A CRM switch costs you in four ways, and only one of them shows up on an invoice. There’s the data: what you can export, and what won’t come with you. There’s the overlap: the sales cycle you run both tools side by side. There’s contract timing: a yearly term you may still be paying for. And there’s your own time, setting the new tool up and getting everyone to use it. This page won’t give you a number, because the right one is yours. It gives you a way to count each cost before you decide a switch is worth it.
What should you export?
Before anything else, find out what your current CRM will let you take. Export these, and open each file to check it, not just that it downloaded:
- Contacts, with every field you use: email, phone, company, the stage or status, the owner, and your custom fields.
- Companies, if you keep them separately from contacts, with the link between each contact and its company.
- Deals or opportunities, with their stage, value, expected close date, and the contact and company they belong to.
- Notes, the free-text history you’ve written on each record. These are often a separate export, or attached in a way that’s hard to import.
- Files and attachments, if you store proposals or contracts in the CRM. These usually need downloading separately.
- Your pipeline stages and custom field list, written down. You’ll rebuild these by hand in the new tool, so it helps to have them on one page.
Keep a dated copy of every export somewhere safe, even after the move. It’s your record of where things stood the day you left.
What usually doesn’t move?
Plan for some things to stay behind, or to need rebuilding:
- Email history. Emails logged against contacts often don’t import into a different tool, or arrive without their link to the right person.
- Automations and workflows. Rules, sequences, and reminders built in one tool don’t transfer to another. You’ll rebuild the ones you still need.
- Templates. Saved emails and snippets usually need copying across by hand.
- Custom fields that don’t map. A field in your old tool may have no matching type in the new one, so dropdowns become text, or dates lose their format.
- Integrations. Connections to your calendar, inbox, forms, or accounting tool need setting up again.
This list is the best argument for moving early. The less you’ve built, the less you rebuild.
Why run both for one sales cycle?
Don’t switch off the old tool the day you start the new one. Put new leads into the new tool from day one, let deals already in progress finish where they started, and cancel the old one only when the last of them has closed or moved across. That means paying for both tools for one sales cycle, however long yours is. It costs one extra bill, and it saves you the deal that falls through the gap while everyone is learning where things live.
Mind the contract dates
If your current plan is billed yearly, the cheapest time to leave is just before it renews. Leave mid-term and you’ll usually keep paying the old tool until the term ends, on top of the new one. Some plans also commit you to a year even when you pay monthly, so check your plan’s terms, not just how you’re billed. Write the renewal date down and plan the switch around it.
How do you count your own hours?
This is the cost to be honest about. Copy this list and put your own estimate beside each line. We won’t fill it in, because a five-hundred-row spreadsheet and a five-thousand-row one are different jobs.
| Task | Your estimate (hours) |
|---|---|
| Cleaning the data before you import it (duplicates, missing fields, old leads) | |
| Exporting and checking every file | |
| Setting up the new tool: pipeline stages, custom fields, users | |
| Importing, and fixing what didn’t import cleanly | |
| Rebuilding the templates and automations you still need | |
| Reconnecting your inbox, calendar, and forms | |
| Showing everyone how it works, and answering questions in the first weeks | |
| Running both tools during the overlap |
Add a margin for the surprises you’ll find once you start, then multiply the total by what an hour of your time is worth to the business. That’s the cost to set against what the switch saves you each month. If the saving doesn’t cover it within the year, our view is that the switch can wait.
Say you run a two-person consultancy, halfway through a yearly plan on a CRM you’ve outgrown. You’ve found a tool that suits you better and costs less each month. Before you switch, you fill in the worksheet and come to your own total hours. You note your renewal date, which is six months away, and the monthly saving the new tool would give you.
Now the decision is arithmetic you can trust. Switching today means paying for both tools for the rest of the term, plus your hours. Switching just before renewal means the same hours, but no double bill. Unless the old tool is actively costing you deals, the second plan wins, and you can use the months in between to clean your data, so the move itself goes faster.
Our view
A switch is worth it when the new tool fixes a problem that’s costing you money: deals slipping, a team that won’t use the old tool, or a bill well above what you’d pay for what you use. It isn’t worth it to save small change, or because a new tool looks nicer. Our view is that your own hours are usually the largest cost, so count them honestly, time the move to your renewal, and keep the old tool running until the last open deal closes. What this cautious approach gives up is the quick relief of a clean start. What it saves is a lost deal, and a double bill you didn’t need to pay.
Your next step
Run the export test this week, before you’ve decided anything. Export your contacts, companies, and deals from your current CRM, open each file, and check that every field you rely on is there and readable. If it’s clean, you know the move is possible, and you can fill in the worksheet with confidence. If it isn’t, you’ve learned the most important cost before paying for a new tool. If cost is the reason you’re thinking of switching, what a CRM costs for 1, 3, 5, and 10 people and what a CRM really costs in the first year help you check the saving is real. If you’re paying per seat for a bundled CRM you’ve half outgrown, when leaving pays runs the numbers.