Cost guide
What Salesforce really costs, and when a custom CRM is the cheaper path
The seat price is the smallest part of the answer. This worksheet uses your own contract and your own numbers to compare three years of Salesforce with three years of a CRM you own.
Salesforce pricing is a list. Your Salesforce cost is a contract.
Salesforce publishes list prices per user per month for each edition on its pricing page. Those prices change, and few companies pay exactly the list. So we do not repeat them here. Open the pricing page for today's list, then open your own order form. The order form is the number that matters.
The seat price is where most people stop. The real Salesforce cost includes everything your company pays because Salesforce is the system of record. Some of that goes to Salesforce. A lot of it goes to other people.
This guide is a worksheet. It uses your numbers. We do not publish a price range for custom work, and nothing here promises that a custom CRM will cost you less. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it clearly does not, and the worksheet will show you that too.
What Salesforce really costs: the eight lines
Make a spreadsheet with one row per line and three columns, one for each of the next three years. Fill it in from invoices, not from memory.
1. Licences
Every edition, every seat, every user type. Include the seats held by people who log in once a month. Include sandboxes. Write down the renewal date and any price increase your contract allows at renewal.
2. Add-ons
Products billed beside the core licence. Quoting, marketing, analytics, extra storage, extra API calls, a higher support plan. Each one has its own line on the order form.
3. AI and usage charges
Anything billed by consumption: credits, conversations, requests. These are hard to forecast. Use last quarter's actual usage and say what you assumed about growth.
4. Installed packages
Third-party apps from the marketplace. Document generation, e-signature, data cleaning, mapping, backup. Many are priced per seat too, so they grow when headcount grows.
5. Admin and consultant time
The salary share of anyone who administers Salesforce. The monthly retainer or hourly bills from an implementation partner. If every new field is a ticket, this line is larger than you expect.
6. Integrations
Middleware subscriptions. The cost to keep the ERP, accounting and marketing syncs working. The hours someone spends every month uploading a spreadsheet by hand.
7. Work done beside the CRM
This one is never on an invoice. If reps keep a second spreadsheet for samples, quotes or reorders, count the hours. Be honest and be conservative. A rough number you can defend is better than a big one you cannot.
8. Planned changes
Projects you already know you need in the next three years. A new quoting process. A partner portal. A new business unit. Get a quote for doing each one in Salesforce. They belong in the comparison because you would pay for them either way.
How much does a custom CRM cost: what drives it
A custom CRM has no seat price. The cost comes from scope, and scope comes from a short list of things. Anyone who quotes you before asking about these is guessing.
- Workflows. How many, and how many rules and exceptions each one has. One clear workflow is a small project. Ten is a large one.
- Roles and permissions. Every role that sees different data adds screens and tests.
- Integrations. Each connected system is its own piece of work, including what happens when a sync fails. This is often the largest driver.
- Data migration. How much history has to come over, and how clean it is. Our migration inventory lists what to count.
- Reports. The reports people open, rebuilt and checked against the old numbers.
- Portals. Whether customers or partners log in.
- Foundation. Starting from an open-source CRM can cut the build. It also brings a licence and an upgrade path that you need to read first.
Ask for a fixed scope and a fixed quote for one workflow first. A pilot gives you a real number to put in the worksheet. An estimate for the whole system, made before anyone has mapped your process, does not.
Custom CRM vs Salesforce: the three-year worksheet
The custom side has its own eight lines. People forget half of them, which is how a custom project ends up looking cheaper on paper than it is.
| Line | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Build | The quoted cost of the pilot, then of each later stage |
| Migration | Inventory, test loads, reconciliation and cutover |
| Parallel running | Salesforce licences you still pay while both systems run |
| Retained licences | Any Salesforce or other seats you keep afterwards, for example for marketing |
| Hosting and services | Servers, database, backups, email sending, monitoring |
| Maintenance and support | Upgrades, security patches, fixes and someone who answers when it breaks |
| Changes | A yearly budget for new features. It will not be zero |
| AI usage | Model and API charges, if AI is part of a workflow |
Then add your own time. A custom project needs a person on your side who makes decisions every week. Put their hours in.
Now put the two totals side by side, year by year.
| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay on Salesforce (eight lines) | |||
| Custom CRM (eight lines plus your time) |
Year 1 almost always favours staying. You pay for the build and you still pay for Salesforce during the pilot and the parallel period. The question is what years 2 and 3 look like, and how sure you are of each number. Mark every cell as an invoice, a quote or a guess. If the custom total only wins on guesses, it has not won yet.
When a custom CRM is the cheaper path
We cannot tell you the answer without your numbers. We can tell you what the worksheet tends to look like when custom comes out ahead.
- You have many seats and most users touch a small part of the product.
- Add-ons, packages and consultant time together are larger than the licence line.
- Headcount is growing, so a per-seat bill grows with it.
- Your process is specific to your business and stable enough to describe.
- You have, or can pay for, someone to maintain software.
When staying on Salesforce is cheaper
- You have few seats.
- You use a wide range of standard features as they come.
- Your process still changes every quarter.
- You depend on marketplace apps that would each need a replacement.
- Nobody on your side would own a custom system after handoff.
If that second list sounds like you, the cheaper move is usually to clean up what you have. Remove unused seats, drop add-ons nobody opens, and renegotiate at renewal with the worksheet in hand.
Questions buyers ask about cost
How much does Salesforce cost per user?
It depends on the edition, and the list prices are on Salesforce's own pricing page. Your cost per user is different. Divide the total of your eight lines by the number of people who use the CRM every week. That figure is the one to compare.
How much does a custom CRM cost to build?
It depends on workflows, integrations, migration and roles. We do not publish a range, because a range without your scope would be a guess. Ask any builder for a fixed quote on one mapped workflow, and use that.
Is a custom CRM cheaper than Salesforce over three years?
Sometimes. It is more likely with many seats, heavy add-on spend and a stable process. It is unlikely for a small team using standard features. Fill in both sides and mark which numbers are guesses.
What are the hidden costs of a custom CRM?
Maintenance, hosting, security updates, the licences you keep during parallel running, and your own people's time. They are only hidden if nobody writes them down. Get maintenance terms in writing before any build starts.
Using the worksheet with us, or without us
Take this to your renewal conversation whatever you decide. If you want a quote for the custom side, we map one workflow first and give you a fixed scope for a pilot. You keep the map and the worksheet.