How Much Does a CRM System Cost in the UK?

How much does a CRM system cost in the UK? Ask two comparison guides and you can get two answers for the same plan. One 2026 guide puts HubSpot’s cheapest paid sales plan at £16 a seat, another at £7. HubSpot’s own UK page, checked 11 October 2026, shows £7 a seat as a current offer, with the £18 list price struck through. Both may have been right on the day they were written, because a price guide is only as current as its last check.

So we went back to the source. Every price below comes from the vendor’s own pricing page or price file, checked 11 October 2026, in pounds wherever the vendor publishes pounds. Dollar-only tools are converted at a dated Bank of England rate, and there’s a VAT note for your accountant.

We build LiftUp, a CRM priced flat per organisation in US dollars. That makes it cheaper for some UK teams and dearer for others, and the tables show both.

How much does a CRM system cost in the UK? The short answer

For a small UK business, a CRM system costs between nothing and about £80 per user per month, before VAT. Four mainstream tools have free plans: Zoho Bigin for 1 user, HubSpot and Capsule for 2, and Zoho CRM for 3. Each vendor’s cheapest paid plan costs £5 to £20 per user per month when paid yearly. Mid-tier plans with workflow automation, such as Capsule Growth at £27, sit above that, and professional tiers such as HubSpot Sales Hub Professional at £77 and Salesforce Pro Suite at £80 cost several times as much.

Put in team terms, five users pay roughly £25 to £100 a month on an entry plan, and £385 to £400 on a professional tier. Twenty users pay £100 to £400 a month on entry plans.

CRM system costs in the UK by vendor

This is what each CRM system will cost a UK business per user per month when paid yearly, excluding VAT, checked 11 October 2026. When a vendor also shows a pound price for monthly billing, it’s in the notes.

Vendor and plan	Per user a month	Notes
Zoho Bigin Express	£5	£7 billed monthly; free plan for 1 user
Freshsales Growth	about £6.80 ($9)	Dollar prices only on its page
HubSpot Sales Hub Starter	£7	Shown against a struck-through £18 list price; free plan for 2 users
Zoho CRM Standard	£12	£16 billed monthly; free plan for 3 users
Capsule Starter	£14	Free plan for 2 users
Salesforce Starter Suite	£20	Same price billed monthly or annually
Capsule Growth	£27	Adds workflow automation and multiple pipelines
Freshsales Pro	about £29.49 ($39)	Dollar prices only
HubSpot Sales Hub Professional	£77	List price £85; onboarding fee on top
Salesforce Pro Suite	£80	Billed annually
LiftUp Starter	about £37.05 flat ($49)	One price for up to 5 users, not per user
LiftUp Growth	about £112.66 flat ($149)	One price for up to 20 users, not per user

The HubSpot figure needs a footnote. Its Sales Hub pricing page says Starter “starts at £7” next to a struck-through £18, but it doesn’t say whether £7 is an introductory rate or when it ends. Until HubSpot confirms the renewal price in writing, budget at £18. Pipedrive and monday CRM are missing on purpose: we couldn’t load a pound price from their own pages, and we won’t copy figures from other guides.

What a UK CRM system costs a month for 1, 5, 10 and 20 users

Because per-user bills grow in a straight line, head count shapes what a CRM system will cost in the UK far more than the headline seat price does. Here is each plan’s monthly bill when paid yearly, before VAT. LiftUp’s row also uses its annual price, which is 10 times the monthly one.

Plan	1 user	5 users	10 users	20 users
Bigin Express	£5	£25	£50	£100
Freshsales Growth	£6.80	£34.02	£68.05	£136.10
HubSpot Starter, offer	£7	£35	£70	£140
HubSpot Starter, list	£18	£90	£180	£360
Zoho CRM Standard	£12	£60	£120	£240
Capsule Starter	£14	£70	£140	£280
Salesforce Starter Suite	£20	£100	£200	£400
Capsule Growth	£27	£135	£270	£540
HubSpot Professional	£77	£385	£770	£1,540
Salesforce Pro Suite	£80	£400	£800	£1,600
LiftUp	£30.87 (Starter)	£30.87 (Starter)	£93.88 (Growth)	£93.88 (Growth)

Bear in mind that features differ a lot between rows. HubSpot Professional’s one-off onboarding fee, covered below, isn’t in the monthly figure either.

Dollar prices in pounds: the rate we used

We converted dollar prices at US$1.3226 to £1, the Bank of England spot rate for 8 October 2026 (series XUDLUSS). So a dollar is worth about 75.6p. From 1 to 8 October it ranged from 1.3212 to 1.3279, which is small on one seat but shows up on an annual invoice. Your card issuer applies its own rate and may add a fee, so treat any converted figure as an estimate.

Vendors that publish pound prices don’t convert at the market rate. For example, Salesforce lists Pro Suite at $100 or £80, against £75.61 at spot. Capsule’s Starter is $18 or £14, against £13.61 at spot, and Zoho CRM Standard is $14 or £12, against £10.59. In all three cases the pound price is a little higher than converting the dollar list yourself. In return, your bill doesn’t move with sterling.

VAT on a CRM system in the UK: a note for your accountant

VAT is the part of what a CRM system will cost a UK business that most price tables leave out, because almost every CRM price is quoted without it. Capsule’s terms say it adds UK VAT for customers whose place of business is in the UK, and Zoho’s pricing page says local taxes are charged on top. The standard rate is 20%, but whether that 20% is a real cost depends on how your business is set up:

• VAT-registered: you normally reclaim the VAT on the invoice as input tax. A £14 Capsule seat then costs you £14.
• Not registered: below the £90,000 registration threshold, and without voluntary registration, you can’t reclaim it. So that £14 seat costs £16.80, and a £400 monthly bill becomes £480.
• Supplier outside the UK: when an overseas supplier invoices without UK VAT, a registered business usually accounts for the VAT itself under the reverse charge. HMRC Notice 741A explains the mechanics: you record the tax as both output and input VAT, so if you can reclaim in full, the net cost is nil.

This is general information, not tax advice, and partial exemption or sector rules can change the answer. LiftUp bills UK customers in US dollars by card from outside the UK, and paid checkout asks for a UK VAT number, so ask your accountant how they’d treat that invoice.

Hidden costs in a UK CRM budget

The seat price is only part of the bill, so budget for these four extras as well.

Onboarding fees

HubSpot’s product catalogue says Sales Hub Professional needs onboarding for a one-time fee of $1,500, and Enterprise $3,500. At the Bank of England rate, that’s about £1,134 and £2,646. For a five-seat team on Professional, the first year’s seats come to £4,620, so onboarding adds roughly a quarter on top. The catalogue quotes dollars only, so ask your HubSpot rep for the sterling figure in writing. Our LiftUp vs HubSpot comparison covers the features side by side.

Monthly billing

Paying month by month usually costs more. Zoho CRM Standard is £12 on annual billing and £16 monthly, a third more. Bigin Express goes from £5 to £7, which is 40% more. Similarly, Freshsales says annual billing saves 20%. Salesforce Starter Suite is the exception, at £20 either way. However, annual billing also fixes your seat count.

Seats you can’t hand back

Capsule’s billing help says a monthly bill counts every user, whether active, suspended or pending, times the plan price. On annual billing, removing a user doesn’t lower the current year’s bill; the change only applies at renewal. If staff come and go, read each vendor’s seat-removal rule before you commit to a year.

AI and add-ons

HubSpot includes 500 HubSpot Credits with Starter and 3,000 with Professional. AI features draw on them, and extra credits come in packs or on pay-as-you-go. We worked through a real five-seat bill in HubSpot credits explained. Freshsales lists its Freddy AI Agent at $49 per 100 sessions (about £37.05) and branded documents at $19 per user a month (about £14.37).

Per-user or flat: which CRM system will cost a UK team less?

Per-seat pricing suits a small or stable team, whereas flat pricing pays off when head count grows faster than the budget. Our per-seat vs flat-rate breakdown covers the general maths; here is the UK crossover.

LiftUp has a Free plan for 2 users. Starter is $49 a month (about £37.05) for up to 5 users, 3 products and 1,000 leads a month, with a 0 to 100 lead score and reply deadlines of 4, 12 or 24 hours by score. Growth is $149 a month (about £112.66) for up to 20 users and 10 products. Annual billing costs 10 times the monthly price, and the full list is on our pricing page. Against the per-seat plans above:

• 1 to 3 users: a per-seat plan or a free tier wins. Three users on Bigin Express cost £15 a month, while Zoho CRM’s free plan costs nothing.
• 5 users: it’s close. LiftUp Starter, at £30.87 on annual billing, costs more than Bigin (£25), about the same as Freshsales (£34.02) or HubSpot’s offer (£35), and less than Zoho CRM Standard (£60) or Capsule Starter (£70).
• 6 to 18 users: this is LiftUp’s weakest band. A sixth user moves you to Growth at £93.88 a month, while eight users on HubSpot’s Starter offer cost £56 and on Bigin £40. Bigin stays cheaper up to 18 users.
• 19 to 20 users: Growth’s £93.88 is below every paid plan in the table. At 20 users, Bigin costs £100.

We ran the same exercise in rupees for Indian teams in CRM software prices for 5, 10 and 20 users, and the same rule held: team size decides the winner.

Who LiftUp isn’t for

LiftUp isn’t the right buy if you need invoices in pounds, a UK hosting commitment, or phone, SMS or WhatsApp inside the CRM. Paid plans are sold to UK buyers only as businesses with a VAT number, so a sole trader below the threshold can stay on Free but can’t upgrade. LiftUp also loses on price for teams of 6 to 18 that only need a sales pipeline, where Bigin costs less. Capsule, based in Manchester and priced in pounds, suits a small UK team that wants a simple per-user contract.

How to set your CRM budget

1. Count users at next year’s peak rather than today, because per-seat bills follow head count.
2. Price the plan you’ll need in month six rather than the entry plan. Capsule Starter to Growth, for example, almost doubles the seat price, from £14 to £27.
3. Add the one-off costs: onboarding fees, plus the hours to clean and import your data. Our CRM data clean-up checklist lists the fixes worth doing before an import.
4. For any dollar price, write down the rate and its date, then check the VAT treatment with your accountant.
5. Ask every vendor for the renewal price in writing, especially if you sign on a promotional rate.

Next step

Copy the team-size table into a spreadsheet, change the user counts to your own, and add 20% if you aren’t VAT-registered. You then have a figure for what a CRM system will cost your UK business that your accountant can check. If your team is heading towards 20 people and you want lead scores and reply deadlines without a per-seat bill, book a 30-minute LiftUp demo and we’ll price your team against the plans you’re comparing.