Getting started on the Free plan

Free is the front door, not a trial. No card, no countdown, no upsell prompts. You can stay on Free for as long as you want, and the site you build stays yours either way.

This article walks you through what to expect on day one.

TL;DR

Pick a path on the marketing site: Create / Grow / Buy.
Walk the 7-step quiz/intake (~5–10 minutes).
AthenAI generates the artifacts (business idea, brand kit, audit, etc. — depending on path).
Account signup happens at the end, not the beginning. You see the product before you commit.
You land in Free with a CRM, an AI cofounder, and a dashboard — your site at yourname.athenaigrowth.com deploys at the end of onboarding (typical 2–10 minutes after signup; you’ll get an email when it’s live).

You upgrade when you actually want something Free doesn’t include. Not before.

What you get on Free

The full Free-plan deliverable, in plain English:

A live website on yourname.athenaigrowth.com. Real Astro site, real SEO, real schema markup. Yours to keep indefinitely. (Provisioned at the end of onboarding — 2–10 minutes typical after signup.)
AI cofounder chat — 50 messages on a rolling 30-day window. Web and mobile.
A 90-day roadmap. If you’re on the Grow path, you also get a full 6-dimension audit of your existing site. (Create and Buy don’t run a site audit — there’s no existing site to audit on Create, and Buy is acquisition-focused.)
Full workflow library — browse the catalog. 28 pre-built workflows today, catalog growing. You can read every entry. You can’t run them on Free; that’s a paid feature.
CRM dashboard with contacts (read/write, manual). The pipeline + automation features unlock at Solo.
Mobile app + web dashboard — same product, both surfaces.
Same control model as paid. Approval cards on high-stakes actions, audit log, per-workflow enabled toggle. (Mid-action kill switch + auto-approval rules: 🟦 coming soon across all tiers — see /help/account/approvals-and-control/.) Free isn’t a stripped-down product; it’s a smaller-capacity product.

What you don’t get on Free

We’d rather be specific than vague:

No custom domain. yourbusiness.com is a paid feature (Solo and up). On Free, you live on yourname.athenaigrowth.com.
No workflow execution. You can browse all 28 workflows in the catalog but you can’t run any of them. Solo gets you 5 simple workflows.
No scheduled AI work. Free is interactive — you ask, AthenAI responds. Scheduled “run this every Tuesday at 9am” content/CRM workflows are paid.
No GoHighLevel sub-account. Full marketing automation — outbound email / SMS at scale, multi-stage pipelines, lifecycle journeys — lives behind Solo+. (Note: the 50-message rolling-30-day chat window covers AI cofounder messages; it doesn’t cap your outbound to customers.)
No support SLA. Best-effort support on Free. Paid tiers add structured support (Solo: AI support, CEO escalation on request; Scale: 2-hour SLA during business hours).

If you hit any of those walls and they’re slowing you down, that’s the upgrade signal. (See /help/account/pricing-and-tiers/.)

Step-by-step: your first day

1. Pick your path

Go to athenaigrowth.com and pick:

Create if you don’t have a business yet. (You’ll get an idea + brand + free site.)
Grow if you have a business and a website already. (You’ll get an audit + roadmap + free site.)
Buy if you’re looking to acquire a small business. (You’ll get matched listings + a deal pipeline.)

Not sure? Read /help/paths/. Picking wrong is reversible.

2. Walk the 7-step intake

Each path has a 7-step wizard. Most people finish in 5–10 minutes. You can leave and come back; we save your state and email you a resume link.

Email capture happens at step 1 (just email + first name, no password). Full account signup is at step 7. You see the product before you commit.

3. Watch the site build

Around step 6, AthenAI assembles your site in the wizard so you can see what it’ll look like. The full deployment to yourname.athenaigrowth.com happens at the end of onboarding — typically 2–10 minutes after you sign up at step 7.

You’ll get an email when the site is fully deployed. If it’s been over an hour, something’s wrong — open chat and ask.

Heads-up: the at-end-of-onboarding deploy trigger is rolling out (spec §7 P0-1 in active development). Until it ships, your site goes live shortly after signup but the exact timing varies more than the 2–10 minute target. If you want it sooner or you’re not seeing the email, support@athenaigrowth.com.

Email + password + name. That’s it. No card. No payment surface unless you actively choose a paid tier on this screen.

Tier recommendation: AthenAI suggests a tier based on what you told it (target income, channels, employees). The default selected option is Free. The recommended paid tier is shown alongside, but it’s not pre-selected.

Click “Continue free” → you’re in. Click “Activate [tier]” → you’re routed through Stripe checkout, then in.

5. Find your way around

After signup, you land in the dashboard. Quick tour:

Home — your site preview, latest cofounder messages, recent activity.
Site — view, edit, view live URL.
CRM — contacts (always), pipeline + automation (Solo+).
Workflows — full catalog. Lock icons on entries you can’t run yet.
Chat — your AI cofounder. Same one you talked to on the marketing site, now scoped to your tenant.
Settings — billing, integrations, workflow toggles (per-workflow enabled switches — mid-action kill switch is 🟦 coming soon), audit log.

Mobile app: same routes, same data. Sign in with the same email/password.

What to do first

A few good first moves on Free:

Tell the cofounder what you’re trying to do this month. Don’t ask it to “help you grow.” Ask it: “I want 10 leads in 30 days. What should I do this week?” Specific in, specific out.
Browse the workflow library. You can’t run them yet, but seeing what’s available shapes how you think about your business. Note which ones you’d run if you upgraded.
Edit the site copy. AthenAI’s first draft is a draft. The site editor is right there.
Connect one channel (email or SMS). Even on Free, you can wire up your own provider — saves the 50-msg quota for the AI side.

When to upgrade

Concrete triggers, in plain English:

You’re getting leads and the contacts/manual-pipeline-workflow combo is wasting your time → Solo ($97/mo, 5 simple workflows, real pipeline).
You want a custom domain → Solo.
You’re tired of approving every message one at a time → Growth ($297/mo) gives you more workflow capacity AND scheduled execution.
You’re burning through the 50-message rolling-30-day chat window before it resets → Growth or Scale.
You want AthenAI running scheduled content, weekly ops briefings, and the full medium+complex workflow set without you in the loop → Scale ($797/mo). (A/B testing engine: 🟦 coming soon; manual variant testing available today on Scale.)

Pricing details: /help/account/pricing-and-tiers/.

What if I’m not ready?

Don’t upgrade. Free is free for as long as you want it. You’re not on a clock.

If you want to leave entirely: cancel billing from Settings → Billing. Your free site keeps running on yourname.athenaigrowth.com — we don’t take it down. If you want a copy of your CRM data, contacts, or the site source, email support@athenaigrowth.com and we’ll send you the export (CSV or JSON for data, zip for the site source) the same day. A self-serve one-click download is on the roadmap for later this quarter. Nothing dramatic happens automatically.

[IMG-FREE-DASHBOARD: phone screenshot of the post-signup dashboard with the live free-site URL highlighted. Product surface, not human imagery.]