Custom CRM vs Salesforce: An Honest, Numbers-Based Comparison

Let me be upfront: we build custom software. So you’d expect us to trash Salesforce and tell you custom is always the answer. We’re not going to do that, because it’s not true.

Salesforce is the most successful CRM on the planet for good reason. HubSpot is excellent at what it does. For many businesses, they’re the right choice and I’ll tell you exactly when.

But for a specific type of business — usually $2M-$50M revenue, with workflows that don’t fit neatly into standard templates — the maths start telling a very different story. Let’s lay it all out.

The Licence Fee Problem Nobody Talks About

Salesforce Enterprise is $165 per user per month. Let’s say you’ve got 25 people who need access — sales, operations, admin, field supervisors.

That’s $4,125 per month. $49,500 per year. Just in licence fees.

But it doesn’t stop there. You’ll also need:

• Implementation partner: $15,000-$60,000 for initial setup and customisation
• Ongoing admin: Either a part-time Salesforce admin ($40K-$60K/year) or a consultant ($150-$250/hr as needed)
• App marketplace add-ons: Many features that sound included require paid plugins — document generation, advanced reporting, SMS integration
• Training: Initial and ongoing, because the platform updates constantly

Three-Year Cost Comparison

Let’s do the real maths for a 25-person business. These are conservative, mid-range estimates.

Salesforce (Enterprise Tier)

Cost Item	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
Licences (25 users × $165/mo)	$49,500	$49,500	$49,500
Implementation & customisation	$35,000	—	—
Admin/consultant time	$15,000	$20,000	$20,000
Add-on apps & integrations	$6,000	$6,000	$6,000
Training	$5,000	$2,000	$2,000
Annual Total	$110,500	$77,500	$77,500

Three-year total: ~$265,500

Custom CRM

Cost Item	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
Development & deployment	$50,000-$80,000	—	—
Hosting & infrastructure	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600
Maintenance & updates	$6,000	$12,000	$12,000
Training	$3,000	$1,000	$1,000
Annual Total	$62,600-$92,600	$16,600	$16,600

Three-year total: ~$96,000-$126,000

The gap widens every year, because the custom CRM has no per-user licensing. Add five more people? No extra cost. Open a second location? Same system, same price. With Salesforce, every new user is another $165/month, forever.

Features You’re Paying For But Never Using

This is the part that frustrates me on behalf of the businesses I work with. Salesforce has thousands of features. A typical contracting or services business uses maybe 15% of them.

You’re paying for:

• Territory management (you operate in one metro area)
• Opportunity scoring with AI (you close deals by picking up the phone)
• Advanced campaign management (you get work from referrals and repeat clients)
• Multi-currency support (you invoice in AUD, always)
• Collaborative forecasting (your sales “team” is three people)

None of this is bad — it’s just not relevant to your business. But you pay for all of it because it’s bundled into the tier you need for the two or three features you actually care about.

When Salesforce (or HubSpot) Is the Right Choice

I’ll be straight. Off-the-shelf CRMs win in these situations:

Your workflows are standard. If your sales process looks like: lead comes in, you qualify it, send a proposal, negotiate, close — that’s a standard pipeline. Salesforce and HubSpot handle this brilliantly out of the box. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

You need to move fast. A Salesforce or HubSpot instance can be live in a week. Custom software takes weeks to months. If you need a CRM yesterday, go off-the-shelf.

Your team is small (under 10 users). At low user counts, the licence fees are manageable and the total cost of ownership favours off-the-shelf. The maths only start shifting at scale.

You want a known quantity. Salesforce has 150,000+ customers. The bugs are well-known, the workarounds are documented, and there’s a consultant on every corner. That ecosystem has real value.

When Custom Makes More Sense

Custom starts winning when:

Your workflow is your competitive advantage. If the way you manage customers, quote jobs, schedule work, and handle follow-ups is genuinely different from your competitors — and that difference is why you win — forcing that workflow into a generic CRM means diluting what makes you good.

You’re burning hours on workarounds. If your team spends time exporting data to spreadsheets, manually copying information between systems, or maintaining side processes that your CRM can’t handle — you’re paying the hidden tax of a bad fit.

Per-user costs are killing you. At 25 users on Salesforce Enterprise, you’re spending $49,500 per year on licences alone. A custom CRM has no per-user fees. At 50 users, the savings fund the entire build within the first year.

Integration is a nightmare. Off-the-shelf CRMs integrate with other off-the-shelf tools. But if you’re connecting to industry-specific software, legacy systems, or custom databases, every integration becomes a project. Custom software is built with your exact integration needs from day one.

The Honest Answer

There is no universally right choice. If someone tells you Salesforce is always the answer or custom is always the answer, they’re selling something.

The decision comes down to three things:

1. Complexity of your workflow — standard processes favour off-the-shelf, unique processes favour custom
2. Team size — under 10 users, off-the-shelf usually wins on cost; over 20, custom starts winning
3. Integration needs — if your CRM needs to talk to industry-specific or legacy systems, custom avoids the middleware tax

Run the numbers for your specific situation. Don’t let a vendor (including us) make the decision for you based on generalities. The right CRM is the one that fits your business, your team, and your budget — not the one with the best marketing.