Why seat fees keep climbing
Per-seat pricing ties your software bill to your headcount. Every new tech, rep or front-desk hire adds a monthly fee, and features you need are often locked in higher tiers or paid add-ons. A 10-person team paying $90 per seat plus $228 in add-ons spends $13,536 a year, and adding 5 people adds about $5,400 more.
The industry is moving away from seats
Software companies themselves are dropping pure per-seat pricing. The SaaS CFO reports, citing Growth Unhinged data, that per-seat pricing fell from 21% to 15% of SaaS companies in twelve months, and that about 65% of established vendors studied by Bain added hybrid models. The catch for buyers: many of those new models add usage charges on top of seats, so bills don’t always go down.
Four steps to cut or end seat fees
- Audit seats. List every login and when it was last used. Remove people who left or only need read access.
- Cut add-ons. Check which paid features anyone actually uses each month.
- Run the 3 to 5 year math. Include planned hires. Our cost guide shows how.
- Change the model. Either move to a tool priced by usage, or own your CRM outright so users are free.
What owning your CRM changes
With a custom CRM, you pay once to build it and a small hosting cost to run it. Users are unlimited. You own the code and data, so there is no lock-in and no price increase at renewal. The tradeoff is the upfront cost, usually $10,000 to $25,000 with CRMmage, which makes the most sense for teams that are growing or already paying for many seats.
If your software bill goes up every time you hire, your tools are taxing your growth. Count what you’ll pay over five years before you renew.
Related: Custom CRM vs subscription cost · Custom CRM
