Licences are the visible part of the bill. The full implementation budget: analysis, configuration, migration, integrations, training and maintenance.
The question “what does a CRM cost” usually means the licences. That’s a framing error: licences are one of six budget lines, and rarely the largest. Below is the full structure — without amounts, because those depend on scale, but with the proportions we see in projects.
The six budget lines
- Requirements analysis and audit — workshops, process mapping, scope documentation. The cheapest stage, and the only one whose omission guarantees overpaying for all the others.
- Licences — the only line that shows up on a recurring invoice, which is why it absorbs all the negotiation attention.
- Configuration and development — fitting the platform to the processes: fields, automations, permissions, reports. Grows with the number of exceptions to the standard.
- Data migration — the most commonly underestimated line, because its cost depends on the quality of the old data, which you only discover along the way.
- Training and adoption — not a one-off session, but working with the team until the system becomes the default place of work.
- HyperCare and maintenance — post-launch care and ongoing development. Left out of comparison quotes because it spoils the low price.
The most expensive implementation is the one you have to do twice.
Where budgets break
Not on licences. They break on underestimated migration, on “small changes” to the configuration requested after go-live, and on missing care in the first weeks — precisely the lines easiest to cut from a quote to win a price comparison.
How to read quotes
A quote without a migration estimate and without a defined HyperCare period is not cheaper — it is incomplete. When comparing vendors, reduce every quote to these six lines. Gaps in the table say more than the total at the bottom.