What a Small Team Actually Pays for Software in 2026

By the founder (bio) · Updated 2026-07-31

Everyone asks “how much should we be spending on software?” and gets the same non-answer: a percentage of revenue, borrowed from a consulting report about companies a hundred times your size.

So we did it the other way round. On 30 July 2026 we opened the official pricing page of 23 vendors a small service business actually buys from, recorded the price of the minimum useful business plan, and built complete stacks at four team sizes. Every number below traces to a vendor’s own page on that date.

What this is and isn’t: these are verified list prices composed into representative stacks — not a survey of what businesses report paying, and not our opinion of what you should buy. Vendors change prices without notice; each figure carries the date we checked it. Where a vendor’s US price could not be verified from an official source, we left it out rather than guess.

The essential stack, priced

Six categories almost every small service business ends up paying for: email and office, password manager, backup, CRM, accounting, e-signature.

Monthly totals (annual billing, all prices checked 2026-07-30):

Two things fall out of that table immediately.

Per-person cost falls as you grow, but not by much. The per-seat model means going from 5 to 25 people multiplies your bill 4.3× while headcount goes up 5×. There’s no volume relief coming to save you — the only lever is which tools you carry, not how many seats you buy.

The solo owner pays the worst rate. At one person you’re paying $58/month for a stack whose per-person cost drops to $37 at scale, largely because per-org products (accounting) and minimum-seat floors don’t shrink to fit you. If you’re solo, the free tiers below matter more than any discount.

The same stack, cheapest defensible version

Swap in free tiers and lower-cost equivalents wherever it doesn’t cost you a control that matters:

A solo consultant can run a legitimate stack for roughly $15–20/month (Workspace + Backblaze, everything else on free tiers). A five-person firm cannot — free tiers cap at 2–3 users almost everywhere, which is exactly the point they’re designed to stop working.

Where the money actually leaks

The renewal price is the real price. Several vendors in this sweep advertise a promotional rate on the same page as the standing one. HubSpot’s Starter platform shows $7/seat as a flagged new-customer promotion against a $20/seat list monthly rate — a 2.9× step-up most buyers don’t model. Google Workspace is currently running 50% off for three months. Budget the number you’ll pay in month 13, not month 1.

Monthly billing is a 20–70% tax. Proton Pass Business is $1.99/user annually and $4.99 monthly — 2.5× more for the convenience. Pipedrive Lite: $14 annual, $24 monthly. NordPass: $3.99 vs $5.99. If you’re confident you’ll keep a tool a year, annual billing is the single largest discount available to a small team.

Minimum seats you don’t need. Keeper starts at 5 seats. NordPass Business starts at 5. Proton starts at 3. ThreatDown and ESET both start at 5 devices. A three-person firm buying a five-seat minimum is paying a 67% overhead on that line — worth checking before you commit, and worth choosing a no-minimum vendor when the products are otherwise close.

Per-user vs per-org vs per-device. These don’t scale alike, and mixing them up is how forecasts break. Accounting tends to be per-organization (Zoho Books $15/mo including 3 users; QuickBooks priced by plan with user caps). Backup is often per-computer, not per-person — a team where everyone has a laptop and a desktop pays twice. Security products are frequently per-device too. When you model a hire, add up the per-seat lines only; when you buy hardware, remember the per-device ones move as well.

The plan-rename trap. Between price checks, vendors rename tiers and the plan you researched quietly stops existing. In this sweep alone: Pipedrive’s Essential became Lite and Advanced became Growth; SignWell’s Personal became Light; Malwarebytes’ business line is now ThreatDown; Dashlane’s business SKUs are branded Omnix; ESET US sells PROTECT Entry, not “Essential.” Microsoft 365 Business Standard now bundles Copilot at $23.50/user/mo, which is a different product at a different price from the Standard tier most comparison articles still cite.

How to use these numbers

1. Price your own stack with the cost calculator — it shows your monthly, annual, and per-person cost, plus what the same stack costs at 5, 10, and 25 people, and flags categories where you’re paying twice.
2. Compare against the table above. Materially higher per person? You’re likely carrying overlap or an enterprise tier you don’t use.
3. Check your renewal dates, not your signup prices.
4. Before you hire, re-run the numbers — per-seat lines move, per-org lines usually don’t.

Methodology

All prices read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-07-30, US pricing in USD, annual-billing rate where offered. JS-rendered and bot-blocked pages were verified in a rendered browser session on the official domain. Stack totals are the sum of the listed plans at each team size, with per-org products counted once and per-user products multiplied by headcount. pCloud was excluded because its site would not display US pricing from any access path — we don’t publish a number we couldn’t verify.

We re-verify these prices on a schedule and date every change; corrections go to our corrections page. This page carries no affiliate links.