Per-seat pricing: what a one-person business actually pays (checked September 2026)

Per-seat pricing means you pay for each person using the software, so one person should pay for exactly one seat. In practice several CRMs charge a solo operator for more: monday CRM's plans "start from 3 users", Keap starts at $299 a month with two user licences, and plans built for one person — like Close's Solo plan — cap you at a single user, so the first hire means a new tier.

Every price here was checked on the vendor's own pricing page between 16 and 22 September 2026, in US dollars. I build Groundbase, which is priced flat rather than per seat; that's a trade-off, not a virtue, and the section on it says what it costs you.

The comic version

In How Many Seats, an enterprise sales rep asks how many seats Adamo needs before he can quote. Adamo looks around the office. There's a cat on the desk and a potted plant in the other chair. The rep types in three.

It's a joke, except that for monday CRM it's the actual minimum.

What one person actually pays

The five ways a per-seat price grows

1. Seat minimums. The headline number is per seat; the bill is per seat times the minimum. monday CRM's Basic plan is $12 a seat billed annually, and its own pricing FAQ says "Plans start from 3 users" — so one person pays $36 a month, or $54 on monthly billing. Keap's pricing page says it "starts you off with 2 user licenses" at $299 a month.

2. Solo plans that cap you at one. A plan built for one person is often the cheapest way in, and a trap on the day you hire. Close's Solo plan is "Limited to 1 user". The moment a second person needs a login, you're on Essentials at $35 a user billed annually, or $49 monthly — for both of you.

3. The feature you need lives on a pricier seat. Per-seat prices usually come in tiers, and the tier multiplies too. HubSpot Starter is $20 a seat, but email sequences are on Professional, at $90 a seat billed annually plus a required $1,500 onboarding fee. For one person that's a first year of $2,580; for two, $3,660.

4. Minimum terms. Some per-seat prices are only available on a commitment. Kommo's minimum subscription is six months, and HubSpot's Professional plan is an annual commitment even when you pay monthly. Neither is unusual. Both mean you can't try the tier for one month and leave.

5. Required fees. Onboarding and implementation fees don't scale with seats, which is exactly why they hurt one person most. HubSpot's is $1,500 for Professional. Keap lists "required implementation services" on its pricing page.

How to read a per-seat price in thirty seconds

1. Find the tier that has the feature you actually need, not the cheapest tier.
2. Multiply by the minimum number of seats, not by one.
3. Add any required onboarding or implementation fee.
4. Check whether that price needs an annual or six-month commitment.
5. Then ask what happens to the bill the day you add one person.

Step five is the one that decides whether a tool is cheap for you or cheap for now.

The case for per-seat pricing

To be fair to it: per-seat pricing is reasonable when you have a team. Each person costs the vendor support, storage and servers, and paying per person means a three-person company doesn't subsidise a three-hundred-person one. The problem isn't the model. It's minimums and tier jumps that were designed for teams, landing on someone who is on their own.

Flat pricing, and what it costs you

Flat pricing charges one price regardless of seats. It comes in two shapes, and they suit different people.

Flat with unlimited users — HighLevel at $97 a month is the clear example. It's good value for an agency with many people and many client accounts, and a lot of money for one person.

Flat for one person — which is Groundbase. Groundbase is a CRM for one-person businesses that sends email and texts through your own accounts and connects to the AI assistant you already use. It's $9 a month, billed monthly, with one plan and no tiers: workflows, campaigns, invoicing, booking links, and the web, desktop and Android apps are all included.

The trade-off is real, and it's the reason this model is cheap: there is no second seat. Groundbase has no team accounts, no shared logins and no lead routing. If you expect to hire someone who needs their own login, that's a reason to pick a per-seat CRM now rather than migrate later. Who Groundbase is and isn't for says the same thing at more length, and the billing help article has the details of the plan.

Which model suits you

• You're on your own and expect to stay that way: flat pricing for one person, or a per-seat CRM that prices a single user — Less Annoying CRM, Pipedrive and Zoho Bigin all do.
• You'll hire in the next year: pick a per-seat CRM that prices a single user, and check the second-seat price before you commit, especially on a solo plan.
• You're an agency with many users: flat with unlimited users, like HighLevel.
• You're comparing prices generally: how much a CRM costs for one person has the full table, including what automated follow-up costs on each, and HubSpot alternatives for one-person businesses covers the options by reason for leaving.

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Found a seat minimum I missed? Tell me: blog-per-seat@groundbasecrm.com — I read every one.