CRM, ERP or point solutions: what small service businesses actually need

It is not about how many people you are. It is about whether the chain holds: lead, quote, hours, invoice, margin. Run those five steps in five separate tools and you move data by hand and still cannot say what you earned.

A sole trader has that problem exactly as much as a business of thirty. For the sole trader it bites harder, because nobody else is there to catch it.

What follows: what separates the categories, what each route costs, and who each one suits.

What is the difference between CRM, ERP and accounting software?

CRM manages client relationships: contacts, leads, opportunities, communication. It ends when the deal closes.

Accounting software starts at the invoice: documents, payments, tax filing, handover to the accountant. It takes no interest in how the work was won.

ERP connects both and everything in between: quote, order, resources, time, materials, invoice, reporting. The term comes from manufacturing, which is why it carries a reputation for being large and expensive. For a small service business it does not have to be.

Time tracking and HR sit alongside as a fourth and fifth island in most businesses.

Between these categories lies a gap that most small service businesses fall into. They need the chain from lead to margin, but neither stock control nor production planning. That gap is what Pulse is built for.

Is a system worth it for a sole trader?

Yes, and sooner than for larger businesses.

Working alone means there is no colleague checking the CRM and no bookkeeper finding the document. What falls between systems is gone for good. Every hour spent transferring and looking things up is an hour nobody pays for. For a sole trader, working time is not one cost among several. It is the only one.

The arithmetic for one person, published list prices as of August 2026:

About €27 cheaper. And even so, quotes, projects and job costing still sit in a spreadsheet on the point-solution route, while Pulse brings them along.

The larger item appears on no price list: the time spent on handovers. At an internal cost rate of €63, half an hour a month costs around €32. Anyone moving data between three logins, hunting for documents and assembling hours for an invoice passes that quickly. That alone exceeds the price difference.

The spreadsheet on row four costs nothing but delivers no job costing either. Anyone wanting to know what a job returned works it out by hand. Or not at all.

HubSpot's CRM is of course also available free. With the free tier the point-solution route drops to roughly €17 a month, so the gap to Pulse widens rather than closes.

But the free tier ends where sales work begins: no serious reporting, a capped number of contacts, no email tracking. Anyone needing those features pays from around €90 per user per month at HubSpot. The step up is not gradual. It goes from nothing to more than a full Pulse plan. And HubSpot stores its data in the United States.

Anyone who gets by on the free CRM and does not need job costing is cheaper off that way. That is a legitimate choice, and it holds as long as both of those remain true.

One point does not show up in euros at all: anyone working alone eventually grows. When the first hire arrives, the question is no longer which system, only which plan.

When is a CRM enough and when do you need more?

A CRM is enough if your service is standardised, every invoice looks like the last one, and nobody needs to work out whether an individual job made money. Typical for retail and highly repetitive services.

A connected system pays off as soon as three conditions coincide:

You work in projects whose scope varies. Your costs are mostly working time. And you cannot say today which of your last five projects returned the most.

If all three apply, the question is no longer whether a system is worth it, only which one.

What does a landscape of point solutions really cost?

The obvious calculation is licences. Take a business with 15 people and the published list prices, as of August 2026:

The second-to-last row holds the actual finding: this landscape does not cover quotes, project control or job costing at all. That needs either another tool or, once again, the spreadsheet.

Then come the items that appear on no price list:

Add-ons. With Pipedrive, features such as LeadBooster from €32.50, Campaigns from €13.33 and Web Visitors from €41 per month are charged separately.

Contract lock-in. Personio works with a twelve-month minimum term plus a one-off implementation fee. Miss the notice period and you are committed for another year.

Where the data sits. HubSpot stores in the United States. Whether that bothers you is your call - for an accountancy holding client records, or a consultancy handling its clients' HR data, it usually does.

The handovers. The lead is in the CRM, the proposal in Word, the hours in a spreadsheet, the invoice in the accounting tool. Every transition is manual, and every manual step is a source of error. Anyone wanting to know whether a project paid off has to pull data from three systems. And therefore does not.

What does Pulse cost by comparison?

Pulse charges per business, not per head. That is the decisive difference.

Included in every plan: CRM and lead pipeline, quotes, projects, time tracking, sales and supplier invoices, job costing, HR, resource planning. No module surcharges, no add-on packs.

The direct comparison for 15 people, looking only at the CRM function:

That is around €15,430 difference a year, plus a view of your margins that did not exist before.

Growth amplifies the effect. Going from 15 people to 20, HubSpot Sales Hub Professional rises from €1,350 to €1,800 a month. Pulse rises from €250 to €264.95, that is five users at €2.99.

Anyone growing pays for every hire twice with per-seat tools: once in salary, once in licences. With three systems, three times.

Pipedrive and HubSpot are specialist sales tools and do things in CRM that Pulse does not cover: sophisticated email automation, lead scoring. Anyone running a pure sales team belongs there. The comparison above applies to businesses that sell and deliver and invoice.

Who is Pulse the right choice for?

Specifically, businesses that fit this picture:

One to thirty people in services, trades, consulting or design, starting at one.

Project work where scope and effort differ from job to job.

Working time as the main cost: you sell capability, not goods.

A wish to know after every project what was left over, without assembling data from three systems to find out.

Data held in Europe as a requirement, not a preference. Pulse runs in Frankfurt, operated by a Swiss provider, with a data processing agreement and a complete list of subprocessors.

What Pulse is built for

Pulse is built for businesses whose product is working time. The entire feature set follows that chain: from enquiry through quote, project and recorded hours to invoice and margin.

What lies outside that chain, Pulse does not cover today: stock control with inventory, and production planning with bills of materials. Nor payroll itself. Pulse manages HR records, absences and hours, while the payroll run stays with your accountant or payroll bureau, as it does for most businesses this size anyway.

Anyone buying and selling goods, or manufacturing, will find a better fit elsewhere. Anyone selling services will find everything the chain needs.

Which system fits which case?

You work alone and mainly need invoices and document storage. An accounting tool such as sevdesk or Lexware Office is enough. You do not need a CRM yet.

You sell but do not deliver the work yourself. Pipedrive for a lean start, HubSpot if automation and reporting matter.

You trade in goods or manufacture. A system with stock control. Pulse does not cover that.

You need payroll in the same system. Lexware Office with its payroll module, or Personio if HR processes are the focus.

You work in projects, sell working time, want to know after every job what was left over, and you want your data held in Europe. Pulse. That is what it is built for.

How to make the decision

Calculate total cost, not licence prices. Add up every tool currently in the chain, including add-ons. Then add the time spent each month moving data between them, valued at your internal cost rate.

Check the lock-in before you compare the price. Twelve months minimum plus an implementation fee is a different offer from a monthly subscription, even at the same monthly price.

Test with real data, not sample data. Take one completed project and reproduce it end to end: quote, hours, supplier documents, invoice. After that you know whether the chain holds.

Ask what happens if you want to leave. Exportability is not a side issue. A system you cannot get your data out of costs more than any monthly fee. In Pulse every list exports to CSV.

---

All third-party prices are published list prices as of August 2026, excluding VAT, and are subject to change. Personio does not publish list prices; the figure given is drawn from publicly available comparison sites and is an approximation. Clockify prices are in US dollars, converted approximately here. Check prices with the respective vendor before deciding.