Are they just that much more computationally expensive for Zoho to run than normal workflows?

I thought they were this magic bullet for having a snappy portal experience for my users but then I realized we're limited to 2400 schedules a month . It had seemed that I could have the illusion of a normal On Submit workflow where I'm creating a PDF and pushing info to CRM all happen based on modified time with a schedule so my client just submits and they're instantly redirected correctly while the backend happens asynchronously but with that few schedules a month it doesn't seem feasible. 

After a bit of looking around I guess I want to just have a batch workflow fire every night at 12:00:01 for records with modified time of yesterday and that'll get me the new information in a reasonable turnaround while letting my clients have a reasonable portal experience. 

Is there a better way? The On Submit workflow was really awful when I'm making several CRM update calls and pushing files to workdrive.