SmallTeamStack

Software stack for a small nonprofit

Three illustrative stacks, priced from rates read off each vendor's own page. At five people they run from $55 to $221.95 a month — and the expensive one is not the best one.

Typically 3–15 people · figures computed from the pricing tracker at build time · newest check

What shapes this business's software

Grant-funded, so every recurring cost has to be defensible to somebody. Donor records matter as much as client records do elsewhere, and volunteer turnover makes offboarding a routine event rather than a rare one.

The three stacks at a glance

Stack1351025
Lean $11$33$55$110$275
Practical $33.83$69.83$105.83$195.83$465.83
Feature-rich $113.95$155.95$221.95$386.95$857

Monthly, at the annual-billing rate, for the whole team.

Lean — $55/month at five people

The least you can pay and still run the business properly. Free tiers where they genuinely work.

Covered free:

  • Accounting (Wave free tier)
  • Projects (ClickUp free — unlimited members, which suits volunteers)
  • Forms (Google Forms)

Deliberately not included at this size:

  • A paid CRM. Donor management has its own nonprofit-specific vendors, and a sales CRM fits it awkwardly.
  • Per-seat tools for volunteers, who come and go — this is the single biggest avoidable cost in a nonprofit stack.

Per person: $11/month · $660 a year for five people

Practical — $105.83/month at five people

What most teams this size actually end up on, once free tiers stop fitting.

Deliberately not included at this size:

  • Paid storage and scheduling, both of which the suite covers adequately at this size.

Per person: $21.17/month · $1,269.96 a year for five people

Feature-rich — $221.95/month at five people

More capability, and more cost. Not an upgrade — a different trade, and often the wrong one at this size.

Deliberately not included at this size:

  • Anything that charges per volunteer. Pick tools that cap on usage rather than on people.

Per person: $44.39/month · $2,663.40 a year for five people

The thing generic stack advice misses here

Several vendors publish nonprofit pricing, including Google and Microsoft, and the discounts can be substantial. We have NOT verified those rates — every figure on this page is the standard commercial price, so treat it as a ceiling rather than a quote. Ask each vendor directly before budgeting, and check what proof of status they want, because that is usually what delays it.

What this page is not

A recommendation. We have not run most of these products in a lab, and two businesses of the same type and size can have genuinely different right answers — the variable that matters most is how your team actually works, which no table can see. These are priced illustrations, good for checking whether your bill is in a sane range and for seeing what a tier deliberately leaves out.

To price what you actually pay for rather than an illustration, the stack auditor takes your real list and flags overlap, seat-minimum waste and what happens when somebody leaves. If your bill is well above the feature-rich row, the cause is usually paying twice for a capability you already own rather than one expensive mistake.

Other business types

Tell me when these prices change

Every figure on this page is recomputed when a tracked rate moves. Subscribers hear what changed, with the date and the source.