whether the model fits your business, before you pay for anything. If it works and you want the full product around it, that is the moment to ask for a quote. You decide with evidence instead of a guess.
Step 1
Start free
Free plan, no credit card
Step 2
Build a rough version
Self serve
Step 3
Put it in front of a few clients
Self serve
Step 4
Read what they ask
Your evidence
Step 5
Ask for a quote
Only if it works
This suits the coach who is curious and cautious. Prove it cheaply, then pay for the finished version only if the evidence supports it.
FAQ
How much does it cost to build an AI coaching clone yourself vs done for you?+
DIY starts free on the self serve plan. Pro is $39 a month billed monthly, or $29 a month billed annually, when you add Stripe Connect or a custom domain. Done for you is a flat quote after a free call. Your own time is the larger cost on the DIY side, and it grows with the amount of content you have.
How long does it take to set up an AI coaching clone DIY?+
A first version is live in about 10 minutes. A version you would put in front of paying clients takes longer. Plan for content upload, guardrail tuning, and testing over the first few weeks, then a recurring slot after launch to review conversations. The hours depend mostly on how much content you have and how organised it is.
Can I start DIY and upgrade to done for you later?+
Yes. Start free, build a rough version, and put it in front of a few clients to learn what they ask. If it fits your business and you want the full product around it, ask for a quote then.
Is it worth paying for done for you AI clone setup?+
Yes, when your content is messy or spread across years of untranscribed video, when you want voice replies and your own branded app, or when your billable hour is worth more than the quote. Done for you launches in about 14 days. If none of that applies and you enjoy iterating, DIY will serve you well.
Should I build my AI clone myself or have it built for me?+
Build it yourself if your material is already organised, you are testing whether clients will use a clone at all, and text answers are enough. Have it built if you need voice, if your material is a large unstructured library that needs curating, or if you are launching to an audience where a weak first impression is expensive. The self-serve path starts free, so most people should test there first regardless.
What is the difference between a self-serve AI clone and a bespoke build?+
The clone technology is the same. What differs is who does the work of turning your material into a trained clone, whether voice is included, and how much curation your content gets. Self-serve means you upload and configure it yourself in about 10 minutes. Done-For-You means a discovery call, professional voice cloning at 97% likeness, multi-format content training across books, courses, PDFs and videos, a branded interface, and live deployment around day 14.
Does the done-for-you build produce a better clone?+
It produces a better trained clone, which is not the same thing. The model answering is the same either way. What the build buys you is curation: someone deciding what of your material matters, structuring it, and testing the answers before your audience sees them. If your content is already tidy and focused, self-serve gets you close to the same result. If it is twenty years of scattered material, the curation is most of the value.
Is voice cloning available on the self-serve plans?+
No. Voice cloning, where the clone speaks in your actual voice at 97% likeness, is part of the Done-For-You service only. Self-serve clones are text, and answer in over 100 languages. If voice is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have, that alone decides it.
Can I start self-serve and upgrade later?+
Yes, and it is usually the right sequence. Starting on the free tier costs nothing, proves whether your audience actually engages with a clone, and gives you real transcripts. Those transcripts make the discovery call far more useful than a call held before anyone has used anything, because you arrive knowing what people actually ask.
How much does each option cost?+
Self-serve has a free tier with 100 messages a month and one clone, and Pro at $39/month, or $29/month billed annually, for unlimited messages, clones and documents. Done-For-You is scoped on a discovery call because the work depends on how much material there is and what needs building. Done-For-You builds carry no Personify commission.
Start free, or ask for a quote
If you have content ready and a few spare hours, start free. No credit card, and you can have a first version live in about 10 minutes before you tune it.
If you would rather hand it off, book a done for you discovery call. The team trains your Second Self and clones your voice, with a flat quote after the call and launch in about 14 days.
Pick the one that fits your calendar.