Software Pricing — 2026 Edition

Software pricing: what six SaaS platforms
actually cost.

Compare the annual amount that leaves your account — after seat minimums, billing terms, onboarding and add-ons — using figures checked against each provider's official pages.

Compare annual costs · Calculate by team size · Monthly vs annual · Hidden year-one costs

6Platforms
23Articles
09 / 01Last verified
Covered HubSpotSemrushmonday.comAsanaShopifySquarespace
Where a link earns us a referral fee, we say so on the same page. We are a Shopify Affiliate and may receive compensation if you sign up. Read the full disclosure

Selection Criteria

Three tests before anything is recommended

Not brand recognition — distance to payback.

01

Payback

Can the monthly fee be justified in hours saved or revenue added? If the arithmetic cannot be written down, the tool does not make the list.

02

Governance

Role permissions, audit logs, SSO, data residency. Anything used by a team has to survive the questions a serious buyer asks.

03

Time to adoption

How long until the team actually uses it. Free tiers, templates and localization weigh heavily here.

Editor's picks

Six platforms, chosen by use case

Filter by category. Published prices, seat rules, contract terms and product limits are sourced from the vendors. Break-even points, payback thresholds and fit judgments are SaaS COMPASS models or editorial views; we show the assumptions and arithmetic behind them.

Editor's pick

HubSpot

CRM & Revenue Platform

Start on the free CRM and consolidate sales, marketing and service onto one customer record. The fastest route out of deal-tracking that lives in one person's head.

Free tier SSO Localized UI
Not for you if

You run fewer than a handful of open deals at a time — and note the jump from Starter to Professional is steep ($1,300/mo), so budget for staying on Starter a while.

Starter from $7 / seat (promo) · $20 regular
Visit official site→ Read the analysis

Free plan available

Semrush

SEO & Market Intelligence

See which keywords and paid campaigns actually bring your competitors traffic. Turns web spend from an act of faith into a budget line you can defend.

Competitor data Ad research AI visibility
Not for you if

Nobody on the team has an hour a month to read the reports. The license only pays for itself if someone acts on what it shows.

SEO$139 / mo
Visit official site→ Read the analysis

Free trial

monday.com

Work & Project Management

Replaces the shared spreadsheet with boards anyone can read at a glance. Its real value is showing, without a status meeting, exactly where work is stuck.

Intuitive UI Automations Localized UI
Not for you if

With a three-seat minimum, one or two people pay for unused seats. Where the arithmetic starts to work depends on the plan and the hours it saves — run the numbers for your headcount →

Basic · annualfrom $9 / seat
Visit official site→ Read the analysis

3-seat minimum

Asana

Tasks & Workflow

Its distinguishing feature is tying daily tasks to stated goals — so leadership can see whether the strategy has reached the people executing it.

Goal tracking Free tier Integrations
Not for you if

What you actually need is a customer database. Asana tracks work, not customers — for pipeline and contact history, look at a CRM instead.

Starter · annualfrom $10.99 / seat
Visit official site→ Read the analysis

Free for individuals

Shopify

Commerce & Cross-border

Multi-currency, multi-language and local payment methods come as standard, so a new market is a configuration decision rather than a development project.

Multi-currency Cross-border App ecosystem
Not for you if

At low volume the fixed monthly fee and payment terms dominate. The break-even against a marketplace depends on order value, payment method, marketplace fees and ad spend — not order count alone. Work it out for your own numbers →

Basic · annualfrom $29 / mo
Visit official site→ Read the analysis

Trial available

Squarespace

Corporate Site & Landing Pages

The floor on design quality is unusually high, which means a credible corporate presence without an agency. Well suited to recruitment and investor-facing sites.

Premium templates Custom domain SSL
Not for you if

You need deep integrations, membership areas or a properly multilingual site. The ceiling arrives early once requirements get specific.

Basic · annualfrom $19 / mo
Visit official site→ Read the analysis

14-day trial

Side by side

Software pricing and actual annual cost

The annual entry cost turns the displayed monthly rate into the minimum first invoice before tax. The next column shows what can make the real bill higher.

Service Primary use Entry price Annual entry cost What can raise the bill Free tier SSO Official
HubSpot CRM, sales, marketing $7 / seat, billed annually (promo) · $10 monthly (promo) · $20 regular $84 / seat promo · $240 regular Promotional renewal, contact tiers, credits; required onboarding on Professional+ 2 usersProfessional up Visit
Semrush SEO, competitor data $139 / mo (annual: $117.33/mo equivalent) $1,407.96 / included user Additional users and report, lead-generation or other add-ons Free accountGuru up Visit
monday.com Work management $9 / seat, annual (min 3) $324 / 3-seat minimum Seat-block rounding and paid AI credits above the included allowance 2 seatsEnterprise only Visit
Asana Tasks and goals $10.99 / seat, annual $131.88 / paid seat Seat-block rounding above 5 users; internal read-only users take paid seats 2 usersEnterprise only Visit
Shopify Commerce, cross-border $29 / mo annual ($39 monthly) $348 / store Card and third-party payment fees, apps and transaction volume Trial onlyPlus only Visit
Squarespace Websites, landing pages $19 / mo $228 / site A separate plan for each site, domain renewal and commerce fees where applicable Trial onlyPremium up Visit

Entry prices were rechecked against all six providers' official US pricing pages on 17 September 2026. Annual entry cost is SaaS COMPASS arithmetic: published annual-billing monthly rate × minimum billable seats or sites × 12, excluding tax and the cost drivers named beside it. It is not a quote. The SSO column shows the lowest plan on which single sign-on is offered — for HubSpot that is any Hub at Professional, at $90 per seat per month plus a mandatory $1,500 onboarding fee. HubSpot Starter's $7 annual and $10 monthly rates are limited-time offers for new customers; the regular price is $20/seat/mo. Verify the live offer before checkout. Buying from Japan? See the Japanese edition for yen pricing, consumption tax and card fees →

Insights

Reading for the decision itself

Twenty-four pieces built from vendor pricing pages, help centers and terms of service, with the arithmetic shown so you can re-run it on your own numbers.

Pricing and contracts

11 articlesAll of pricing and contracts →
Pricing and contracts 03

Semrush at $139 a month: how many people does that cover?

The advertised $139 covers one person, and every user after that adds a seat fee that reorders the plan comparison.

Read → Pricing and contracts 04

Shopify plan choice does not turn on processing rates until monthly volume passes $25,000

Without outside payment providers the crossover from Basic to Grow sits at $25,000 a month; add them to the mix and it falls as far as $5,000.

Read → Pricing and contracts 07

Is the free trial actually free

Only Semrush asks for a card at sign-up. The other five issue no invoice, but HubSpot and Squarespace state that trial content may be permanently deleted when it ends.

Read → Pricing and contracts 08

Annual or monthly billing — which one to pick

Annual billing needs 8.92 to 10.80 months before it beats monthly. Shopify breaks even earliest of the 5 at 8.92 months; our editorial default for a first contract is monthly.

Read → Pricing and contracts 09

A “seat” does not mean the same thing at any two vendors

The same 10 people are billed as 4, 5 or 10 seats and $720 to $3,588 a year, and what creates the gap is the definition of a seat rather than any difference in features.

Read → Pricing and contracts 10

Budgeting from the list price times twelve leaves you short

Year one runs from 1.00x to 5.18x the list price times twelve. What moves it is not the plan price but a required onboarding fee, contact and user overages, seats sold in blocks, and per-transaction fees.

Read → Pricing and contracts 18

What happens if the price goes up after you sign?

Of the 5 vendors whose terms we read clause by clause, only HubSpot and Semrush have wording that stops a price rise part-way through the contract term.

Read → Pricing and contracts 19

How much are you paying for accounts nobody uses?

Deactivating a user does not lower the bill. When it does fall differs by vendor — invoice, credit and renewal seat count are 3 separate things — and we suggest auditing 45 to 60 days before renewal.

Read → Pricing and contracts 20

How many months until that SaaS pays for itself?

Put the cost into 3 years and 8 lines and the benefit into 2. The 6 / 12 / 24-month lines the result is read against are a SaaS COMPASS model, not a vendor or accounting standard. The introductory price is the assumption that breaks first.

Read → Pricing and contracts 22

How much does a response-time guarantee cost?

Only 2 of the 5 vendors write a response time into a contract document, and both keep it to Enterprise plans whose price is not published.

Read → Pricing and contracts 24

Hosting at $2.99 a month: what does year two actually cost?

The advertised rate needs up to 48 months paid upfront, and when the term ends the same plan renews at roughly 2 to nearly 4 times that rate.

Read →

Choosing a platform

4 articlesAll of choosing a platform →
Choosing a platform 01

Where the free plans stop

All three free plans stop at two people, and the real decision is made by the seat blocks that kick in at the fourth and sixth person.

Read → Choosing a platform 02

HubSpot or monday.com: which should you choose

The dividing line is not headcount but contact volume: at contact 1,001, three HubSpot seats go from $252 to $852 a year and monday CRM Basic becomes the cheaper choice.

Read → Choosing a platform 16

Do you really need a CRM?

Judge by 4 symptoms rather than by a customer count: no clear owner, duplicate records, follow-up dates that vanish, and changes you cannot trace.

Read → Choosing a platform 17

monday.com or Asana: which should you choose?

At 20 seats the like-for-like gap is $242 a year, about one month. What decides it is the seat steps — 4 seats exist on Asana and not on monday.com — and what the cheapest paid plan leaves out.

Read →

Operations and security

8 articlesAll of operations and security →
Operations and security 05

What does SSO actually cost?

The cheapest published route is $90 per seat per month, but a mandatory $1,500 onboarding fee brings the first year to $2,580 for a single seat.

Read → Operations and security 06

What happens to your data when you cancel

Only Shopify and HubSpot state how long data survives cancellation, which makes the export a job for while the contract is still live.

Read → Operations and security 12

Will your automation run count be enough?

Only monday.com stops you on monthly run count, and because 1 run can spend several actions, its 250 runs a month cover about 42 pieces of work.

Read → Operations and security 13

On which plan does support stop being a help article?

Only 2 of the 6 put a live channel on every plan, and only 2 state anywhere how long you wait for a reply.

Read → Operations and security 14

Who helps you when something breaks

Only 2 of the 5 vendors put a response time in numbers, and only on their top plans.

Read → Operations and security 15

Which country will your customer data sit in?

All 4 put a US sign-up in the United States. HubSpot moves regions free once you pay, Asana moves for a price, monday.com never moves an account at all.

Read → Operations and security 21

How many times a month will your automations run, before you sign?

With last month's actual volumes, 7 steps give you the monthly figure, but of the 4 vendors only monday.com lets you check afterwards whether that figure was right.

Read → Operations and security 23

What do you hand over when a client asks how you manage information

SOC 3, the URL of the DPA and the storage-location display are the first 3 items of a client security questionnaire, and all 3 are free; the other 4 are listed in the piece.

Read →
Start here →

Not sure where to begin?

Six platforms presented by use case, with the entry price for each.

See the picks→

Editorial method

Who writes this, and where the numbers come from

Who writes this, what it is based on, and what it deliberately does not do.

Publication SaaS COMPASS
Editor Kaz — pen name of the independent, one-person publisher (not a company)
Method Desk research, not hands-on review: every figure is taken from the vendor's own pricing, help and legal pages, the pricing arithmetic is shown in the articles so you can re-check it, and anything we could not confirm officially is marked as unconfirmed rather than filled in. This site publishes no score or star rating.
Review cycle Pricing and terms are re-checked against each vendor's own pages; the articles carry the date they were last verified.
Contact Contact form — replies within two business days.

How these six are presented

We publish no score and we do not rank these six. Capability, usability, value and support are judgment calls with no fixed rubric, so a single number out of five would be something you could not check. The six are presented by use case, in the editor's own reading order for general business use and payback period, and placement here is never sold. Published prices, seat rules, contract terms and product limits are sourced from the vendors; break-even points, payback thresholds and fit judgments are SaaS COMPASS models or editorial views, and we show the assumptions and arithmetic behind them.

Corrections

Vendors and readers can request a correction through the contact form; verified errors are fixed promptly.

Contact form

When in doubt, start with the free tier.

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