How Much Does CRM Software Cost? Pricing Guide

Most CRM software providers charge per user, per month, although advanced plans for large businesses usually come with a set price monthly for 5 to 10 users, with additional users costing extra.

In general, here’s what you can expect to pay depending on the size of your business and team:

• Small businesses/teams: £12-£50 per user, per month
• Medium businesses/teams: £50-£100 per user, per month
• Larger businesses/teams: £100 per user, per month, to £1,000+ per month

If you’re looking at these prices thinking your business can’t afford CRM, don’t worry. There are free CRM systems out there, and cheap CRM systems offered by providers such as Zoho CRM and Monday CRM.

To start you off, here’s a quick look at what some of the top CRM providers charge:

Need more help with choosing the right CRM system for your business? Use our free quote tool, and we’ll match you with trusted providers who will contact you with personalized, obligation-free quotes.

CRM Costs Explained: What Factors Affect CRM Pricing?

CRM providers set their price per user, per month, which will also vary depending on whether you want monthly or annual billing. From there, you can choose from subscription plans based on the features you want to include and how much data storage you need. Other than that, there are add-on features you can integrate for an additional price.

Fundamentally speaking, the price of your plan depends on factors, such as:

• Type of CRM (sales, marketing, service)
• Company needs and goals
• The number of users
• Subscription plan based on the features you want to include
• Add-on features
• Billing cycle (monthly or annual)
• Time investment fees
• Onboarding costs

Ultimately, your current business needs and goals are crucial factors you’ll want to consider when choosing a CRM system. You will have to determine where you want your software to focus, whether it’s on sales, marketing, or customer service.

CRM Costs by Industry

CRM pricing can vary quite a lot between industries since different teams require different levels of complexity in their processes. Software is typically split into three types: sales, marketing, and customer service.

Here’s what you can expect to pay:

CRM costs for sales

£12-£250+ per user, per month

CRM for sales teams is mainly used for lead capture, communication, and conversion and tends to be priced between £12 and £250 per month. That’s what most businesses will pay, although large businesses can pay more. There are also many free plans for sales teams, which is fantastic for sole entrepreneurship but can be limiting once you require multiple users or higher data capacity.

If you upgrade to a mid-tier sales CRM (£59-£80 per user, per month), you have the added benefit of more advanced features such as lead scoring, and deal and quote management which helps to gain a fuller picture of the prospects in your sales pipeline.

The highest-priced plans (£100-£250+ per user, per month) are intended for enterprise-level teams and instead of adding more features, will enhance the operational functionality of your system with higher data, user and contact limits.

Example providers

• Salesforce: Sales plans range from £20-£400 per month per user, a wide range
• Zoho CRM: Compared to Salesforce, its sales plans have a smaller range, going from £12 to £42 per month, per user.

CRM costs for customer service

£15-£250 per user, per month

CRM systems for customer service teams are mainly used for managing customer queries and complaints and for maintaining relationships with existing customers (sales and marketing CRM systems are used at an earlier stage in the sales funnel).

That being said, customer service CRM systems tend to start at a slightly higher price point than sales-focused systems, at £15-£250 per month. This is because they often have specialised integrations with VoIP phone systems, or even have built-in call and video meeting features. This makes them a feasible investment for teams of all sizes.

Example providers

• Salesforce: An exception to the rule, Salesforce specialises in sales CRM, so its customer service plans have a smaller range than its sales one, costing from £20 to £264 per user, per month, while its sales plans range from £20 to £400 per user, per month
• Zendesk: customer service CRM costs between £15 and £89 per, user per month

CRM costs for marketing

£20-£1,000 + per month (set user number)

CRM systems for marketing teams are where we see the biggest increase in pricing. They can range from £20 to over £1,000 + per month, a marked price increase from sales and customer service systems. This is mainly because marketing CRM systems offer more advanced capabilities, including email marketing, multi-channel lead communication and capture.

With higher-paid plans (£1,000+ per month), you’ll typically benefit from analytics features and automation, which are particularly useful when it comes to reallocating your team’s time and resources to more valuable activities.

Example providers

• Salesforce: Its marketing CRM plan costs from £1,000 per month, much more than its other types of CRM software
• HubSpot: Its Marketing Hub plans range from £14 to £3,000 per month, while its SalesHub plans only range from £14 to £135 per user, per month

CRM Software Cost Comparison

While it’s complex to figure out the overall price of your CRM system, computing your baseline cost will give you a ballpark figure of how much you should put into your CRM budget. This is why we’ve put together the price per user, per month for each subscription plan offered by the top seven CRM providers in the UK.

HubSpot pricing

Price range: £0-£3,740 per month

Prices correct as of October 2024

HubSpot’s pricing is a little peculiar. It offers software bundles that include a range of CRM solutions (sales, marketing, customer service), which it refers to as a Customer Platform. These cost from £0-£3,740 per month, and include set numbers of users. HubSpot charges extra for additional users.

Included in the Customer Platform bundles are plans for small teams, which are much more affordable than Hubspot’s plans for large teams. There’s a Free Tools suite for individuals, which costs £0 per month, and a £11 per month, per user, Starter Customer Platform, which is a great option for small businesses and startups.

After that, prices jump to £1,017 per month (five users, and £45 per month per additional user) for the Professional Customer Platform, and £3,740 per month (seven users, and £70 per month per additional user) for the Enterprise Customer Platform. It goes without saying that these bundles are for medium to large businesses with a significant budget.

You also have the option of paying only for the type of CRM tools you need. HubSpot splits these up into “Hubs”, the three main ones being Marketing, Sales, and Service. They cost the following:

• Marketing Hub: £14/user/month, £702/month (3 users, £40/month/additional user), or £3,000/month (5 users, £70/month/additional user)
• Sales Hub: £14/user/month, £77 or £135 per month, per user
• Service Hub: £14/user/month, £77 or £135 per month, per user
• Content Hub: £14/user/month, £396/month (3 users, £40/month/additional user) or £1,310/month (5 users, £70/month/additional user)
• Operations Hub: £14/user/month, £630/month (1 user, £40/month/additional user) or £1,740/month (1 user, £70/month/additional user)

You also have the option to “Create a bundle”. With this option, you can mix and match the software offerings listed above, as well as the pricing tiers. So, for example, you could pick the £702 marketing plan and the £77 sales plan, and nothing else.

Where HubSpot pricing is similar to other CRM software providers is that paying for the entire year with annual billing, as opposed to month-by-month, will save you 10%.

HubSpot Onboarding Fees

You will have to pay additional “onboarding” fees when you sign up to certain premium HubSpot plans, which vary from £1,000 to £3,000. This pays for a HubSpot professional to help you:

• Set goals specific to your company
• Start projects, and advise on prioritisation
• Access resources to understand the software
• Integrate your existing tools with HubSpot

monday CRM pricing

Price range: £10-£24 per user, per month

Prices correct as of October 2024

At £10 per user per month, the ‘Basic’ plan offers an app for iOS and Android, 5GB of storage, and whiteboard collaboration. That’s really convenient and rather rare in the scope of CRM software.

But, if your organization relies heavily on email, you’re better off going for Monday CRM’s £14 per user, per month ‘Standard’ plan, because of its email integration with Gmail or Outlook.

Based on our research, we think monday CRM is the best for managers who need a lot of customisation. We particularly like the separate dashboards for leads, contacts, deals, and accounts, all of which you can customise. monday CRM is better than Zendesk in this respect because you get unlimited customisable pipelines at every price point. It’s a lower-priced product that reliably tracks deal progression and client communications.

Salesforce pricing

Price range: £20 per user, per month to £2,200 per month

Prices correct as of October 2024

If you’re part of a medium-to-large business, you’re ready to upgrade to Salesforce, on of the sharpest tools in the CRM shed.

Like Hubspot, Salesforce has different pricing tiers for each of its CRM software types, sales, marketing, and service, and a separate all-in-one solution for small businesses. Here’s what you can expect to pay:

• Small business: £20/user/month or £80/user/month
• Sales Cloud: £132/user/month, £264/user/month, or £400/user/month
• Marketing Cloud: £1,000/month or £2,200/month
• Service Cloud: £20/user/month, £64/user/month, £132/user/month, or £264/user/month

While its small business tiers seem reasonable in cost (considering how big a brand it is), you’ll miss out on some key features if you pay anything beneath £264 a month, per user.

Customer service is in short supply on the Starter Suite Plan (£20 per user, per month) – you can expect a response within two days. For response within an hour, you’ll need to pay for the “Premier Success Plan”, an add-on that’s an extra 30% of your net license fee, or be on at least the Unlimited Plan for sales, at £264 per user, per month, where it’s included at no extra cost.

Freshsales pricing

Price range: £7-£49 per user, per month

Prices correct as of October 2024

If you’re a small business looking for a good, affordable CRM system without all the bells and whistles, Freshsales will be right up your street.

Get up and running in next to no time with an easy, useful dashboard, packed full of features you’ll actually use. Freshsales is popular across the board, but it’s the small businesses that sing its praises the loudest. Paid plans start at £7 per user, per month.

Freshsales is one of the best value-for-money CRM systems we tested, after Hubspot, offering a powerful platform that’s easy to use. In our testing, we found it easy to set up email campaigns and to import contact information from a variety of sources including CSV/Excel, Google Contact, or Outlook Contact

Zoho CRM pricing

Price range: £12-£42 per user, per month

Prices correct as of October 2024

Zoho is a powerful platform offering plenty of features across sales, email, customer support, and more. Its interface isn’t as jazzy or modern as competitors like monday CRM, but it still gets the job done.

If you want to dive in and add a pile of data to customise your database of accounts, contacts, and deals, Zoho will come into its own. For example, it has a ‘Set Up Your CRM’ checklist, and customisable layouts for accounts, leads, and contacts. These impressed us during testing.

This platform is also great value for money, with plans starting at £12 per user, per month (billed annually). It offers the strongest selection of features for the price of any CRM system we tested.

As you may already know, Zoho has as many software offerings as a millipede has legs. If you’re looking for more powerful business tools, you should take a look at our Zoho One pricing review. You may be able to score better value for money with extra functionality compared with Zoho CRM products.

Zendesk pricing

Price range: £15-£89 per user, per month

Prices correct as of October 2024

Zendesk specializes in affordable, effective solutions for sales and service teams.

Zendesk’s ‘Sell’ and ‘Support’ plans both start from just £15 per user, per month. However, its ‘Suite’ plans from customer service start at a higher price, £45 per user, per month, and come with more AI-powered features. For all three solutions, the more expensive plan costs £89 per user, per month. You can see a summary of the main features you’ll get in each pricing tier in the table above.

In our testing, we found that Zendesk’s all-in-one system would suit growing businesses. It’s not for nothing that Zendesk is one of the most popular CRM providers. This platform is ideal for managers, marketing teams, customer care, and sales teams looking for customizable pipelines and data tracking.

How Much Does CRM Implementation Cost?

Setting up your CRM system requires serious technical skills. You would need expertise from your provider to help you implement your system.

Here are just some of the implementation services you need to consider:

• Consulting services
• Data migration
• Contact import
• Workflow export/import
• Building dashboards
• Automated workflow creation

In any case, a few of these services are already included in some plans. So, it is of utmost importance to find out what services you will need before picking a plan.

Implementing a CRM system also involves indirect costs, such as training and onboarding of staff. This process may cause downtime while the staff become familiar with the system. As CRM systems are essential for the sales pipeline, any downtime during the implementation phase could lead to missed sales opportunities, which could also be considered an extra cost.

Is Free CRM Software Worth It?

Free CRM plans can be worth it for very small businesses, but not for larger ones.

That’s because free CRM plans typically offer limited features and functionalities with potential usage restrictions, making them only suitable for small businesses or startups with budget constraints, or for those wanting to test a particular CRM platform’s suitability.

This doesn’t mean they’re never worth it for anything other than a startup. For example, HubSpot’s free plan is a good value option for companies looking to streamline their contact management processes without the investment of paid software.

But, ultimately, paid plans are generally worth the expense, if they’re within budget. Paid plans provide comprehensive features, advanced functionalities, and dedicated support, making them ideal for businesses with complex sales processes and large customer bases, who need ongoing support and customisation options.

When it comes to CRM pricing, paid plans offer a more robust and tailored CRM experience, while free plans serve as a starting point for businesses with simpler needs.

How to Keep CRM Costs Down

With a per-user pricing model, with the additional transparent hidden costs, it’s easy for your CRM budget to get out of control.

Here are some helpful tips:

• Start with a free plan
• Pay annually instead of monthly (most CRM providers offer discounted pricing if you pay for the year upfront)
• Determine your goals for your CRM
• Choose a cloud version instead of installing an on-site hardware
• Conduct quarterly evaluations

If you want to save time choosing the best CRM system for your business, our free quote comparison tool can cut your research time and provide you with access to same-day quotes. Simply answer a few questions, and the leading CRM providers will contact you with bespoke, obligation-free quotes.