Guides
A custom CRM built in the UK typically costs between £120,000 and £400,000 or more, depending on integration count, user numbers, compliance scope and how much of your record model departs from a standard sales pipeline. The figure below is the range we see across our own quoted projects, not a marketing floor.
£120k–£400k+
A £120,000 build is a genuine, fully working CRM for a single team with one or two integrations. A £400,000 build is a multi-entity platform with five or more integrations, workflow automation and a regulated audit trail. Most projects land between £180,000 and £280,000; below and above that band you are usually at one of the extremes described in the worked examples further down.
What moves the number
These are the factors that account for most of the variation between a £120,000 build and a £400,000 one. Integration count and compliance scope usually do the most damage to an optimistic early estimate, because they are the hardest to see from a requirements document alone.
| Cost driver | Low end | High end | Indicative impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integration count | One or two systems (email, telephony) with a documented API. | Six or more systems, including legacy platforms with no API and finance or ERP systems requiring two-way sync. | Each additional non-trivial integration typically adds £8,000–£25,000. |
| User count | Under 30 named users, one role structure, one office. | 200+ users across multiple teams or regions with distinct permission sets and record visibility rules. | Drives permissioning and UI complexity more than raw licence cost; adds £10,000–£40,000 at the high end. |
| Compliance scope | General GDPR obligations only, no sector-specific regulation. | PECR consent tracking, FCA-adjacent conduct rules, or sector audit requirements needing traceable records. | Adds £10,000–£35,000 for the audit trail, consent model and reporting this requires. |
| Data migration volume | A single clean export from one existing system, under 50,000 records. | Multiple sources, duplicate and conflicting records, decades of spreadsheet history to reconcile. | £5,000 for a clean single-source load; £30,000–£60,000 for multi-source reconciliation. Priced separately from the build. |
| Design complexity | Standard forms, lists and dashboards using established UI patterns. | Custom pipeline visualisations, portfolio roll-ups, map-based views or a partner-facing front end alongside the internal CRM. | Adds £15,000–£50,000 depending on how much bespoke interaction design is needed. |
| Ongoing support | Business-hours bug fixing on a retainer, reviewed quarterly. | 24/7 on-call cover with defined response times and a dedicated support engineer. | Not part of the build cost; typically 15–20% of the original build cost per year. |
Three budget levels
£120,000–£160,000
A single-entity sales and account management CRM for a business with one sales team and one office. Core record model (accounts, contacts, opportunities, activities), one integration with an email platform, standard reporting dashboard, role-based permissions for two user types.
Timeline
12–14 weeks
Team shape
1 tech lead, 2 full-stack engineers, 1 part-time designer, 1 part-time QA engineer
£220,000–£280,000
A CRM for a multi-team business with a portfolio-based record model (accounts with multiple linked sites or contracts), two to three integrations including a finance system, commission or margin calculation logic, and a client-facing portal for status visibility.
Timeline
18–22 weeks
Team shape
1 tech lead, 3 full-stack engineers, 1 integration engineer, 1 designer, 1 QA engineer, 0.3 project manager
£400,000+
A multi-entity platform serving several business units or geographies with distinct permission and data-isolation requirements, five or more integrations including legacy systems without modern APIs, workflow automation with approval chains, and a full audit trail for a regulated sales process.
Timeline
28–36 weeks for the first release, followed by phased rollout
Team shape
1 principal engineer, 1 tech lead, 4–5 full-stack engineers, 1 integration engineer, 1 data engineer, 1 designer, 2 QA engineers, 0.5 project manager
Team shapes assume UK consultancy day rates in the region of £550–£750 for a tech lead or principal engineer, £450–£600 for a full-stack engineer, and £400–£550 for a designer or QA engineer, blended across the delivery team and location mix across the UK, Germany and Pakistan.
Not included
Where the money goes
Across every band in this guide, roughly 10–15% of the total cost sits in the discovery and scoping phase, where the record model, integration inventory and data quality baseline are established. Skipping or shortening this phase does not reduce total cost; it moves risk into the build phase, where a wrong assumption about a field mapping or a permission rule is far more expensive to unpick.
The remainder splits roughly 55–65% into build (engineering and design), 10–15% into integration work specifically (which we separate from general build because its cost depends on the other system's API, not ours), and 10–15% into testing and hardening before go-live. A CRM handling financial or personal data at any scale needs a dedicated QA pass beyond unit testing: permission-boundary testing, so a user genuinely cannot see records outside their role, and data-integrity testing after bulk import.
A common mistake in early budgeting is to treat "the CRM" as a single line item and reporting, exports, and admin tooling as free additions. In practice, a reporting layer that lets sales leadership build their own dashboards without engineering involvement is a meaningful piece of scope in its own right, and belongs in the estimate from the start rather than being negotiated in as a change request once the team is already three months into the build.
How we produce an estimate
These ranges are indicative, not quotes. A real estimate comes from a discovery and scoping sprint, where we map your systems, review your data and produce a phased estimate with a stated confidence level for each phase. See our CRM and portal development service for how we structure the build itself, and our build vs buy guide if you have not yet ruled out a configured off-the-shelf platform.
If your CRM is for an energy brokerage or a healthcare provider, our sector-specific guides give tighter numbers: see energy broker CRM cost and broker CRM development.
Questions
It is a fully working, single-team CRM covering the core record model, one or two integrations and standard reporting. It is not a demo, but it will not have advanced workflow automation, a partner-facing portal or multi-entity data isolation. Those come with the higher bands.
It usually does not, once you add the configuration, integration and customisation day rate that a serious off-the-shelf rollout also needs. The difference is where the money goes: with a platform licence you pay ongoing per-seat fees indefinitely; with a custom build you pay once for the build and own the result outright.
List every system that currently holds a version of the customer or account record: finance, telephony, email marketing, a quoting tool, an existing spreadsheet register. Each one is a scoping question, not an afterthought, and each one moves the estimate.
Yes. Data migration is priced separately from the build because its cost depends on the state of the source data, not the target system. A single clean export is a few days' work; ten years of inconsistent spreadsheets from different regional offices is a project in its own right.
Both, depending on what the discovery sprint recommends. A platform base can be faster for standard sales-pipeline CRMs; a fully bespoke build is usually right when your record model does not map to a generic object graph, which is common in regulated or portfolio-based businesses.
Twelve to twenty weeks for the first release across the bands in this guide, followed by shorter iterative releases. The examples below give week counts for three budget levels.
You need a support and maintenance arrangement for bug fixes, security patching and small enhancements. This is quoted separately and is not included in the build ranges below.
Tell us how many systems it needs to talk to and we will tell you which band you are in.
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