What a CRM migration costs a small business, and how long it takes
A CRM migration for a small business starts at $2,500, usually takes 1–6 months depending on size, and costs $50–$300 a month to run afterwards. Here's what drives each number.
If you run a small business and your team fights its CRM every day, the first question is usually about money. What will it cost to move, and what will it cost after? Here are my numbers and what pushes them up or down.
What the migration costs
My CRM migration projects start at $2,500. That covers:
- your customers, deals and history moved over and checked against the old system
- the screens your team uses every day, built around how they sell
- a written guide to how the new system works
Three things raise the price. More people use the CRM. More tools connect to it, such as email, calendar, e-signature, texting and billing. Or the data is messy, with duplicate contacts or years of half-filled fields. I quote a fixed price after a free one-hour call, once I’ve seen what you have.
How long it takes
Most migrations take 1–6 months from the start to the day your team switches over. A small team with clean data sits at the short end. More people, more connected tools and messier data push it toward six months.
Your team doesn’t stop working. I build the new CRM next to the old one. When the records come over, both systems run side by side until the numbers match. You pick the day you switch, once your team trusts it.
What it costs to run afterwards
A CRM you own still has running costs. They’re usually $50–$300 a month for hosting, the database, and email and text services. You pay those providers directly, in your company’s name.
What you stop paying is per-seat fees. Adding a new salesperson doesn’t add a monthly charge.
If you want someone to keep fixing things and adding features, that’s optional. I do it as ongoing part-time help from $500 a month with a three-month minimum, or hourly for smaller jobs while the limited-time hourly offer lasts.
Who owns it
You do. The code, the data and every account sit in your company’s name. If I’m unavailable, another developer can take over using the written guide. You’re not locked in to me, and you’re not locked in to a vendor’s pricing page.
A real example
A real-estate marketing company doing about $10M a year was paying for HubSpot and an outside software agency. I replaced both with a system the company owns. Leads, deals, tasks, billing, email and where each lead came from now live in one place, and one screen for each rep replaced four tools.
A home-equity lender was paying about $3,000 a month for HubSpot. Its new CRM checks every customer against five loan programs at once, and it costs under $300 a month to run.
When you shouldn’t switch
Sometimes the CRM is fine and the setup is the problem. A workflow is broken, nobody understands an automation, or someone rebuilds a report by hand every week. That’s a few hours of work, not a migration. On the intro call I’ll tell you which one you have, and if the answer is “keep what you have”, I’ll say so. If HubSpot is the CRM in question, here’s how to decide whether to leave it.
Before you decide
Write down three things before any call, with me or anyone else:
- What your team does by hand every week that the CRM should do for them.
- Every tool connected to your CRM today.
- What you pay per month now, including seats you’ve stopped using.
Those three answers decide most of the price and the timeline.
If you’d like a straight answer on your setup, book a free intro call.
- How much does a CRM migration cost?
- Mine start at $2,500. That covers your data moved and checked, the screens your team uses every day, and a written guide to running it. I quote a fixed price after a free one-hour intro call.
- How long does it take to switch CRMs?
- Usually 1–6 months from start to switch-over, depending on size. Your team keeps working in the old CRM the whole time.
- What does the new CRM cost each month?
- Usually $50–$300 a month for hosting, the database, and email and text services, paid to those providers in your company's name. Ongoing help from me is optional: part-time from $500 a month, or hourly.
- What if the developer who built it disappears?
- The code and every account are in your company's name, with a written guide to how it works, so another developer can take over.
Today I build CRMs for small and mid-size businesses.
If your team fights its CRM every day, I'll build one that fits how you sell. AI writes the code, and CRM migrations start at $2,500.