What does a CRM really cost in the first year?

For three people, a CRM’s first year can cost nothing: two free plans in this guide still fit three. If you pay, the cheapest plans that fit come to $324 to $864 for the first year at regular prices, billed monthly. HubSpot is counted at its regular price, because its lower Starter price has no end date. A required onboarding fee on HubSpot’s higher plans comes on top, and no table includes your own time, which is often the biggest cost of all.

What does the first year cost for three people?

Here’s each product for three people on the cheapest plan that fits, for the first twelve months billed monthly. Free means a free plan still fits three, so there’s nothing to pay. Each paid figure is the whole year for the team, not per person.

Two numbers matter here. The first is the free rows: if three of you can live within what those free plans allow, the honest first-year budget is nothing. The second is the spread among the paid plans, from $324 to $864 for the first year at regular prices. That’s a wide range for the core job of tracking leads, which is why the plan you pick matters more than the brand.

At one person and at five

On your own, five free plans fit, so only the two tools with no free plan cost anything: $180 to $288 for the first year.

At five, no free plan in this guide fits, and the cheapest plans that do come to $540 to $1,440 for the first year at regular prices.

Say you run a five-person nonprofit office: a director, a development coordinator who looks after donors, a program manager, a volunteer coordinator, and a part-time bookkeeper. You want one shared list of donors, funders, and volunteers, with a reminder for every follow-up.

Start by counting logins, not staff. The bookkeeper needs a monthly export, not a seat, so it’s four. That alone takes a seat off every row: on Less Annoying CRM, for example, it’s $60 a month instead of $75 a month, every month of the year. For four people, the cheapest fitting plans come to $432 to $1,152 for the first year at regular prices.

Then budget the year monthly, and put the time in your plan too: cleaning the donor sheet, importing it, and reminding everyone to log their calls until it’s a habit. Our view is that this is where a first year goes wrong, more often than the price.

Promotions, and how long they last

As this page is written, the only promotion among these CRMs is HubSpot Starter’s. HubSpot’s Starter page calls its lower price an offer for new customers, available for a limited time, and gives no end date. So this page never counts it for a whole year. The tables price HubSpot’s year at the regular price and show the lower price in a note. If you qualify for it, treat the difference as a discount that can stop at any time, and budget as if it already has.

Required one-time fees

HubSpot’s Professional plan carries a required one-time onboarding fee, and the per-seat price on HubSpot’s pricing page leaves it out. Here’s what three seats come to in the first year, with the fee on its own line:

That fee is why Professional’s monthly price badly understates its first year. It’s also a plan a small team rarely needs: its sequences and forecasting are tools for a team with someone managing other sellers.

Yearly commitments

Five of the six vendors publish a lower yearly price. Less Annoying CRM is the exception: it bills month to month and offers no discount for paying ahead.

Two commitments are worth knowing before you sign:

• HubSpot Professional is a yearly commitment even on monthly billing. Its monthly option reads “Commit annually”, so paying monthly only spreads the payments.
• Yearly billing anywhere locks you in. Bigin Express (by Zoho) for three is $21 a month billed yearly against $27 a month monthly. That’s a real saving, and a year on the wrong tool if you guess wrong.

Our view is to pay monthly for the first few months, until you’ve used the tool through one full sales cycle, then switch to yearly if the vendor offers it.

What the first year doesn’t include

• Your time. Cleaning your list, importing it, building the pipeline, and getting everyone to use it. This is usually the largest cost, and it’s the one that decides whether the money was well spent. What switching CRMs costs gives you a way to count it.
• Add-ons. Several vendors price extras separately: Pipedrive’s Campaigns, Projects, and other add-ons, Freshsales’s Branded documents and Freddy AI Agent, Capsule’s Marketing add-on. If one of them is why you’re choosing a tool, add it to the year.
• Tax. Prices are before sales tax or VAT.
• The move after this one. If you start on a free plan and outgrow it, the next tool means another import. Pick the free plan you’ll outgrow last.

Our view

For most owner-run teams of one to three, the right first-year budget is nothing: start on a free plan that fits and spend the money in year two, when you know what you need. At four or five, the cheapest fitting plan is a modest yearly bill, and the bigger risk is paying yearly for the wrong tool or buying a plan with an onboarding fee you didn’t need. What this view gives up is the comfort of a “complete” tool from day one, in exchange for paying only for features you’ve found you need.

Your next step

Count the people who’ll log in over the next twelve months. If it’s three or fewer, start one of the free plans that fits three this week and your first year costs nothing: start Zoho CRM’s free plan or start Freshsales’s. When a free CRM plan is enough shows which one’s caps suit you. If you’re four or more, find your size in the tables above, start a trial of that plan, and pay monthly until you’ve run one full sales cycle on it.