How Much Does It Cost To Start A Crm Business? (In 2025)

"It took 2 years of development before we had a minimum viable product (MVP)."

Lars Helgeson is the founder of GreenRope, a CRM and marketing automation platform that started in 2000 and has grown to serve over 1,000 customers in more than 20 countries.

"Another aspect to consider when launching a business is time and resources. In our case, it took close to 8 months to make a suitable version of our product and be able to sell it to the public with just two developers in the team."

Erick Vargas is the founder of Followup CRM, a CRM business tailored for the construction industry that helps companies organize sales, convert more leads into jobs, and win high-margin bids.

*"With one colleague, Robert Houdart, we offered to buy our former company and we were supported by a business angel. We kept learning about CRM... In 2005, we sold this first company and left with some money and the idea to create a new company just afterward. We wanted a European CRM solution highly customizable, easily upgradable and 100% SaaS-based. Here we had our specifications! We just had to do it… Concerning our financial situation, as I wrote, we had some money in our pocket after the first exit. That’s an important point in my opinion. On my side, I chose not to get paid during several months but this might not be possible in every situation: in my opinion, financial comfort (=not having to worry about paying the mortgage or food, nothing too fancy!!!) is important when you create your own business." *

Cédric Pierrard is the founder of Efficy, a CRM software company that has grown to dominate the European market with its customizable and efficient CRM solutions.

"We used probably 80k€ to get a product and 500k€ to break even."

Sunny Paris is the co-founder of noCRM.io, a Lead Management Software business launched in 2014 that has grown to $2.4M in annual recurring revenue and $200K in average monthly revenue.

"Knowing we would need to invest several million pounds into the business before we would even make any sales, we put together an investment document and presentation and then pretty much hit the road trying to raise seed capital."

John Cheney is the founder of Workbooks, a cloud-based CRM and business application platform that started in 2008.

"There were only three of us and we bootstrapped our startup by equally investing our own savings into it."

Oleksii Avramenko is one of the founders of EspoCRM, an open-source CRM application that helps businesses with sales, marketing, and support functionalities.

"The MVP took just 2 weeks to build and cost only $400. I registered the domain and it cost $12.99. It really didn't cost much."

Abhishek A Agrawal is the founder of Integrately, a 1-click integration platform, and CompanyHub, the world's easiest CRM, which helps users automate their processes efficiently.

"Expenses in First Year (2019): The company had $130,000 in expenses. Initial Funding: Groundhogg was funded with a loan from the founder’s family."

Adrian Tobey is the founder of Groundhogg, a WordPress plugin development business that addresses the needs of small businesses with a self-hosted CRM and marketing automation tool.

"The MVP took just 2 weeks to build and cost only $400. I registered the domain and it cost $12.99. It really didn't cost much."

Adam Guild is the founder of Owner.com, a company that provides a data-rich online ordering system for restaurants, helping them to reduce third-party fees and retain customer data.

"We started work in August 2015 and by February 2016 we were ready to launch version 1 of Studio Ninja to the world, and we were also very broke."

Chris Garbacz is the co-founder of Studio Ninja, a photography business management app that helps photographers manage their leads, clients, shoots, invoices, and more.