Per-user vs per-company CRM pricing — which saves money?
Per-user CRM pricing charges by seat. Per-company pricing charges a flat rate regardless of headcount. For contractors with seasonal hiring or who want everyone (including crew leads and bookkeepers) in the system, per-company usually wins on price and adoption.
Per-user pricing in practice
Per-user pricing is the default for most SaaS — '$49 per user per month.' At one user, it's $49. At five users, $245. At ten users, $490. The math gets ugly fast, especially for contractors with admins, salespeople, and crew leads who all need light access. Per-user also creates a 'who needs access' bottleneck: the spouse handling QuickBooks reconciliation 'doesn't really need a seat,' so she emails screenshots back and forth instead. That's a per-user pricing artifact, not a workflow choice.
Per-company pricing in practice
Per-company pricing is one bill regardless of headcount — usually somewhere in the $99-$300/mo range. The bill doesn't move whether you have two people or twelve. The behavioral effect is significant: you stop gatekeeping access. The bookkeeper gets a login. The crew leads get logins to update job status. The owner's spouse gets a login to handle customer calls. Everyone working on the business is in the system, which means the data is complete.
When per-user is cheaper
Per-user wins in two scenarios. Solo or two-person operations where you'll never have more than two seats. And teams where most people genuinely don't need access — say, a 20-person operation where only 3 people touch the CRM and the rest are crew who work off printed job sheets. In those cases, the per-user math beats the per-company flat rate. But once you cross 4-5 active users, per-company is almost always cheaper.
The seasonal contractor problem
Per-user pricing punishes seasonal businesses. You hire two extra sales reps for spring rush. Your CRM bill goes up by $100. You let them go in fall. Your bill goes back down. Unless your vendor offers easy mid-month seat adjustment, you end up either over-paying in slow months or under-staffing in busy ones. Per-company pricing makes this a non-issue. Hire whoever, fire whoever, the bill stays flat.
Bottom line
Per-user pricing favors very small or very gated operations. Per-company pricing favors contractors who want their whole team in the system without thinking about seat counts.