Best CRM for a small business: what HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho and monday charge per user, and what a CRM of your own costs
Which is the best CRM software for a small business depends on your process, and every ranking will tell you that. What the rankings rarely print next to the feature list is the bill. The popular CRMs charge per person per month, the entry plans start low, and the price climbs once you want automation, reports or more than a handful of users. Below are the numbers from the vendors' own pages, a year of arithmetic for three and five people, and the other model: one price for a CRM of your own, with no fee per user.
What the popular CRMs charge per person
We read the prices of five vendors on 31 October 2026: from their pricing pages, and for Pipedrive from its own article. Each shows a price per person per month, but the currency, the billing period and the tax treatment differ, which is why the last column matters.
| CRM | Entry plan | A higher plan | What the page says about billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Free for up to 2 users; Starter from $7 per seat | Professional from $90 per seat, plus a required one-time onboarding fee | Dollars (the page may show euros in Europe), subject to tax; the Starter discount is for new customers only |
| Pipedrive | Lite, $14 per seat | Ultimate, $79 per seat | Per seat per month, billed annually |
| Zoho CRM | Free for 3 users; Standard, €14 per user | Professional, €23 per user | Euros, billed annually; monthly billing costs more |
| monday CRM | Basic, €12 per seat, minimum 3 seats | Pro, €28 per seat | Euros, yearly billing; the page says prices do not include tax |
| Salesforce | Starter Suite, €25 per user | Pro Suite, €100 per user | Euros; Starter monthly or annually, Pro Suite annually |
A few cells need a footnote. HubSpot shows $7 for Starter next to a list price of $20, ties that price to paying a year up front, charges more month to month, and says the limited-time discount is for new customers only, so ask what year two looks like. Its Professional plan also carries a one-time onboarding fee of $1,500, which the page calls required and does not include in the seat price. Pipedrive pricing is quoted from its own article, which says its prices are correct as of July 2026, because the pricing page itself refused to open for us. Salesforce says its page is for information only and subject to change.
What a year costs for three and for five people
Seats times price times twelve months is the only comparison that survives contact with an invoice. The table uses the annual-billing price of each entry plan, then a higher plan for five people. These totals are our arithmetic from the published per-person prices, not figures any vendor prints, and they leave out tax, add-ons and onboarding fees.
| CRM | Entry plan, a year | A higher plan, five people |
|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM | Standard: €504 for three people, €840 for five | Professional: €1,380 a year |
| monday CRM | Basic: €432 for three people, €720 for five | Pro: €1,680 a year |
| Pipedrive | Lite: $504 for three people, $840 for five | Ultimate: $4,740 a year |
| Salesforce | Starter Suite: €900 for three people, €1,500 for five | Pro Suite: €6,000 a year |
Two things stand out. The entry plans cost less than most people expect: five seats of Zoho Standard, monday Basic or Pipedrive Lite stay under a thousand a year. The step up is where the money goes: five people on Salesforce's Pro Suite pay four times what they pay on Starter Suite, and Pipedrive's top plan costs more than five times Lite.
Billing period moves the line too. Zoho CRM Standard costs €20 per user per month when you pay monthly, against the €14 in the first table. monday Basic goes from €12 on a yearly plan to €18 month to month. Paying monthly keeps the exit open, and you pay for that option every month.
What the cheap plan leaves out
Entry plans are not stripped to uselessness, but they have walls, and the wall is where the next tier begins. monday Basic stops at 1,000 active contacts and deals, five columns per board and 20 quotes and invoices a month. Zoho's free plan stops at three users and HubSpot's at two. Pipedrive says all four of its plans share the core pipeline, contacts and activity tools, while AI features, automation limits and reporting grow with the tier. Zoho's Standard plan already lists workflows and assignment rules, follow-up cadences, reports and dashboards, and sales forecasting.
When you pick CRM tools for a small business, test them against your first ninety days, not the feature table. How many contacts and deals will be open at once? Who must see which request? Is an automatic reminder a nice extra, or the whole reason you are buying? If it is the reason, price the plan that has it.
Tax is the other trap. monday states that its prices do not include tax, HubSpot says its prices are subject to applicable tax and Zoho says local taxes are charged in addition, so the invoice can be higher than the table.
The other model: one price and no fee per seat
A subscription is cheap in month one and never ends. A CRM of your own flips that. Our Mini-CRM costs from €480, paid once, and it is built around your process. Nobody charges per user: the server is registered in your name and you pay for it directly, and maintenance is optional. Five Zoho Standard seats on annual billing come to €2,520 over three years by our arithmetic, while the Mini-CRM has no subscription at all.
That comparison is not fair in either direction. With a subscription you get the hosting, the upgrades and a vendor that keeps building the product. The Mini-CRM is exactly as big as we scoped it, and anything beyond the scope is priced in writing before we start.
So here is where each wins. Take the subscription when you have one or two people, a standard sales process and a free plan that fits. Start there, push two weeks of real requests through it, and pay only when you hit a wall. We do not set up other vendors' CRMs, and for the ones above you do not need us. Build your own when there are five or more users, when the work is not a sales pipeline at all, or when you want your data and your exit in your hands from day one.
Take a dental practice. It does not chase deals, it runs chairs, doctors and reminders. The CRM below is a work from our portfolio for a practice in Cologne, with an interface in German. It plans the day per chair, sends reminders 24 and 2 hours before a visit and marks each as confirmed, moved or no reply. When a patient writes back "can I come on Thursday afternoon?", the AI offers two free slots and the front desk confirms. It also lists patients due for a professional cleaning six months on. Only contact details and appointments live in it; clinical records stay in a separate system.
What to do today
- Count the people who will open the CRM every day. A manager who looks at it once a week is not a seat.
- Write down three things you need in the first ninety days, for example every request in one place, a reminder when nobody has answered, and one number each week. Check the entry plan against that list.
- Open the pricing pages in the sources below, switch between yearly and monthly billing, and write both totals for your headcount, with tax added where the page says it is extra.
- Pick one free plan, Zoho for three users or HubSpot for two, and run two weeks of real requests through it, not sample data.
- Before you pay anyone, find the export button and export your customers once. If you cannot get them out as a spreadsheet, you are renting your own customer list.
If you want, we'll do it for you
A CRM on our engine, built around your process: from €480, launch in 2–4 weeks, payment 50/50 with the second half after acceptance. We can keep the price low because our experienced specialists work faster with AI tools. In the price:
- a call about how a request reaches payment in your business, and a pipeline with the stages and fields that fit it;
- your website form and WhatsApp connected, so every request appears as a card with contact, source, history, notes, an owner and a next task;
- a WhatsApp message to you and your managers about every new request, plus roles and access;
- AI that answers a new request, with a label that it is AI, and gives the manager a short summary (which AI features to switch on is decided at the review);
- customers and deals moved from Excel or Google Sheets and checked with you before launch;
- message templates written by us and sent to you for review, and training for your managers;
- export to a spreadsheet at any time, with no subscription and no fee per user;
- free revisions until acceptance and free bug fixes for six months after launch.
Prices exclude VAT. See what the custom CRM includes.
Sources
Checked on 31 October 2026:
- HubSpot Smart CRM pricing: free plan, Starter price, tax note.
- HubSpot Sales Hub pricing: Professional price and onboarding fee.
- Pipedrive, the best CRM software for your team, budget and stage: the vendor's own article with its price range, which states its prices are correct as of July 2026; the pricing page itself did not open.
- Zoho CRM pricing: free plan, Standard and Professional prices, monthly and annual.
- monday CRM pricing: Basic, Standard and Pro prices, plan limits, tax note.
- Salesforce Sales Cloud pricing for the EU: Starter Suite and Pro Suite prices.