Getting Started with ChatGPT or Gemini for Your Business

1. Open the free plan

Go to ChatGPT or Gemini and sign in. Skip any screen that asks for a card. You can add a paid plan later.

Use one tool for a week. Switching every day makes it harder to see what the free plan can do.

2. Try three real tasks

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A sample prompt that asks for a 60-word cake-order email at $48, and a sample result that keeps that price. Illustration, not a ChatGPT or Gemini screen.

Copy this, then change the business and the price:

Write a 60-word email.
We can move a cake order to Saturday at 10 a.m.
The price stays $48.
They should reply to confirm.
Do not invent a discount or a phone number.

Read the result. If a number is not one you typed, delete it.

Each of the three tasks has a longer guide:

• Customer emails

• Social captions

• Your website and Google description

3. Pay only after you hit a limit

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Three choices when the free plan pauses: wait for it to reset, try the other free tool, or open the company's pricing page.

Checked October 20, 2026, on each company's own pricing page. These are the US monthly prices for the main individual paid plans:

Open the page the day you pay. Prices can change. ChatGPT also lists Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Google also lists Ultra. Those are not in this table.

Google's limits page, checked the same day, says a personal free account has lower limits than the paid Google AI plans, and that a limit refreshes every 5 hours until a weekly limit. Work and school accounts use a different page.

A personal Gemini plan is not Gemini inside a company Gmail. That setup is in Gemini in Gmail, Docs, and Sheets.

Before you paste anything about a customer, read what not to put in an AI tool.

Common mistakes

• Paying because a blog listed last month's price.

• Sending the first draft because it sounds polite.

• Putting a customer list into a free personal account.