Method: where every figure comes from and how the ordering is produced

Every price here is copied from the vendor's own published pricing page, with the date it was read. Nothing is estimated and no third-party figure is used anywhere.

Every ordering is by one computed number — effective cost per user at a stated team size, ascending — and listing position is not for sale.

The formula, in full

users billed = max(users you have, minimum users the plan bills) user subtotal = published per-user price x users billed fixed charges = the mandatory gateway, server or base fee, where the plan requires one monthly total = user subtotal + fixed charges effective per user = monthly total / users you have uplift = effective per user / published per-user price three-year cost = monthly total x 36 + setup fee

Nothing else is added. Optional add-ons are shown in the tables and left out of every computed figure, and so are taxes, which none of these vendors publishes. Every figure here is a floor. The full method is at Method.

What is added and what is not

Added: the published per-user price, the minimum users the plan bills, any fixed charge the vendor states is required, and the setup fee where one is published.

Not added: optional add-ons, taxes, hardware, and the work of moving. Every figure is a floor.

Why the fixed charge is in the formula

Because it changes the answer most for the people least able to absorb it. A dedicated gateway or dedicated-IP server at a flat monthly rate is a small part of a hundred-user bill and can double a two-user one. Vendors publish these charges honestly; comparison tables drop them because a single per-user number is easier to sort.

Optional charges are not counted. Where a vendor offers a dedicated IP as an extra rather than a requirement, the table shows it and the arithmetic ignores it.

Three reasons a price can be missing

These are not the same thing and this site does not mix them:

The vendor does not publish one (7 vendors). Its own pages ask you to contact sales. We quote that wording.
We could not read it (0 vendors). The page draws figures with scripts that did not run when we retrieved it. That is our limitation and it is labeled as ours.
The plan is priced per server or per device rather than per user. Those rows are kept and shown, and left out of the per-user ranking.

How ties are broken

Effective cost per user, ascending. If two plans are equal, the lower published per-user price goes first, then alphabetically by vendor. That is the entire sort key: no score, no weighting, no vendor input.

What is not in the sort key

Commission, whether a vendor runs an affiliate program, brand size, review counts, security certifications and anything else we have not measured. The disclosure page names every program we are in.

Currency

We never convert. A vendor that publishes in euros is not ranked against one that publishes in dollars, and the currency is printed on every row.

How often this is re-checked

Every figure carries the date it was read. The dataset was last refreshed on 2026-09-07, and any figure older than 90 days is automatically labeled as not re-checked wherever it appears.

What we do not do

We do not test these products and no page claims otherwise. There are no ratings, no stars and no badges. We have never been paid for placement, and we do not collect or sell leads — there is no quote form on this site.

The data itself

The whole dataset is at data.json under CC BY 4.0, with the source URL and check date on every row. If a figure is wrong, tell us and it will be re-checked and re-dated.

The dataset page describes both files column by column, with how much of each field the vendors publish and what has changed since the data opened.

This site is 162 pages generated from 24 rows by one script. 28 of 67 plans carry enough published detail to compute with.

How we count

Several different totals appear on this site because they answer different questions. All of them are computed from the same dataset at build time; none is typed by hand.

24 vendors. One row per vendor, each with a source URL and a check date. 17 publish a price we could read, and 7 ask you to contact sales.
67 plans listed. Every plan or tier on those vendors' pricing pages, including contact-sales tiers and add-ons.
28 priced plans. Plans with a published price that is not a “from” figure, so the formula can run. This includes plans priced per device or per server.
25 published per-user plans. The priced plans that bill per user, across 11 vendors: 22 in US dollars and 3 in euros. Per-device and per-server plans are shown on their vendor pages but kept out of the per-user ranking.
21 plans in the ten-user ranking. Per-user plans a ten-person team could buy. Free tiers capped below ten users drop out here, which is why this pool is smaller than the per-user count.
The calculator's count. It changes with team size, currency and category, because plans with user caps or free-tier limits enter and leave the pool. Its caption always states the number it is showing.

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.