The short answer
A CRM license with automations costs between €23 and €100 per user per month, so €2,760 to €12,000 a year for ten people depending on the tool. Add mandatory start-up fees where they exist, setup, the team's time and the tools the CRM does not replace. The license is rarely the biggest line.
Articles on CRM pricing often give a range, “from free to over $150,000”, that does not help anyone decide. This guide does the opposite: it starts from the public prices of eight vendors, taken from their pages on November 1, 2026, and sets out a calculation you can redo with your own numbers.
Disclosure: we make Atome, which appears in the tables like every other tool.
What makes up the cost of a CRM?
Six lines, only one of which is on the pricing page.
| Line | What it covers | Who pays |
|---|---|---|
| License | The subscription, per user or flat | The vendor bills you |
| Start-up fees | Onboarding some plans impose | The vendor, sometimes mandatory |
| Setup | Fields, stages, permissions, imports | You, a consultant or the vendor |
| Migration | Moving contacts, companies, deals and history | You, a consultant or the vendor |
| Team time | Project lead, training, manual data entry | You, in working hours |
| Tools alongside | What the CRM does not replace | Your other subscriptions |
Pricing models
- Per user per month: the most common (Pipedrive, Salesforce, HubSpot, Sellsy, folk, Attio, Zoho, Atome).
- Flat fee: one price for the company with users included.
- Usage-based: credits used by automations or AI. Attio caps credits at 1,500 on Plus and 10,000 on Pro.
- Tiers: each plan unlocks features. The point to check is which plan brings automations and email sync.
License prices from 8 vendors
Per user per month, taken on November 1, 2026 from each vendor’s page.
| Tool | Entry plan | Plan with automations | Yearly or monthly | Free |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM | €14 | Professional: €23 | €23 yearly, €35 monthly | Yes, 3 users |
| Pipedrive | €14 | Growth: €39 | Yearly; monthly up to 42% more | No |
| folk | €22 | Premium: €43 | €43 yearly, €54 monthly | No |
| Sellsy (Sales) | €29 | Evolution: €49 | €49 yearly, €59 monthly | No |
| Atome | €49 | Included | €49 yearly, €59 monthly | No |
| Attio | €31 | Pro: €74 | €74 yearly, €93 monthly | Yes, 3 seats |
| Salesforce | €25 | Pro Suite: €100 | Yearly | Yes (Free Suite) |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Starter | Professional: $100 | $100 monthly | Yes, 2 users |
Pipedrive’s and Salesforce’s entry plans lack the automations a team soon needs: compare the second column. Only Pipedrive, Sellsy and Atome state their prices exclude VAT.
Mandatory fees
- HubSpot: $1,500 for Professional, $3,500 for Enterprise, paid once.
- Sellsy: none mandatory, but the Elite account manager requires at least 5 licenses and 5 hours of paid services.
- Pipedrive: setup is free above €400 a year of subscription.
The other vendors compared state no mandatory fee on their pricing page.
What a CRM costs for 5, 10 and 25 people
License only, for one year, on each tool’s plan with automations, billed yearly except HubSpot (monthly, the only price published for Professional).
| Tool | 5 people | 10 people | 25 people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM Professional | €1,380 | €2,760 | €6,900 |
| Pipedrive Growth | €2,340 | €4,680 | €11,700 |
| folk Premium | €2,580 | €5,160 | €12,900 |
| Sellsy Sales Evolution | €2,940 | €5,880 | €14,700 |
| Atome | €2,940 | €5,880 | €14,700 |
| Attio Pro | €4,440 | €8,880 | €22,200 |
| Salesforce Pro Suite | €6,000 | €12,000 | €30,000 |
| HubSpot Professional | $7,500 | $13,500 | $31,500 |
HubSpot’s first year includes the $1,500 start-up fee. Redo it yourself: price per user × people × 12.
The costs the pricing page does not show
Setup
- In house: someone on the team configures the tool. The cost is their time, often two to five days for a company starting from a spreadsheet.
- With the vendor: some include it, others charge for it or impose it.
- With a consultant: useful for a complex migration or ERP connections. Ask for a quote in days, not a lump sum: it is the only way to compare.
Migration
The cost is not the export, it is the sorting: remove duplicates, decide which fields to keep, keep the links between contacts, companies, deals and emails. At Atome, the team migrates from Pipedrive, HubSpot, Airtable, Odoo or a spreadsheet; it is often where a switch succeeds or fails.
The team’s time
The line nobody prices. Work it out for your team:
Hours of data entry per person per week × people × 47 weeks × loaded hourly cost.
A cautious assumption: if each salesperson spends one hour a week copying emails and meeting notes into the CRM, a team of ten spends 470 hours a year on it. That is the line a CRM that fills itself from email and meetings brings down.
Tools alongside
A sales-centered CRM leaves other subscriptions in place: team chat, notes, booking, meeting notetaker. List them with their per-user price. An all-in-one tool sometimes costs more in license and less in total.
Leaving
Before signing, check you can export all your data, history included, in a readable format. A CRM you cannot leave is expensive the day you need to.
How to bring the bill down
- Pay yearly once the tool is validated: the gap with monthly runs from 20% to over 40%.
- Pick the plan for your real need: check which plan brings the automations you need.
- Do not license everyone who only reads: look at read-only access or guests.
- Count what you stop paying: a tool that replaces three subscriptions compares with their sum.
- Negotiate at renewal, especially above ten seats.
The first-year budget, in one formula
Yearly license + start-up fees + setup + migration + team time in the first weeks + tools kept.
Run it for two or three tools on your real team, over one year and then three. The difference is often somewhere other than the price per seat.
To choose the tool itself, read How to choose a CRM for a small company in 2027 and our comparison of HubSpot alternatives.
Sources
Prices taken on November 1, 2026 from each vendor’s page: HubSpot, Pipedrive, Sellsy, Zoho CRM, folk, Attio, Salesforce. Prices change: check the vendor’s page before you decide.
