Been doing this since the early GPT-2 days and honestly, for a 20 dollar limit, Jasper is a total waste of money for a local florist. You're paying for enterprise features you won't ever touch. To get a blog going on a budget, you need efficiency over fancy UI. If you want the best bang for your buck, look at these:

• Koala KoalaWriter Essentials Plan is great because it pulls real-time data. It wont just talk about flowers in general; it'll actually know what's trending in Portland right now if you toggle the live search feature. It handles the SEO side for you too.
• OpenAI ChatGPT Plus Subscription is exactly 20 bucks. You get GPT-4o which is miles ahead of the free version in terms of sounding natural and following complex instructions. It's much less robotic.
• Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet Free Version is currently the top tier for free users. It generally writes much better, more human-like prose than the free version of ChatGPT without any special tweaking. The robotic tone usually comes from generic prompting. If you just tell it to write a blog post about roses, it will be boring and dry. You have to tell it to write in the style of a friendly Portland shop owner who cares about local sustainable farming. Give it specific context about your shop and it'll stop sounding like a bot. I would go with Koala for your specific needs. It uses the better models but streamlines the whole blog process so you arent fighting with prompts for hours. For a small business, your time is worth more than the few bucks you would save using basic tools. Just make sure to fact-check the seasonal availability it suggests so you aren't promising flowers you don't have.

Building on the earlier suggestion, I think you should prioritize factual safety over just finding the absolute cheapest price. If you get flower care tips wrong because of AI hallucinations, your Portland customers wont trust your expertise anymore. For a 20 dollar limit, Writesonic Small Team Plan is actually quite decent because it integrates real-time search data into its outputs. It helps avoid that typical robotic vibe you see in the basic free tools. I would also suggest looking at Frase Content Search Tool if you can find a starter deal. It is more about search data than just creative text generation. Using tools that ground their output in actual search results is just a safer bet for a small shop. It keeps things professional without needing a massive Jasper-style budget. Just gotta be methodical with the settings so the tone stays natural... it works well enough for local SEO stuff.

^ This. Also, I've always found that a methodical approach to the research phase is the most effective way to maintain a lean budget! Utilizing primary sources like local historical databases or botanical society records is a fantastic way to find unique stories. You can find some absolutely fantastic material that really sets your content apart. Speaking of Portland, I spent a week there a few years back and got completely obsessed with finding the best food carts near the waterfront. There was this one place that sold the most incredible spicy noodles, but I can never remember the name of it... Maybe it was near a bike shop? I actually missed a meeting because the line was so long. totally worth it tho. anyway lol sorry kinda went off topic there.