CRM cost per month for a team of 5 or 20

A CRM costs 12 to 90 euro per user per month before VAT on the mainstream packages, and over three years a team of 20 spends anywhere from about 15,000 to more than 60,000 euro. Three things make the difference: the price per seat, whether it drops as the team grows, and what you are obliged to buy on top, such as onboarding. A custom CRM has no price per seat; it becomes cheaper than a package once you have many users, or a process no package fits.

This guide lists five packages with their prices on 24 October 2026, works out a team of 5 and a team of 20 over three years, adds up what comes on top and shows where the tipping point to custom lies. HubSpot in detail is in HubSpot pricing; if you are unsure whether you need a CRM or an ERP, read CRM vs ERP.

CRM costs per user per month

Prices per user per month on annual billing, before VAT, as shown in euro:

Salesforce mostly sells through partners and quotes, and for a team of five it usually sits above the budget of a small business. HubSpot's free tier is a genuine starting point; see is HubSpot free. If you also need invoicing and stock, a CRM inside a broader package can make sense; compare in Odoo or Teamleader.

CRM costs over three years, worked out

Our own example with the middle plan of each CRM, annual billing, before VAT and one-off costs:

Teamleader is that cheap at 20 users because of the discount from the sixth seat: five at 33 euro and fifteen at 16.50, together 412.50 euro a month. HubSpot Starter would cost 1,200 euro a year for five users at list price, but Starter is capped at ten users and lacks the automation teams usually move up for, which is why Professional is in the table.

What comes on top of the licence

The licence is rarely the whole bill. What a CRM really costs in year one:

The largest hidden cost is adoption. A CRM your salespeople do not fill in delivers nothing, however cheap it is. Choose the system your team will open every day, not the one with the longest feature list.

When a custom CRM pays off

A custom CRM is built once and has no per-seat fee afterwards. It pays off in three situations:

• Many users who each do a small partDrivers confirming a delivery, technicians closing a job sheet, site staff adding a photo. On a package each of them needs a full licence.
• A process no package fitsA quote generated by a calculator, a file that passes five people, follow-up that depends on a contract or a permit.
• A CRM that has to talk to your own systemsScheduling, stock, a client portal. Every integration on a package is extra work at every update; in your own system it is part of the design.

The sum to make: put the build price of a custom CRM next to three to five years of licences from the table above, plus the onboarding and the integrations you would build on a package anyway. How a custom CRM works is on custom CRM development; what custom software costs in general is in custom software development cost, and the build-or-buy question in build vs buy software.

An example from our own work: Business Centrum, a payroll and HR office in Ghent, ran on a large spreadsheet for employers, employees, documents and tasks. We built a management platform with a file per client, an activity log, roles and a portal where their clients sign in with a link by email, no password. No per-seat licence, and exactly the fields such an office needs. The Business Centrum platform case shows how; moving from spreadsheets yourself is covered in replace Excel with software.

US, European or Benelux

A few things matter for a European team that no pricing page shows. HubSpot and Salesforce are American, Pipedrive was founded in Estonia, Zoho in India, Teamleader in Belgium. Where your data is stored and whether EU-only storage is available differs per package and edition, so ask if your clients or your sector require it. If you trade across borders, check whether the CRM or your accounting tool sends e-invoices in the formats your customers' countries require; Belgium made structured B2B e-invoices mandatory from 2026, and other EU countries follow on their own schedules. For the tax treatment of licences, ask your accountant.

A CRM rarely works alone. Your website feeds it leads, quotes leave from it, invoices go out through accounting. How to make those pieces work together without retyping is in Make, Zapier or n8n, and how an API integration works in its glossary entry. If you are leaving a package, the cheaper options per use case are in HubSpot alternatives and Teamleader alternatives.

What we do for you

We do not sell CRM licences. From Ghent, Belgium, we help teams across Europe choose between a package and custom work with their own numbers, build a custom CRM when the process calls for it, and connect an existing package to their website, scheduling or accounting. See custom software.