Per-seat pricing is designed to look small. $7.25 a month for chat. $17 a month for projects. $10 for docs. Nobody balks at any one of them.
The problem is that you're not buying one, and you're not buying it for one person. Every tool multiplies by head count, and every new hire adds a line to five bills at once. For a small service business, where margins depend on keeping overhead flat as you grow, it's worth doing the arithmetic once.
The prices
These are list prices from each vendor's own pricing page, checked in November 2026, per user per month. Vendors change these often, so check before you budget.
| Tool | Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slack | Pro | $7.25 | $8.75 |
| Slack | Business+ | $15 | $18 |
| ClickUp | Core | $9 | not listed |
| ClickUp | Business | $17 | not listed |
| Notion | Plus | $10 (as listed) | — |
| Google Workspace | Business Standard | $14 | — |
| Zoom Workplace | Pro | $14.16 | $16.99 |
A few notes. ClickUp lists yearly prices only, shown next to a higher "regular price". Notion shows $10 for Plus and says yearly billing saves up to 20%, but doesn't break out both figures. Google Workspace lists the same figure for annual and flexible plans on its main page.
A typical agency stack, worked out
Here's a common setup for a small agency or studio: Slack Pro for chat, ClickUp Business for projects and time, Notion Plus for the wiki and docs, Google Workspace for email and calendar, and Zoom Pro for the three people who run client calls. Annual billing throughout.
12 people
| Tool | Seats | Per seat | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slack Pro | 12 | $7.25 | $87.00 |
| ClickUp Business | 12 | $17.00 | $204.00 |
| Notion Plus | 12 | $10.00 | $120.00 |
| Google Workspace Standard | 12 | $14.00 | $168.00 |
| Zoom Pro | 3 | $14.16 | $42.48 |
| Total | $621.48 |
$621.48 a month × 12 months = $7,457.76 a year
$621.48 ÷ 12 people = $51.79 per person per month
So about $620 per person per year for the basics, before add-ons.
As you grow
| Team size | Monthly | Yearly | Per person / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 | $621.48 | $7,457.76 | $51.79 |
| 20 | $1,007.48 | $12,089.76 | $50.37 |
| 30 | $1,489.98 | $17,879.76 | $49.67 |
The per-person figure barely moves, which is the point of per-seat pricing: your software bill grows in a straight line with head count. Every hire costs about $600 a year in tools before they've done any work. Hire ten people over a year and you've added roughly $6,000 to overhead without noticing.
If you need the next tier
Move Slack to Business+ ($15) and the 20-person stack rises by $155 a month, or $1,860 a year. Tier upgrades usually happen for one feature (longer history, SSO, more admin control) and apply to every seat.
The costs that don't show on the pricing page
The table above is the floor. Real bills are usually higher, for reasons that are easy to miss.
Seats nobody uses. Someone leaves, and their seats stay active for two months because nobody remembers to remove them from five tools. On a team with normal turnover, that adds up.
Contractors and freelancers. You bring in a freelance developer for six weeks. They need chat, tasks and docs, which may mean three paid seats for a temporary person. Guest access helps on some plans, with limits.
AI add-ons. Several tools now charge separately for AI features or usage credits on top of the seat. ClickUp, for example, lists extra AI credits at $10 per 10,000. These are easy to switch on and hard to forecast.
Overlap. Most stacks pay twice for some jobs. Comments in ClickUp and threads in Slack about the same task. Docs in Notion and docs in Google Drive. Meeting links from both Zoom and Google Meet, which comes with Workspace.
Integration glue. Zapier or similar to make the tools talk to each other, often another subscription, and someone's time to keep it working.
Switching time. Harder to price, but real. Status lives in one tool, the conversation about it in another, the file in a third. Every "where did we discuss this?" is a small tax.
How to audit your own stack in an hour
- List every tool you pay for, with plan and seat count. Your card statement for the last three months is the fastest source.
- Compare seats to people. Count active staff and contractors. Any tool with more seats than people has leavers on it.
- Mark overlap. For each job (chat, tasks, docs, calls, time tracking), write which tools do it. Anything with two tools is a candidate to cut.
- Check usage. Most admin panels show last-active dates. Seats not used in 30 days can usually go or move to a free or guest tier.
- Calculate per person. Total monthly spend divided by head count. Write the number down and check it again in six months.
Ways to bring it down
Remove seats on the day people leave. Make it a line on your offboarding checklist, for every tool.
Put occasional users on free or guest tiers. A client who reads one channel doesn't need a full seat.
Drop one tool per job. If you have Google Workspace, you already have Meet; whether you still need Zoom depends on your clients. If your project tool has docs, check whether the wiki needs a separate subscription.
Look at flat-priced tools. Some tools now charge a flat monthly price regardless of team size. Basecamp moved to flat pricing in September 2026, and Suprwork is priced the same way: one monthly price, with everyone on the team included. Suprwork covers team chat and projects and time tracking in one place, so on the 12-person example above it would stand in for the Slack and ClickUp lines ($291 a month together) at $99 a month on the Basic plan. You'd still need Google Workspace for email and a video provider for calls, since Suprwork's huddles create a meeting in your own Meet, Zoom or Teams account.
Flat pricing isn't automatically cheaper. For a team of three, per-seat tools on their lower tiers can cost less. The crossover depends on head count and which tiers you actually need, so run your own numbers.
When per-seat pricing is fine
To be fair to per-seat tools: if your team is small and stable, the bill is predictable and the tools are very good at what they do. Slack's integrations and ClickUp's customisation are deep. If you rely on those, the cost may be worth it.
Per-seat pricing hurts most when you're growing, when you use contractors, or when you're paying for two tools that do overlapping jobs. If any of those describe you, it's worth an hour with a spreadsheet.
This week
Pull last month's card statement and list every software line. Divide the total by your head count. If the answer is over $50 a person, look first for seats belonging to people who've left, then for jobs you're paying two tools to do.