Love it or hate it, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is an acronym that most business people are privy to. Actually, it’s still a growing market, increasing about 27% year over year, more than almost every other category in computer software.

With that growing market share, we see new players to the space each month. And it gets more and more difficult to choose in the sea of options.

Check out BrainSell’s Top 5 CRM Vendor Guide for a rundown of features sets between these top industry players.

So where does one start? Software pricing of course. Here are some of the top things to consider around software pricing during a CRM hunt, and some of the industry leaders pricing guides as of June 19, 2018.

User Types

Most of the SaaS (Software as a Service) options like SugarCRM and Salesforce.com price by named users only. Which means that each person with a login needs a user license. You can’t share licenses between user names.

Concurrent users, on the other hand, allow companies to make as many login names as they want, but only a set number of users can be active at the same time. This model is great for call centers or companies that have different shift workers. This model is becoming more and more rare, but some companies, including InforCRM still support concurrent user pricing.

Payment Terms

Named users are almost always priced on an annualized basis, but some publishers will allow you to pay month to month or quarterly. Regardless of the payment schedule, most vendors will have customers sign an annual agreement, locking customers into a year or multi-year agreement where they can add users throughout the term, but rarely reduce the number of users. Sometimes multiyear agreements are a great way to get a deal on software when you know you’re in it for the long haul. You don’t always have to pay upfront for each year of the contract, but rather, you contractually opt in to commit to multiple years, but pay annually, monthly or quarterly.

Software Versions

Of course, there can’t just be one version of a system! The top vendors, Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Zoho, they all have at least four versions of their platforms. Take a look at the version differences on each publisher’s site and ask during demos what features from what version they’re showing.

If you’re still at a standstill and just want to talk to someone who’s been in your shoes, call us or email us, seriously! We’re happy to discuss some of the biggest differences between the leading publishers, and maybe help you get a little closer to a decision.

Implementation Costs

That’s the hardest part to nail down…. Sorry, but it’s true! BrainSell has put together some quick start packages for SugarCRM and Salesforce.com. We’ve included the most commonly used development and configuration items to consider, like: data migration from a legacy system, basic set up of users and time zones, custom field creation, report configuration and of course end user and administrator training.

Implementation costs can vary A LOT depending on what integrations and configuration you require. But usually a one-two hours conversation with a CRM expert (we have more than a few here at BrainSell) is enough discovery time to get a ballpark estimate together for implementation.

Top CRM Software Vendors Pricing (at a glance)

We’ll take the googling off your hands for now! Here are pricing lists from all the major publishers as of June 19, 2018.

Salesforce.com Sales Cloud

SugarCRM

Microsoft Dynamics Sales

Zoho CRM

BpmOnline Sales

HubSpot CRM

Pipedrive CRM