Turn seats, years and an illustrative per-seat price range into a low and high three-year cost, including one-time setup, migration and training.
Use this estimator before you talk to vendors, to set a realistic budget range, or after you have quotes, to check that the total makes sense. It answers one question: what could this CRM cost over the next three years, all in?
How to fill it in. Count the people who need a paid seat (sales reps, owner, office manager who books jobs) and multiply by the years you are comparing: 8 seats × 3 years = 24 seat-years. Pick a plan type from the menu or type your own yearly per-seat range from the vendor's price page. Put everything that is not a per-seat subscription in the fixed field: setup or onboarding packages, data migration, integration work, training, internal staff time, and marketing-contact or add-on charges for the whole period.
Formula. Low estimate = seat-years × low price per seat-year + fixed costs. High estimate = seat-years × high price per seat-year + fixed costs.
Worked example (illustrative). 8 seats for 3 years is 24 seat-years. At an illustrative $300 to $1,200 per seat per year, subscriptions come to $7,200 to $28,800. Add $8,000 of one-time and add-on costs and the three-year range is $15,200 to $36,800, before GST/HST or QST.
Limits. The menu ranges are placeholders to show the arithmetic, not survey data or any vendor's price. The tool does not apply renewal increases, exchange-rate moves or sales tax; use the renewal and FX buffer calculator and the three-year total cost guide for those.
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