What business software really costs over five years

You searched for the price of an accounting system, an ERP or production software, and found two kinds of answer: a small monthly figure per user with an asterisk, or "contact us for a quote". Neither tells you what you actually want to know, which is how much money this decision will take out of the business, so you can budget for it and compare one option with another fairly.

That number exists, but it is not on any pricing page. It is the total cost of owning the software over the years you will use it. This article shows you how the prices you see are structured, which costs sit outside them, and how to build a five-year figure for each option so the comparison is honest.

If what you are pricing is a system built specifically for you, what a custom system costs, and why estimates differ covers how that kind of quote is put together. This article is about the full picture for any option, ready-made or custom.

How software is priced

Almost every business program is sold on one of a few models, or a mix of them.

• Subscription per user. A fixed amount per user per month, usually billed monthly or yearly. The most common model for cloud software. Read the definition of a user carefully: a named user is one specific person; a concurrent user is one seat that anyone can use when it is free. Some vendors price different kinds of user differently — a full user and a limited or read-only user.
• Subscription per module or per plan. The price depends on which applications or which tier you choose. Features you need may sit only in a higher tier.
• Perpetual licence plus maintenance. You pay once for the right to use a version, then a yearly maintenance fee — often a percentage of the licence — for updates and support. Stop paying and you keep the version you have, but not updates.
• Open-source or community editions. The licence costs nothing. Everything else — implementation, hosting, support, upgrades — is paid for, by you or by a partner.
• Custom development. A price for building the system, then a support and hosting arrangement afterwards.
• Where it runs. The same product can be priced differently in the vendor's cloud and on your own servers, and the cost of the servers, backups and administration moves to you in the second case.

Vendors publish their models on their pricing pages; read them for the structure, not only for the headline figure, and check what the price includes before you compare.

The costs that are not on the pricing page

The subscription or licence is often the smaller part of the total. These are the lines to add.

• Implementation. Configuring the system to your processes, setting up charts of accounts, products, routings, users and permissions. Usually done by the vendor or a partner, priced by days.
• Data migration. Moving customers, suppliers, products, opening balances and open orders from what you use today. Cleaning the data is usually the larger part of the work.
• Customisation. Anything that needs development. Remember that it has to be carried through every future upgrade; how to decide between Odoo and a custom system explains why that turns a one-time cost into a recurring one.
• Integrations. Connecting to your e-invoicing, your online store, your bank, your payment gateway, your machines.
• Training. For the first users, and again whenever staff change.
• Hardware. Tablets or phones for the floor, barcode scanners, label and receipt printers, a server if you host it yourself.
• Hosting and infrastructure. Servers, backups, domains, security certificates, and someone to administer them.
• Support. A support contract, and what it does and does not cover.
• Your own staff's time. People taken off their normal work to test, migrate and learn. It is real cost even though no invoice arrives for it.
• Renewal increases. Subscription prices rise. Ask how much they have risen in the past and whether the contract caps it.
• Currency. If the price is set in dollars and your revenue is in pounds, the cost in pounds moves with the exchange rate.
• Leaving. Exporting your data and moving to something else, if you ever have to.

An old system is not free either

If you are thinking of staying on an old desktop program because it is paid for, count what it costs to keep. Many older programs run only on older versions of Windows. Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 on 14 October 2025, which means no more security updates for the computers still running it unless they are covered by a paid extended-support arrangement. Keeping an old system alive can mean keeping unsupported computers on your network, paying for extended support, or replacing the computers and finding the old program will not install on the new ones. Put those costs in its column, along with the hours spent re-entering data it cannot share.

Build a five-year figure for each option

Put every option in the same table, one row per cost, one column per year. Use your own quotes; the structure is what matters.

Two habits make the table honest. Grow the number of users with your plans, not with today's headcount. And price the first upgrade explicitly, because it is where hidden customisation costs appear.

Then look at the shape, not only the total. A subscription spreads cost evenly and keeps rising. A licence or a custom build is heavy in the first year and lighter afterwards. Which suits you depends on your cash flow as much as on the total.

Getting quotes you can actually compare

"Contact us for a quote" is usually honest: the price depends on scope. You can make the quotes comparable by controlling what you send.

• Send every vendor the same description of your business and the same list of scenarios the system has to handle. Comparing business software on evidence explains how to write them.
• Ask for an itemised quote with the lines in the table above, and a five-year total.
• Ask what is not included, in writing.
• Ask what happens to the price when you add ten users, a second branch or a second factory.
• Ask whether any part of the quote depends on assumptions about your data or processes that have not been checked yet.

Questions to ask about price

• What exactly counts as a user, and are there cheaper user types?
• Which features in our scenarios sit in which plan?
• How much has the price risen at renewal over the last three years, and is there a cap in the contract?
• What currency is it billed in?
• What does the support contract cover, and what is billed separately?
• What does it cost to export all our data and leave?

The next step

Pick the two or three options you are seriously considering and fill in the table for each, even with estimates. Where you cannot fill a line, that is the question to ask the vendor. If you want a system built for you priced on the same basis, so that it can be compared line by line with the packages, Softwiro will quote it that way.

Sources

• Odoo pricing — Odoo S.A. An example of per-user, per-month pricing in plans.
• Dynamics 365 Business Central pricing — Microsoft. Per-user subscription, with cheaper licences for limited "team member" users.
• Windows 10 support has ended on October 14, 2025 — Microsoft Support.
• What is total cost of ownership (TCO)? — IBM. The total cost of a product over its whole life, direct and indirect.