CRM & Business Systems
How much does a bespoke CRM cost in the UK?
The short answer
A bespoke CRM in the UK typically costs £15,000 to £45,000 to design and build, with most small and mid-sized companies landing around £22,000 to £30,000. Simple pipeline-and-contact systems start near £8,000; multi-department platforms with billing, portals and automation run to £60,000 or more. After launch, budget roughly 15–20% of the build cost per year for hosting, support and improvements.
Indicative price ranges
Entry
£8,000 – £15,000
One team, one pipeline. Contacts, deals, stages, notes, tasks, email capture from the website and a basic reporting dashboard. Replaces a spreadsheet and a shared inbox.
Typical
£15,000 – £45,000
Multiple teams and pipelines, custom fields per record type, automated follow-up sequences, document generation, role-based permissions, integrations with accounting and email, and proper reporting.
Complex
£45,000 – £90,000+
A full operating system: customer or member portals, payments and subscriptions, inventory or scheduling, mobile admin, API integrations with third-party platforms, and bespoke workflow engines.
These are indicative UK ranges based on projects we have actually delivered. Scope drives the number, not the sales conversation — we quote a fixed price after a scoping session, and we will tell you if an off-the-shelf tool is the cheaper answer.
Typical timescales
- 1–2 weeks
Discovery and process mapping
We sit with the people who actually do the work and map how a lead becomes an invoice today.
- 2–3 weeks
Design and data model
Screens, record structure, permissions and the reports leadership needs on day one.
- 6–12 weeks
Build
Delivered in working increments so you use it before it is finished.
- 2–3 weeks
Migration, training and launch
Data brought across, team trained, old system run in parallel until nobody misses it.
Who this suits
- Businesses whose process genuinely does not fit a standard sales pipeline — memberships, bookings, multi-stage projects, compliance-heavy work.
- Teams paying for three or four SaaS tools that still do not talk to each other.
- Companies where per-seat licensing has become the single biggest software line item.
- Organisations that need customer or member-facing portals as well as internal screens.
Who it does not suit
- A standard B2B sales team of under ten people — HubSpot or Pipedrive will do the job cheaper and faster.
- Businesses with no documented process. Automating chaos just produces faster chaos.
- Anyone who needs it live in three weeks.
- Companies without a named internal owner for the system after launch.
What actually drives the cost
Number of user roles
Every distinct permission set is a separate set of screens, rules and test cases.
Integrations
Xero, Sage, Outlook, Companies House, payment providers and legacy databases each add days, and legacy systems add the most.
Data migration
Clean data in one system is a day. Fifteen years of spreadsheets with inconsistent formats is weeks.
Customer-facing portals
A portal effectively doubles the surface area — it needs its own auth, design and security review.
Automation depth
Reminders are cheap. Conditional multi-branch workflows with approvals are not.
Why the range is so wide
"CRM" describes a £30-a-month contact list and a £90,000 operating platform equally well, which is why quotes vary so much. The honest way to narrow it is to describe what has to happen automatically. A system that stores contacts is cheap. A system that decides who chases what, generates the paperwork, takes payment and tells the director where the month landed is not.
We price against outcomes rather than screen counts. If a workflow saves a person two days a month, it earns its place. If it exists because "it would be nice to see", it usually gets cut in scoping — that is the fastest way to bring a number down.
What the annual cost looks like
Beyond the build, expect:
- Hosting and infrastructure — usually £40–£300 per month depending on data volume and uptime requirements.
- Support and maintenance — around 15–20% of build cost per year covers security patching, backups, small changes and someone to call.
- No per-seat licence. This is the part that flips the maths. Adding your fortieth user costs nothing.
A 25-person team on a mid-tier commercial CRM at £70 per user per month spends £21,000 a year, every year, and still owns nothing. A £28,000 bespoke build with £5,000 a year of support has usually paid for itself somewhere in year two — and the gap widens every year after that.
How to get an accurate number quickly
Bring three things to a scoping call: a description of your current process end to end, a list of the tools you pay for today, and the reports your leadership team wishes they had. That is enough for us to put a fixed price and a delivery date in writing.
If, during that call, it becomes clear a configured off-the-shelf CRM will serve you better, we will say so. We would rather lose a build than sell a business a system it did not need.
Proof
Where we have done this
Common questions
Is a bespoke CRM cheaper than HubSpot or Salesforce long term?
Usually yes, once you pass roughly 15–20 users or need heavy customisation. Bespoke has a higher upfront cost and no per-seat licence, so the crossover typically falls in year two or three. Below ten users, off-the-shelf is almost always cheaper.
Can we build it in stages to spread the cost?
Yes, and we recommend it. We usually deliver the core pipeline and data model first so the team is live within a few weeks, then add automation, portals and reporting in later phases against a fixed price per phase.
Who owns the code?
You do. On completion the codebase, database and hosting accounts are yours. There is no lock-in and no licence that stops you moving to another developer.
What ongoing costs should we budget for?
Hosting from £40 to £300 a month depending on scale, plus support and improvement work at roughly 15–20% of the build cost annually. There are no per-user fees.
How long before the team is actually using it?
Most clients are working in the new system 8–12 weeks after kick-off, with the first usable increment in their hands well before that.