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How to read the effective-per-seat column, and why ten seats

The effective-per-seat column is what one seat costs per month when a ten-seat team pays a plan's published price for 36 months, including minimum seat counts and required fees. Ten seats is my choice of basis, and the column moves at 3 or 25 seats.

What does the column measure?

It measures the three-year cost for ten seats, divided back to one seat and one month. Take the published seat price, multiply by the seats the plan makes you pay for, multiply by 36 months, add any onboarding fee the vendor calls required, then divide by 360 seat-months. For a plan with no minimum and no fee, the result is the published seat price. For any other plan, it is higher.

The column appears in the provider list and on every provider page under d/, such as SugarCRM's page. It is the only sorted figure on the site. What a CRM costs walks through the formula with more plans; the Method page states it in one block.

Why ten seats?

Because I needed one basis and ten is the one I chose. Most minimum seat counts in the dataset sit below ten: monday CRM's plans "start from 3 users", Salesflare Enterprise has a "Minimum 5 users", and SugarCRM has a "15 user minimum" (checked 2026-08-25). Ten is above the first two and below the third, which means the column shows the SugarCRM penalty and hides the monday one. That is a consequence of my choice, not a claim that ten is a typical team. I have no data on how large a typical team is.

Ten is also below the point where vendors stop publishing prices. HubSpot Enterprise "Starts at $150/mo/seat" with a Talk to Sales button; monday CRM Ultimate is "Custom pricing"; Attio Enterprise is "Custom" (checked 2026-08-25). A ten-seat team can read a price on almost every page in the dataset, so ten produces a column with few gaps. A basis of fifty would have produced a column with many.

How does the number move at 3 and 25 seats?

It moves whenever a plan has a minimum seat count or a fixed fee, and it stays flat otherwise. The generator computes the same formula at 3, 10, and 25 seats, and the three plans below show the range.

Plan3 seats10 seats25 seats
SugarCRM Standard$295.00$88.50$59.00
HubSpot Sales Hub Professional$103.89$94.17$91.67
Salesflare Enterprise$165.00$99.00$99.00

^ Source: data/computed_for_articles.json, built from each vendor's pricing page, checked 2026-08-25. Figures are effective cost per seat per month over 36 months on annual billing.

SugarCRM Standard is published at $59 with a "15 user minimum" (checked 2026-08-25). A three-seat team pays for fifteen seats, so each real seat carries five.

$59 × 15 seats × 36 months = $31,860 $31,860 ÷ (3 seats × 36 months) = $295.00 per seat per month $31,860 ÷ (10 seats × 36 months) = $88.50 per seat per month $31,860 ÷ (25 seats × 36 months) = $59.00 per seat per month

At 25 seats the minimum no longer binds and the effective figure equals the published $59.00. HubSpot Professional has no minimum but a required $1,500 onboarding fee, so the fee is spread over fewer seat-months at 3 seats ($103.89) than at 25 ($91.67). Salesflare Enterprise's five-seat minimum bites at 3 seats ($165.00) and disappears at 10 ($99.00). The calculator runs the same formula for any seat count you enter.

The shape of the movement tells you which condition is at work. A figure that falls and then flattens at the published price is a seat minimum. A figure that falls and keeps falling without reaching the published price is a fixed fee. Article 01 covers the minimums in detail and why the annual price is the one the formula uses; article 07 shows the flip on a pair page.

What about ties and ordering?

Ties are common, because most plans have no minimum and no fee, so their effective figure is their published price. At ten seats, Close Growth, Copper Business, Insightly Enterprise, Attio Pro, and Salesflare Enterprise all come to $99.00 (checked 2026-08-25). The column does not break these ties with any judgment of mine. The ordering rule for equal figures is written on the Method page, and it is the same rule on every page.

A tie in this column is not a statement that two plans are equivalent. It means their published seat prices are the same and neither carries a condition that moves the figure at ten seats. Salesflare Enterprise and Close Growth are tied at 10 seats and not at 3, where the Salesflare minimum applies. If your team is not ten people, the tie may not hold for you.

What does the n/a cell mean?

It means the plan cannot be bought for the seat count in the column header. Close Solo is published at $9 per user per month on annual billing and is "Limited to 1 user" (checked 2026-08-25). A ten-seat team cannot buy it, so Close's page shows n/a for Solo at 3, 10, and 25 seats while the other three Close plans have figures.

Attio Plus is the other direction. It is $44 per user per month on annual billing and "Up to 10 seats" (checked 2026-08-25), so it has a figure at 3 and at 10 and n/a at 25. An n/a is a fact about the plan's seat range, not a missing price, and the price itself is still shown in the plan row.

What do "not readable" and "other currency" mean?

Both mean our checker could not read a computable price from the page. "Not readable" describes our limitation; "other currency" describes what the vendor's page showed a UK visitor, which is a fact about the vendor. "Not readable" is used when the page draws its prices with scripts or requires an input first. ActiveCampaign shows "Starts at --/mo" until a contact volume is selected, so it is marked not readable (checked 2026-08-25). Zoho CRM served our checker the page in INR, "₹800/user/month" for Standard, so its USD prices could not be read (checked 2026-08-25). The vendor may well display USD to a visitor in the United States; we could not confirm it. Capsule's seat figures are drawn by script, so they were read in a browser rather than by the checker: $18, $36, $54, and $72 on annual billing (checked 2026-08-25).

"Other currency" is the UK case. Of 14 UK rows, two providers, HubSpot UK and Salesforce UK, published a computable GBP seat price, and Workbooks publishes a From price. Seven pages could not be read in GBP, and four showed another currency (checked 2026-08-25). Pipedrive's en-gb page showed "US$14" for Lite; HubSpot's page showed "£7/mo/seat" for Starter once its currency selector was set to GBP in a browser (checked 2026-08-25). Those rows are kept with their plan names and the wording we saw, and no effective figure is computed. USD and GBP are never converted or sorted together. A vendor whose row says "other currency" has not hidden a price; it showed a dollar one to a UK visitor.

Where the answer changes

Who this article is not for

If you are choosing between two plans that both show a plain published price with no minimum and no fee, this article will not change anything for you. Their effective figures equal their seat prices at every seat count, and the column is telling you what the vendor's page already does. Go to the provider pages and read the conditions instead.

Sources

How this article was made. Written by Kaz, an independent publisher with no commercial relationship with the companies named unless listed on the Disclosure page. All figures come from the companies' own published documentation or regulator publications; each figure carries the date it was last checked. I have not used these products, and nothing here is a personal test result. The arithmetic is shown so you can recalculate with your own numbers. Found an error? Use the contact form; corrections are logged on the Editorial policy page.

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Written by Kaz (pen name). Figures are copied from providers' published pricing pages on the dates shown. We have not used these products. Corrections: contact form.