How Much Does It Cost To Build a CRM System?

Originally published at Ascendix Tech's blog.

The worldwide CRM software market is expected to reach over $43 bln by 2024 with a CAGR of 0.4% per year, according to Statista.

These numbers mean that more and more companies continue to invest large funds into improving their lead generation funnels, customer service, lead-to-deal rates, and other activities through purchasing or building a powerful CRM system.

Today, we want to discuss how much does it cost to build a CRM system comparing both ready-made solutions and custom CRM software for your business.

Let’s get down to business.

Custom CRM Development vs Ready-Made Solutions

Before getting right into discussing the CRM development cost, we want to briefly shed the light on the key options you have to get a customer relationship management system for your business.

Generally, there are three of them:

• Develop custom CRM from scratch

• Customize existing CRM solutions (i.e., on top of Salesforce or Dynamics 365)

• Purchase a ready-made CRM software license

Let’s now highlight the pros and cons of each solution and then compare them by the same criteria.

Custom CRM Development

Pros

• High system performance level

• High compatibility in terms of integrations with any third-party platforms you need

• High data security level using the latest encryption protocols

• High flexibility by building a single IT infrastructure for all departments

• Cost-efficient solution in the long run.

Cons

• High initial price for building and setting up the system

• Much time required to create a CRM from scratch

• Costly maintenance.

CRM Customization

Pros

• Cost savings as you need only to build several specific features on top of ready-made solutions

• Save much time as most features and infrastructures are preliminary ready for use

• Avoid much technical issues

• Get enough customizability and flexibility for your business

• Frequent platform updates automatically.

Cons

• You still need to purchase licenses for each new CRM user

• You still don’t get full flexibility in terms of features and integrations.

Off-The-Shelf CRM Systems

Pros

• Save much time and start using a CRM within a couple of minutes/hours

• Lots of features out-of-the-box

• Existing integrations with third-party tools

Cons

• Low flexibility level

• Extra funds on the functionality you may never use

• High CRM development cost in the long run

• Limited customization opportunities

• Potential scalability issues in the future.

Let’s now dive into a more detailed comparison of the mentioned options covering and cover the most crucial aspects for your business.

CRM Development Cost: Key Price Components

Now we want to share the core CRM system modules that will impact the final CRM development cost. This way, you will have a better understanding of the key components that should complement your CRM system so that you know what you’re paying for.

Admin Panel

This is a cornerstone of your future custom CRM software which is responsible for system rights management, authorization processes, navigation, and account settings.

So, software engineers will need to develop advanced server-side logic and features to make server request architecture as fast as possible.

Moreover, development teams will need to create an easy-to-use and lightweight user interface to offer your employees easy-to-use and advanced CRM software user experience.

Sales Module

Sales functionality block is one of the most crucial parts of your CRM system as it empowers your sales managers to automate their daily workflows and utilize contacts management, task management, get sales data analytics, and many other features.

Marketing Module

CRM software is a must-have system for your marketing department as well.

Marketers create personalized customer profiles, analyze market segments, verify the quality of leads they generate, and build powerful email campaigns for leads and contacts stored in your CRM software.

Customer Support Module

Your custom CRM software should provide an advanced customer support functionality block.

In general, it includes a help desk, agent console, knowledge base portal, service analytics, case report and management, cloud-based data storage, and many other features.

So, we have discussed the most default features and modules of your custom CRM software. And here comes the question: ‘how much does it cost to build a CRM?’

Below is the list of technical specialists required to build the functionality blocks listed above:

• Frontend developers

• Backend developers

• Technical team leads

• UI/UX designers

• Project managers

• QA testing engineers

• DevOps specialists

• Business analysts.

Now you have a better understanding of the technical specialists that will most likely take part in building, testing, designing, and controlling your custom CRM development project.

In terms of the CRM development cost, it may greatly vary depending on the complexity and number of features you need.

You will have a more clear understanding after conducting a discovery phase or requesting an estimate from a CRM development company that you want to partner with.

Generally, an approximate custom CRM software development starts from $50,000 building must-have functionality.

Final Words

Custom CRM development cost is a complex and multicomponent term which should be estimated based on your business challenges and technical needs.

If you want to learn more details, check the full blog article CRM Development Cost: Ready-Made Solutions vs Custom CRM Software.