How many months until that SaaS pays for itself?

The conclusion first. Lay the cost out in a table of 8 lines covering 3 years, and measure the benefit on 2 counts only: hours saved × the loaded hourly cost of labor, and added revenue × gross margin. Divide the one by the other and you get the payback period — the number of months it takes to recover what you paid out of what the SaaS produces, the labor cost of the hours it removes plus the gross profit it adds.

This piece then reads that number against 3 lines, at 6, 12 and 24 months. They are a SaaS COMPASS decision model — not a vendor standard and not an accounting standard. 6 months or less is a case where the payback is fast; 12 to 24 months is a case for re-checking the benefit assumptions and the cost structure before deciding; past 24 months, this calculation does not support the purchase on its own. Purchases that are not decided on cost against benefit — legal compliance, security, something a client has specified — sit outside this test entirely. Figures here are US list pricing from the vendors' US pages, annual billing, excluding tax, unless stated otherwise.

Before you calculate: would the free tier be enough?

HubSpot has a free tier with no expiry date, and so do monday.com and Asana; the three ceilings are set out here. Its own pages put the ceiling at 2 users and 1,000 contacts: “You can add up to 2 users to your free account.” “You can add 1,000 contacts, and your free access has no time limit.” If 2 or fewer people will operate it and you mail to 1,000 or fewer contacts, you do not need the calculation below. Seats are bought only for the people who use them, so with 5 people but only 2 seats the cost is 2/5 of the full amount. The 1,000 contacts on the free tier and the 1,000 marketing contacts included in paid Marketing Hub are separate allowances.

Why 3 years?

Over 1 year the one-time costs weigh too heavily. HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional (US page, annual commitment) is $800 a month with $3,000 of required onboarding, so 23.8% of the $12,600 first year (= $800 × 12 + $3,000) is incurred once only ($890 a month on monthly billing). Over 5 years the cost cannot be fixed, because none of the 6 vendors covered here state on their own pages how much prices rise from year 2 onward.

The cost side: 3 years, 8 lines

The worked example is HubSpot Starter Customer Platform from the US page. That page shows 3 prices for 1 product: $7 per seat per month on annual billing, $10 on monthly billing, and $20 struck through on both toggles as the price without the discount. The $7 and the $10 are marked “Discounts available for new customers only. Offer available for a limited time.” We could not find how long that period runs, or what the price becomes at renewal, stated on the vendor's own pages, so the table below runs 2 cases: A, the introductory price holds; B, the price goes to $20 from month 13.

SaaS COMPASS model — cases A and B are our own way of bracketing a number the vendor has not published. The vendor states the $7, the $20 and that the offer is limited; it does not state which of A or B you will be paying in year 2. Neither case is a forecast.

#	Cost item	Your formula, and how to read the number	Worked example (HubSpot Starter Customer Platform, US page, 5 seats, 1,500 marketing contacts, annual billing, excluding tax)	Case A: the introductory price holds	Case B: $20 from month 13
1	Monthly price × seats	Monthly price per 1 seat ___ × number of seats ___ × 36	$7 × 5 seats × 36 in case A. In case B, $7 × 5 seats × 12 for the first year and $20 × 5 seats × 24 after it	$1,260	$2,820
2	Waste from seat minimums and increments	(seats you are forced to buy ___ − people who use it ___) × monthly price per 1 seat ___ × 36. Seats cannot always be bought 1 at a time	We could not find HubSpot Starter's seat minimum or purchase increment stated on the vendor's own pages, so this assumes seats can be bought 1 at a time. monday.com Work Management (priced separately from the CRM product) sets a minimum of 3 seats rising in multiples of 5, and puts a team of 6 on the 10-seat plan: “Our pricing plans start at a minimum of 3 seats, and then ascend in multiples of 5.” “If you have a team of 6, you will need to select the 10-seat plan.” A separate support article, however, gives the sequence 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 as examples — “3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 seats etc.” — and we could not find the increment above 20 seats — whether 25 seats can be chosen, for instance — stated on the vendor's own pages. Working only from the 10 seats both pages agree on: if 6 people use Standard (Work Management, annual billing, $12 per seat per month), the 4 unused seats cost $12 × 4 × 36 = $1,728 over 3 years, and the payment at signing covers 10 seats rather than 6, at $12 × 10 × 12 = $1,440. Reducing seats takes effect only on the next renewal date. Asana's minimum is 2 seats, then 3, 4 and 5 seats, and from there in steps of 5 up to 30 people	$0	$0
3	Setup fees and mandatory onboarding	One-time cost ___ × 1	We could not find any mandatory onboarding fee for Starter stated on the vendor's own pages (Professional is stated at $3,000)	$0	$0
4	Overage charges (contacts and records)	Overage blocks ___ × price per block ___ × 36. What you count is not your total contacts but the number you actually mail	Only the “marketing contacts” in paid Marketing Hub are charged, and the official catalog states “all your non-marketing contacts are free, up to a limit of 15 million overall contacts”. The example mails to 1,500: (1,500 − the 1,000 included) → 1 block of 1,000 × $50 a month × 36. The catalog prices the block lower as the count rises — $45 per 1,000 from 3,001 contacts and $40 from 5,001 — so the unit price falls while the line grows	$1,800	$1,800
5	Overage charges (extra users and add-ons)	Extra people ___ × unit price ___ × 36	Included in the per-seat price, so already counted on line 1	$0	$0
6	Payment and transaction fees	(monthly sales ___ × rate ___ + transactions ___ × fixed fee ___) × 36	Not applicable (this example does not run e-commerce)	$0	$0
A	Total cost over 3 years	1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6	1,260 + 1,800 in case A; 2,820 + 1,800 in case B	$3,060	$4,620
7	Annual prepayment (already inside A — do not add)	Annual amount for 1 year ___ × 1. The line that says when the cash leaves	$7 × 5 seats × 12 at signing. In case B the 2 renewals are $20 × 5 seats × 12 = $1,200 each	$420	$420
8	Price after the introductory period (a comparison of A — do not add)	Regular price ___ × seats ___ × months after the discount ends. The line that says what A becomes if the price does not hold	The US page states $20 as the price without the discount. We could not find the length of the introductory period, or the renewal price, stated on the vendor's own pages, so this is the gap between the 2 cases rather than a forecast	—	+$1,560, or +51%
B	3-year total, as a range	A if the introductory price holds at renewal; the case B figure if it does not	The 2 cases differ on line 1 only	$3,060 to $4,620

Sources (checked August 2026, prices rechecked 6 September 2026): the HubSpot Starter Customer Platform page, US ($7 per seat per month on annual billing, $10 on monthly billing, $20 struck through on both toggles; new customers only, limited time), the HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing page, US (Professional $800 on annual billing, $890 on monthly billing, plus $3,000 of required onboarding), the HubSpot Product and Services Catalog (1,000 marketing contacts included; 1,001 to 3,000 contacts at $50 a month per 1,000, 3,001 to 5,000 at $45, 5,001 and above at $40), 2 monday.com help pages (minimum 3 seats in multiples of 5 / 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 seats etc.), monday.com pricing (Work Management Standard, annual billing $12 per seat per month) and Asana's help pages (minimum 2 seats, then steps of 5).

Lines 7 and 8 are not added into A; adding them would double-count. The cash that leaves at signing is $420 ($7 × 5 seats × 12, excluding tax), and the first year is $420 + $50 × 12 months = $1,020. A ÷ 36 gives $85 a month in case A and $128.33 in case B, which is a way of thinking about the number, not the shape the invoice arrives in.

Which line is largest depends on a price the vendor has not published. In case A it is line 4: $1,800 over 3 years, 59% of the total. In case B it is line 1: $2,820, 61% of the total. Same product, same seats, same day of signing — the only thing that moves is what the $7 becomes in month 13. So the question to put in writing before you sign is not what it costs, but what it costs from month 13. If the answer does not come back in writing, price the purchase at case B and treat case A as the upside.

Three-year cost if the introductory price holds, and if it does not (HubSpot Starter Customer Platform, US page, 5 seats, annual billing, excluding tax)

Assumptions: 5 seats and 1,500 marketing contacts throughout. Both cases are identical for the first 12 months — $420 at signing plus the $50 monthly overage — and separate at the first renewal: case A renews at $7 per seat, case B at the $20 the page shows struck through. Over 3 years the gap is $1,560, or 51%. The payback period calculated further down completes at 2.25 months, 10 months before the price can move, which is why the payment method and the renewal risk are separate questions. Sources (rechecked 6 September 2026): the HubSpot Starter Customer Platform page, US ($7, $10, $20 struck through; new customers only, limited time) and the HubSpot Product and Services Catalog ($50 a month per 1,000 contacts from 1,001 to 3,000). We could not find the length of the introductory period or the renewal price stated on the vendor's own pages

Who should not buy, first. With 2 or fewer people and 1,000 or fewer contacts to mail, the free tier is enough. In this example the overage is already larger than the seat price in the first year — $50 a month against $35 — and it rises in blocks of 1,000, so if you expect to pass 3,000 contacts, price the higher plans alongside it before you decide. A company that does not send email never incurs line 4, and this worked example will not help.

Only 2 things count as benefit

Item	Formula, and how to read the number	Your figure	Worked example (per month, all assumptions)
① Hours removed	Hours saved (people × hours per month). Enter only figures the people who use it have given you themselves	___ hours	10 hours
① Loaded hourly labor cost	(annual salary + employer contributions) ÷ annual working hours. The cost of 1 hour including the employer's share of taxes, insurance and benefits, not salary alone. A full-time year is usually taken as 2,080 hours	___ per hour	$46.60 (US private industry, total compensation per hour worked; benefits are 30.1% of it, wages and salaries the rest)
① Subtotal	Hours × rate		$466
② Added revenue	Increase per month	___	$1,000
② Gross margin	What percentage of revenue is left after purchases and outsourced work are deducted	___ %	60%
② Subtotal	Revenue × gross margin		$600
What not to enter	Anything with no formula to turn it into money — “satisfaction goes up”, “information is centralised”. Put a figure on it without a conversion formula and you have decided the conclusion first and worked backwards to the number	—	No row for this
Total benefit	① + ②		$1,066 per month

Source: there are no vendor figures on the benefit side. The $46.60 is the 1 figure here that comes from a source rather than from you — the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026, private industry, total compensation per hour worked (all workers, including state and local government, is $49.32). It is a national average and stands in until you put your own loaded rate in the box. Everything else in the worked example is an assumption you set yourself, not a number from a vendor case study.

The payback period comes out of 1 division

Payback period (months) = implementation cost ÷ (benefit per month − SaaS cost per month). In the worked example, what leaves at signing is the prepayment of $7 × 5 seats × 12 = $420 plus 40 hours × $46.60 = $1,864 of your own time for setup, data migration and learning the tool: $2,284 in total. The 1 year of seats is paid off here, so the only monthly outflow is the $50 overage.

$2,284 ÷ ($1,066 − $50) = $2,284 ÷ $1,016 = 2.25 months. If you put the prepayment in the numerator, take the seats out of the denominator. Put them in both and you count the seat price 2 times, and the payback period comes out longer than it is. On monthly billing at $10 there is no prepayment: the implementation cost is $1,864 and the monthly outflow is $10 × 5 seats + $50 = $100.

$1,864 ÷ ($1,066 − $100) = $1,864 ÷ $966 = 1.93 months. Either way of paying lands at around 2 months, so the payment method does not change the conclusion.

What the payment method does change is what the difference buys. At 5 seats, annual billing takes $420 at signing; monthly billing pays $50 a month, $600 over the same 12 months — $180, or 43%, more for the year. Turned around: paying the $420 up front wins on the money alone only if that $420 would otherwise earn about 6% a month, roughly 100% a year, inside the business. That is the rate at which $50 a month for 12 months is worth $420 today, and almost nothing clears it.

SaaS COMPASS model — reading the annual-to-monthly gap as the price of an option to stop is our framing, not a vendor or accounting standard. It holds only while both prices are introductory: $7 and $10 are both discounted, and we could not find the regular annual price, or the gap at the regular price, stated on the vendor's own pages.

So the question is not whether monthly billing is cheaper — over 12 months it costs $180 more. The question is whether the right to stop is worth that $180 a year, $36 per seat, on a tool nobody has used yet. For the first few months, when the hours-saved estimate is still an estimate, it usually is.

Payback period with the revenue uplift set to zero (HubSpot Starter Customer Platform, US page, 5 seats, annual billing, excluding tax)

Assumptions: an initial outlay of $2,284 ($420 prepaid + 40 hours of your own time × $46.60), $50 of spend each month (the overage), a loaded labor cost of $46.60 per hour worked, and no revenue uplift. At 1.07 hours a month or less ($50 ÷ $46.60) the denominator turns negative and no number of months will recover the cost. When you substitute your own figures, estimate the 40 hours as “people who touch it × hours per 1 person”, and check that the line is still crossed if you halve the benefit through the first 3 months of ramp-up ($533 a month gives 4.7 months, still inside 6). The y axis is a log scale. Sources (rechecked 6 September 2026): the HubSpot Starter Customer Platform page, US ($7 per seat per month on annual billing), the HubSpot Product and Services Catalog (1,001 to 3,000 contacts at $50 a month per 1,000) and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026 ($46.60 per hour worked, private industry). The benefit figures are assumptions

Run the division with your own figures

Nothing is sent anywhere. The figures stay in this browser, and “Save” keeps them for your next visit. Purchases decided by legal compliance, security or a customer requirement sit outside this test (Q1 above).

BillingSeatsPrice per seat per month, annual billingPrice per seat per month, monthly billingOther spend per month (overage, add-ons)Your own setup hours, one timeLoaded labor cost per hourHours removed per monthAdded revenue per monthGross margin (%)

How many months is reasonable?

SaaS COMPASS model — the 6 / 12 / 24-month lines below are our own decision rule, not a vendor or accounting standard. The assumptions and the arithmetic they rest on are the 2 tables above.

Before you read your own figure against those lines, run it 3 times. A single number built on a single set of assumptions tells you what you assumed, not what the purchase is worth.

Scenario	Assumptions	How to use it
Low case	Hours saved at 50% of the estimate, no revenue uplift	Does it still pay back at the pessimistic end?
Base case	The median of what the people who will use it told you	The ordinary case
High case	Hours saved at 100% of the estimate, revenue uplift included	The upside. Not to be used on its own as the basis for a sign-off

If the Low case still lands inside 12 months, the decision does not turn on which assumptions you picked. If only the High case gets under the line, what you have is a case for a trial, not a case for an annual contract.

Q1: Does this involve legal compliance, a security requirement, something a customer has specified, or work that kills revenue when it stops?

YesDo not decide on cost against benefit. Lay out the cost side alone in several options and take the cheapest configuration that meets the requirement

NoGo to Q2

Q2: Does the benefit per month exceed the SaaS cost per month?

NoDo not buy. The denominator is negative and no payback period can be calculated

YesGo to Q3

Q3: Is the payback period 6 months or less?

YesYou may sign. Even on annual billing, you recover before the first renewal

NoGo to Q4

Q4: Is the payback period 12 months or less?

YesSign, but start on monthly billing. The renewal decision arrives before you have recovered

NoGo to Q5

Q5: Is the payback period 24 months or less?

YesRebuild the cost side and calculate again. If it is still 24 months, pass

NoThat calculation cannot justify the purchase

All amounts exclude tax. 12 months is both the term of an annual contract and the period for which, as a rule, nothing is refunded if you cancel part-way through. The refund windows we could confirm on vendor pages: monday.com within 30 days of the first purchase (renewals of monthly plans are excluded), Semrush within 7 days of the first annual contract (monthly billing is excluded), Squarespace within 14 days of an annual purchase (no refund on monthly billing), Shopify's terms of service section 5 states “Shopify does not provide refunds.”, HubSpot states “all amounts paid are non-refundable”, and Asana likewise “non-cancelable and non-refundable”. 24 months is the range beyond which costs cannot be fixed, because none of the 6 vendors state on their own pages how much prices rise from year 2 onward. Sources (checked August 2026): each vendor's own refund policy and terms of service (listed at the end of this article)

For the 4 cases in Q1, leave the benefit side and the payback column blank. Force a number into them and the discussion drifts toward dropping the requirement. Annual billing is, as a rule, not refunded if you stop partway, so once you sign you keep paying for at least 12 months. The line sits at 6 months because even if the benefit comes in at half, you still recover within 12 months and are in the black before the first renewal.

When in doubt, set the added revenue to zero

Added revenue is the figure that misses by the most. If the line is still crossed with the uplift at zero, the case is safe to buy. In the worked example, with no revenue uplift, 9.3 hours a month brings the payback within 6 months, 5.2 hours within 12 months and 3.2 hours within 24 months, and at 1.07 hours a month or less you never recover it. For your own figures: (initial outlay ÷ the number of months you are targeting + monthly spend) ÷ loaded hourly labor cost.

Between 6 and 12 months, the gap you pay to bill monthly ($10 a seat a month against $7 on annual billing, $180 a year at 5 seats) is the price of deferring the decision. Between 12 and 24 months, do not raise the benefit side; rebuild the cost side. In the worked example, holding the contacts you mail to 1,000 or fewer removes the $1,800 on line 4 and brings the 3 years to $1,260 if the introductory price holds and $2,820 if it does not. Past 24 months you cannot buy, because none of the 6 vendors state how much prices rise, so costs further out cannot be fixed. If you are unsure, fill in line 4 first.

Do not write $0 in a box you could not fill. $0 means “we checked and it was zero”; blank means “we checked and could not find out”. The boxes that most often stay blank, the size of price rises and whether the discount continues after the introductory period, should be obtained in writing before you sign.

This is not for anyone who writes down hours saved without asking the people who actually do that work. An approver's estimate is never tested after rollout, and the same estimate reappears in the next request for approval.

Sources (checked August 2026, prices rechecked 6 September 2026)

HubSpot: free tier (2 users, 1,000 contacts, no time limit) / Starter Customer Platform ($7 per seat per month on annual billing with payment upfront, $10 on monthly billing, $20 struck through on both toggles as the price without the discount; “Discounts available for new customers only. Offer available for a limited time.”) / Marketing Hub pricing (Professional $800 per month committed annually, $890 paid monthly, and “Cost shown does not include the required, one-time Professional Onboarding for a fee of $3,000.”; annual and monthly are switched by a toggle on the same page, so check again before you sign) / catalog (1,000 marketing contacts included; non-marketing contacts free up to 15 million; 1,001 to 3,000 contacts at $50 a month per 1,000, 3,001 to 5,000 at $45, 5,001 and above at $40) / terms of service (non-refundable; all fees exclusive of tax)
US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026 (private industry total compensation $46.60 per hour worked — wages and salaries $32.60, benefits $14.01 or 30.1%, each rounded separately; all civilian workers $49.32)
monday.com (Work Management; priced separately from the CRM product): plans and pricing (minimum 3 seats, multiples of 5, a team of 6 takes 10 seats) / pricing model adjustment (3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 seats etc.) / pricing (Standard $12 on annual billing) / refund eligibility (within 30 days of the first purchase) / downgrading (seat reductions take effect on the next renewal date)
Asana: pricing and seats (minimum 2 seats, then steps of 5) / terms (non-cancelable, non-refundable)
Semrush: refund policy (within 7 days of the first annual contract)
Squarespace: refund policy (annual billing, within 14 days)
Shopify: terms of service (section 5, no refunds)

The figures exclude tax. HubSpot's terms of service state “All fees are exclusive of taxes”, and US sales tax is added at checkout according to the billing address, so budget from the amount on the checkout screen rather than from the list price. The seat minimum and purchase increment, any mandatory onboarding fee for Starter, the length of the introductory period and the price at renewal are all things we could not find stated on the vendor's own pages. Terms change, so please check each vendor's own pages before you sign.

Buying from Japan? See the Japanese edition for the same calculation in yen, with consumption tax and the yen prices on the Japanese pages →

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What changed on this page

correction7 September 2026 Article 20: the hours a month that bring the payback inside 6 and 24 months — the two thresholds, with the revenue uplift at zero
9.2 hours and 3.1 hours → 9.3 hours and 3.2 hours
Rounded to the nearest tenth, the printed figure did not reach the target: 9.2 hours a month pays back in 6.03 months. Thresholds of this kind are now rounded up.
correction7 September 2026 Article 20, Japanese edition: the hours a month at or below which the cost is never recovered — the threshold
2.45 hours → 2.44 hours
¥7,500 ÷ ¥3,067 is 2.4454 hours, so at 2.45 hours the cost is still recovered, slowly. A threshold stated as “or less” is now rounded down.
editorial basis7 September 2026 Article 20: the payback calculation — how a reader runs it with their own figures
the formula and a worked example in the text → a form in the article that runs the same division, with a link that carries the figures
The form computes only what the article states: hours × loaded labor cost plus added revenue × gross margin, against the monthly spend. Entries stay in the reader's browser and are not sent anywhere.
editorial basis6 September 2026 Payback period — the 6 / 12 / 24-month thresholds
Sign if payback is inside 6 months; if it runs past 24 months you cannot buy it on that arithmetic. → The thresholds are labeled as this site’s own default, with the assumptions shown and low, base and high cases side by side.
scope change6 September 2026 The English edition — currency and tax assumptions
yen prices, Japanese consumption tax and a card issuer’s foreign transaction fee → US published prices in US dollars; sales tax is described as determined by the billing address and no rate is assumed
Buying from Japan is covered in the Japanese edition, which keeps the yen figures.
Where: Processing rates do not decide the Shopify plan until monthly volume passes $25,000, Is the free trial actually free, No two vendors mean the same thing by “seat”, Budgeting from the list price times twelve leaves you short, On which plan does support stop being a help article?, Which country will your customer data sit in?, monday.com or Asana: which should you choose?

Every recorded change to this site is in the change log.