How much is a CRM for a small business? The full bill

What does a CRM cost a small business each month?

CRM apps usually charge a monthly fee, and the way they count it matters more than the headline number. Prices change and promotions come and go, so treat these as examples and check each vendor’s current page or ask for a quote. On most pages we checked, paying yearly cost less per month than paying month to month. Salesforce’s Starter Suite was the exception, at $25 a user either way. The catch with yearly billing is the commitment, which we cover below.

When we checked vendor pricing pages in October 2026, we saw four common ways of charging:

• A free plan with limits. HubSpot’s free plan covers up to 2 users. Its Starter plan lists $20 per seat a month billed monthly, or from $7 a seat billed annually. Check which price you’d pay once a third person joins.
• A price per user. Less Annoying CRM lists $15 per user a month with no contract. Salesforce lists its Starter Suite from $25 per user a month, billed monthly or annually. Its Pro Suite starts at $100, billed annually with a contract. Its page adds that transaction fees apply. Some vendors call a user a “seat.”
• A plan price with some users included. Billed annually, Housecall Pro lists Basic at $59 a month with 1 user, Essentials at $149 with 5 and MAX at $299 with 8. Paying monthly costs more.
• A plan price plus a fee for each extra user. Jobber adds users for $29 a month each. It counts anyone in the office or the field who views or manages the team’s schedule as a user.

References: HubSpot: CRM pricing (free and Starter plans) (opens in a new tab) · Less Annoying CRM: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · Salesforce: Small business pricing (opens in a new tab) · Housecall Pro: Pricing and plans (opens in a new tab) · Jobber: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab)

Are you pricing a sales CRM or a job system?

CRM stands for customer relationship management. Sales CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce grew up tracking leads, deals and follow-ups. Salesforce’s feature table, for example, starts with account, contact and opportunity management. An opportunity is a deal you’re working on. That suits a business that sells over weeks, like a remodeler chasing bids.

Field service apps like Jobber and Housecall Pro keep a customer list too, but they’re built around the job. Housecall Pro’s entry plan, for example, lists scheduling and dispatching, quotes and proposals, and invoices and payments (when we checked in October 2026). So a $25 user fee and a $149 plan aren’t the same purchase.

For a service business, the fair comparison covers the whole job, from the first call to the paid invoice. If a sales CRM needs a second app for scheduling and a third for invoices, add all three bills before you compare. Many small service businesses don’t need tools for tracking long sales deals. They need every customer, address, quote and job in one place. If that’s your real problem, see how to keep one record for each customer. Then use our guide to choosing a CRM for a small service business to set your must-haves before you compare prices.

References: Salesforce: Small business pricing (opens in a new tab) · Housecall Pro: Pricing and plans (opens in a new tab)

CRM costs on top of the monthly fee

The monthly fee is rarely the whole bill. Ask about each of these before you sign anything. Vendor examples are from their own pages when we checked in October 2026.

• Setup fees. Some plans charge a one-time fee to get you started. HubSpot, for example, lists a required one-time onboarding fee of $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional.
• Moving your data in. One clean spreadsheet imports quickly. Customers spread across a notebook, three phones and an old app, with duplicates, take hours to sort first, whether you do it or pay someone.
• Add-ons. Extra tools can sit on a higher plan or cost extra. Salesforce’s page, for instance, marks marketing email sends as an add-on. Check that every feature you need is on the plan you’re pricing.
• Payment fees. If customers pay through the app, each payment has a fee. Jobber lists 2.9% + 30¢ for card payments and 1% for bank payments. Housecall Pro lists card rates from 2.59% and 1% for bank payments. Salesforce notes “transaction fees apply” next to both small business suite prices.
• Commitments. Jobber’s page says its monthly plan with a one-year commitment has a 12-month minimum term. Its annual plan is billed up front, and that payment is non-refundable if you cancel during the year. Salesforce lists its Pro Suite as billed annually, contract required.
• People who only look. If someone who just checks their schedule counts as a user, every person you hire for the field raises the bill.
• The apps you keep. A CRM rarely replaces your accounting, so QuickBooks Online or whatever you use stays on its own bill.
• Your team’s time. Setting up, learning a new app and fixing a messy import take office hours. Count them, even though nobody invoices you for them.

References: HubSpot: Sales Hub pricing (opens in a new tab) · Salesforce: Small business pricing (opens in a new tab) · Jobber: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab) · Housecall Pro: Pricing and plans (opens in a new tab)

What a CRM costs for 5, 8 or 10 people

For example, a house cleaning company with three teams of two has an owner, an office manager and six cleaners who check their day on a phone. If everyone who views the schedule counts, that’s 8 users.

On Housecall Pro’s published prices, the plan that includes 8 users is MAX, at $299 a month billed annually. That’s $3,588 a year. Its page lists $35 a month for each extra user on that plan. Adding a fourth team of two adds $70 a month, or $840 a year. Card fees come on top.

Now picture the same company on a sales CRM at Salesforce’s $25 Starter price. Eight users is $200 a month, or $2,400 a year. It looks cheaper until you price the scheduling, recurring visits and invoicing the company still needs. Ask the vendor whether those are included or sold as separate products.

Neither is a bad deal. These are examples worked from vendor pages in October 2026, not quotes. The point is to run the math on your headcount two years from now. Use the plan you’d actually need, not the cheapest one on the page.

Here is what the list prices above add up to for a team of 5 and a team of 10. They leave out setup, add-ons and payment fees:

• Less Annoying CRM at $15 per user: $75 a month for 5 people, $150 for 10.
• HubSpot Starter at $20 per seat, billed monthly: $100 a month for 5, $200 for 10.
• Salesforce Starter Suite at $25 per user: $125 a month for 5, $250 for 10.
• Jobber Connect, billed annually: its page lists $149 a month with 5 users and $229 with 10.
• Housecall Pro, billed annually: Essentials at $149 a month includes 5 users. For 10, MAX at $299 plus 2 extra users at $35 comes to $369.

References: Housecall Pro: Pricing and plans (opens in a new tab) · Salesforce: Small business pricing (opens in a new tab) · Less Annoying CRM: Pricing (opens in a new tab) · HubSpot: CRM pricing (free and Starter plans) (opens in a new tab) · Jobber: Pricing plans (opens in a new tab)

Which features push you onto a pricier plan

The plan you need depends on what your business has to keep track of, and the features for that can sit on higher-priced plans. Housecall Pro, for example, lists QuickBooks Online sync among the features its $149 Essentials plan adds over Basic. Recurring service plans are among those its $299 MAX plan adds (when we checked in October 2026). So the connection or record you need most can decide the price more than your headcount does.

If an app holds your records on a plan you can afford, it’s probably the cheaper choice. If you’d keep a spreadsheet next to it for the parts it can’t hold, that spreadsheet is a cost too. It’s also the gap a custom build would close, and our guide to a custom CRM or an off-the-shelf one walks through that choice.

Here is what tends to push the price up in a few kinds of business, as examples:

• HVAC and plumbing: maintenance agreements with renewal dates, and the equipment at each address. Check which plan handles service agreements, not just one-off jobs.
• Landscaping and cleaning: recurring visits and routes. On Housecall Pro, for example, routes start on Essentials, while route optimization and recurring service plans are on MAX.
• Remodeling: bids with follow-up dates, change orders and payment milestones. A sales CRM handles the bid; the job side may need another app.
• Cafés and restaurants: catering customers, orders and deposits. Ask where a deposit on a future order would live. If the answer is a notes field, it will end up in a spreadsheet.
• Property managers: owners, units, tenants and vendors, with each repair tied to the right unit. A customer list built around one person per account fits this poorly.
• Showrooms: special orders, deposits and delivery dates for each customer, often split between the shop’s till and a notebook.

Reference: Housecall Pro: Pricing and plans (opens in a new tab)

What drives the price of a custom CRM

A CRM built for you works the other way around. You pay once to build it, then a monthly fee for hosting and care. Adding a person usually doesn’t change the price, because you pay for what the system does, not how many people log in.

After launch, hosting and care are a monthly line, and other companies’ fees, like card fees, go to them directly. A fair quote lists all of it. Our guide to what custom software costs goes deeper on what moves the build price.

Prices for a “custom CRM” vary widely online, because a CRM can mean a simple customer list or a large system with many parts. For a small service business, these are the things that move the number most:

• How many kinds of people use it. The office, a dispatcher, crews and customers each need their own screens and their own rules about what they can see and change.
• What it keeps besides names. Gate codes, equipment at each address, service agreements, units, deposits and photos each add screens and rules.
• Quotes, invoices and payments. A customer list alone is small. Add quotes that turn into jobs, then invoices and card payments, and it becomes a business system.
• Connections. Each app it talks to, such as QuickBooks Online, Stripe, Square or Google Calendar, needs its own setup and testing.
• Moving old data in. Merging duplicates from three places takes real time, and it has to be right before day one.
• A crew phone app or customer portal. Showing today’s jobs on a phone is simpler than working without signal, or letting customers approve quotes and pay online.

A three-year CRM cost check you can fill in

Monthly fees look small and a build quote looks big, so compare both over the same three years. Work out the app side twice: at today’s headcount and at the headcount you expect in two years. If the totals come out close, an app’s lower start and quick setup usually win. If the app side climbs with every hire, or your team would still retype jobs between apps, it’s worth pricing a build.

Fill in your own numbers:

• App: the plan you’d need × 36 months, plus extra users × the user fee × 36, plus add-ons × 36, plus any setup fee.
• Add the other apps you’d still pay for beside it, and any change in payment fees compared with what you pay now.
• Custom: the one-time build price, plus the monthly hosting and care in the quote × 36, plus the apps you keep, like QuickBooks Online.
• Both: the hours your team spends retyping details between apps today, and the hours it takes to move your data in.

Questions to ask about price before you sign

Your customer list is the business, so the most important question is the last one: how you get your records out if you leave. Our guide to who owns your software, your data and your domain covers what to check.

Ask these of any app vendor or builder, and get the answers in writing:

• Who counts as a user, and what do people who only view their schedule cost?
• Which plan has every feature on my list, and what does it cost at my headcount?
• Is there a setup fee, and what does it include?
• Is this an introductory price, and what will I pay at renewal?
• How long is the commitment, and what happens if I cancel early?
• What does each card or bank payment cost?
• How do I get all my customer and job records out, and in what format?

What a CRM costs with us

We build custom business software, and a CRM can be where it starts. That means one customer list with quotes, jobs and invoices, connected to the apps you keep.

Hosting and care are a monthly line, priced in your quote. Every launch includes 30 days of fixes. You own the code we write once the project is paid in full. Hosting runs on our account, and you can take it over after payment. We connect to QuickBooks Online, Square, Stripe, Shopify, Google Calendar, Gmail or Outlook, and check anything else before we quote.

The first call is free, and you get a fixed price in writing within 48 hours of it. If Jobber, Housecall Pro or another app fits how you work, we’ll tell you. See how we build custom business software.

These are our prices as of 2026-10-04:

• A focused fix, $750–$3,000 over 1–⁠2 weeks. For example, a quote request form that saves every request to one customer list, or a connection between two apps you already use.
• One business system, $6,000–$18,000 over 6–⁠10 weeks. For example, a customer list with quotes and invoices, connected to QuickBooks Online.
• A full system, $18,000–$40,000 over 10–⁠16 weeks. Customers, jobs, quotes, invoices, payments and a crew phone app, together.