CRM, HR, accounting and the SSO tax, priced by the seat

I'm Kernel, I'm US-based, and I cover the software bill a startup meets the day it signs its first big customer. That customer's security questionnaire asks whether your tools support single sign-on. Your finance lead asks what the stack will cost at 20 and 50 people. This section answers both, with the math shown.

aliteq is a US company, so every price is in US dollars and a US buyer is the default. Every figure here was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 27 September 2026. aliteq sells no business software and has no deal with any vendor on this page. Our only referral links are for GPU clouds, Higgsfield and Amazon, and they're disclosed where they appear.

CRM cost by seat

A CRM for a team that sells to enterprise costs from $14 to $395 a seat a month at list, and the cheapest plan with SAML SSO is Pipedrive Lite. At 20 seats over three years, that range runs from $10,080 to $284,400. Every plan, which tier each needs for enterprise buyers, and a calculator are in the best CRM for AI startups selling to enterprise.

Two changes this year catch buyers out. Salesforce repriced Sales Cloud into Starter $25, Pro Suite $100, Core $195, Advanced $395 and Max $550; the old $175 Enterprise edition is gone from its page. And HubSpot now sells seats rather than hubs, so a sales rep needs a Front Office Seat at $108 to $120 on Professional. The three-year cost of twelve plans at 5, 20 and 50 seats, with a calculator, is in our CRM comparison, listed at the top of this page.

The SSO tax

The SSO tax is the price jump a vendor charges to unlock SAML single sign-on. On vendor pages today it runs from nothing at Pipedrive to 5.25 times at GitHub, and to six times for a HubSpot sales seat. The name comes from sso.tax, an independent tracker whose rows are mostly from 2019 to 2023, so we re-read every figure.

Euro prices are converted at the ECB rate of 25 Sep 2026; the multiplier is the same in any currency. Figma's page didn't confirm whether its $16 Professional price is the monthly or annual rate.

For a 20-person team, the extra adds up fast. Moving everyone to the SAML plan in Slack, Notion, GitHub, Jira, Figma and HubSpot adds $29,043 a year at list.

Is the SSO tax fair? A widely read Hacker News thread in August 2025 split on it. One side called it market segmentation more than cost; the other said SSO does add a support burden. Your buyer won't care either way. If their questionnaire asks for SSO, it's a line in your budget.

Payroll and HR

US payroll is the one HR category here with fully public prices. Gusto charges a monthly base plus a fee per person, so the cost per head falls as you grow. Gusto Plus works out to $20.00 a person at 10 people and $13.60 at 50.

Simple covers single-state payroll. Plus adds multi-state payroll and time tracking. Premium adds a dedicated advisor and HR experts. Gusto's page says there are no contracts and account setup is free.

For people outside the US, Deel publishes its rates: $49 a month per contractor, $325 per contractor of record, $599 per employee through its employer of record, and $125 per US PEO employee. It says pricing is month to month.

The HR platforms many European teams shortlist are harder to price. Personio shows only "Starts from €7.60 per month/employee" (about $8.67 at the ECB rate of 25 Sep 2026) and puts its tiers behind a demo. HiBob and Rippling send you to a quote form. We don't repeat third-party estimates of their prices.

Accounting and ERP

Accounting is the one category where a small company pays per company, not per seat. Xero's US plans run $25, $55 and $90 a month with "No per-user license fees". QuickBooks Online caps users per tier instead.

Both QuickBooks and Xero advertise introductory discounts; the prices above are list. Odoo's lower price is a first-year discount for the users you first order, and Odoo.sh hosting costs extra. Odoo prices are converted from euros at the ECB rate of 25 Sep 2026. Xero also sells payroll, powered by Gusto, at $36 a month plus $6 per employee or contractor.

NetSuite publishes no price. Its page says the annual licence is made up of the core platform, optional modules and the number of users, plus "a one-time implementation fee for initial setup".

Per seat vs per company

Per-seat software grows in a straight line with headcount. Payroll and accounting mostly don't. At 50 people, a Front Office Seat for everyone on HubSpot Pro would be $5,400 a month, while Xero Established stays at $90.

The practical lesson is where to count heads. Count CRM seats by who sells, not by headcount. Count team-tool seats by everyone, and check which of those tools will need their SAML plan.

Who publishes a price

Most CRMs and team tools publish their prices. The quote-only plans cluster in two places: enterprise tiers that carry SSO, and HR and ERP systems.

A quote-only plan isn't a bad plan. It does mean you can't compare it before a sales call, so we mark it rather than guess. Salesforce's EU Operating Zone, which keeps data processing in the EU and Switzerland, is one example: it's available, but its price isn't published.

Before you buy

Your tools become part of your own compliance scope. A CRM or HR system that holds customer or employee data is a sub-processor, and an auditor will ask for its security report. HubSpot shares a SOC 2 Type 2 report with customers and prospects, Pipedrive's pricing page says "SOC 2 compliant", and Attio lists ISO 27001. Read what a first SOC 2 costs and our security hub before you commit.

If you also run AI in production, the other half of the bill is compute: see owning an AI server vs renting a cloud GPU and what hosting costs. Getting paid for your own software is in business payments. Building agents instead of buying a CRM's AI features? Start with the best AI agent frameworks.