Ask a founder what's going wrong and you won't hear about software. You'll hear that the roadmap slipped, that nobody remembers why pricing changed, that a good engineer looks tired, that cash is lower than expected, and that a big customer went quiet. Those are five separate management jobs, and no product does all five equally well.
So we've sorted this page by the job. We sell Nautis, which touches all five and goes deep in none, so read our opinions knowing that. We read every other vendor's own site on 2 November 2026. We didn't test or score anything.
What software do you actually need to manage a startup?
Less than vendors suggest. The software to manage a startup of five people could be open in one browser window, and most of it can start at $0. A team of 40 needs more, mainly because no founder can see everything any longer and the tools have to do the seeing.
| Job | 5 people | 15 people | 40 people |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tasks and goals | One shared board, with one owner per task | Boards per team, plus a written quarterly goal | Goals linked to projects, visible company-wide |
| Decisions | A running doc | A log with a review date on each entry | The same log, with an owner per function |
| People | A payroll provider and a one-page roster | Add a one-on-one tool and an onboarding checklist | HR system, reviews and a compensation record |
| Money | Accounting software and a business account | Add expense policy and bill approvals | Add budgets per team and a finance owner |
| Customers | A $0 CRM, used by whoever sells | A paid CRM with a defined pipeline | CRM permissions, reporting and a data owner |
Treat those headcounts as rough. A 15-person company with three employees and twelve contractors needs a different people setup from one with fifteen staff in one city. The guide to your first 10 employees covers that earlier stretch, and startup management tools looks at the meetings these tools are meant to support.
How we chose, and what we didn't do
- Selection: one to three products per job, picked because they publish enough to describe. Many good tools aren't here.
- Evidence: vendors' own pricing and product pages, read once on 2 November 2026. Prices are as of November 2026 in US dollars, before tax.
- Not done: no hands-on testing, no scores, no customer interviews. Nothing is ordered by quality.
- Couldn't confirm: We couldn't read the sites of Gusto and Pipedrive, or Linear's pricing page. We say what we could find, and we don't quote prices we didn't read.
- Sibling pages: for products sorted by stage, see the all-in-one roundup. For products sorted by management method, see the business OS roundup.
Managing tasks and goals
The failure here is usually ownership. A task with two owners has none. Pick the plainest tool your team will open daily, and resist building a system with more fields than people.
Asana
Asana's Personal version costs $0 but allows only 2 seats per project and team, so a team of five will outgrow it quickly. Starter is $10.99 a user a month billed annually, or $13.49 monthly. Goals appear in the feature list at Advanced, $24.99 billed annually or $30.49 monthly, which is a big step per head. It suits a mixed team where non-engineers run projects. Decide whether you need Goals in the tool at all, because a one-page doc does the same job until about 30 people.
Linear
Linear's documentation confirms a $0 version, paid Basic and Business plans billed monthly or yearly per unsuspended user, and Enterprise on yearly terms. We couldn't read its pricing page, so we can't quote a price. The docs also say that if you cancel with more than 250 issues, you can no longer create new ones, so plan for that when testing it.
Nautis Task Boards
Task Boards group work into themed boards, each with tasks, assignees, due dates, a progress bar and a discussion thread. The Chief of Staff's morning Briefing scans them along with the rest of the workspace. Nautis has no OKR tracker and doesn't enforce a method. If you want cascading goals, use the OKR generator to write them and a tool built for them to track them.
Managing decisions
This is the job where you need software least, and it's the one most startups skip. Six months after a call, nobody recalls why it was made, so the argument happens again. Start with a shared doc and five fields: what we decided, who decided, why, what has to be true for it to work, and when we'll check.
Most task tools don't help much with this. Meeting tools help a little: Fellow captures AI notes and action items, from $7 a user a month billed annually, or $11 monthly. Its pricing page doesn't mention decisions, though, so you'd still be keeping the list yourself.
Products with a decision record
Founders OS names a decision journal among its features, inside a wider method for companies earning $250K to $10M. The Nautis Decision Loop logs a title, a category, confidence as Low, Medium or High, and whether the call is reversible. It asks you to come back in 30, 60 or 90 days and record the outcome as better than, as, or worse than expected. Entries logged during a high-stress week get a badge, drawn from Burnout Radar. It's a small module, and useful if you'll actually do the reviews. If you won't, a dedicated log will rot just as fast as a doc.
Managing people
Split this in two. Paying people correctly is a compliance job, and you should buy a specialist. Keeping people well managed is a habit, and software only prompts it.
Paying people: Rippling and Deel
Rippling says plans start at $8 per employee a month plus a monthly base fee it doesn't state, and payroll is quote-based. Eligible US venture-backed startups can get 6 months free. It suits a company wanting HR, IT and spend in one system. Deel suits cross-border teams: $49 per contractor a month, $599 per employer-of-record employee and $125 per US PEO employee, month to month. We couldn't read Gusto's site, so we can't quote it directly. Xero sells a payroll add-on powered by Gusto at $36 a month plus $6 per person.
Managing people well: 15Five and Lattice
15Five's Perform plan is $11 a user a month billed annually and includes one-on-one agendas, weekly check-ins, reviews and goals. It lists no seat minimum for core plans. Lattice charges $10 a seat for Performance and $8 for Goals & OKRs, and each includes one-on-ones and weekly updates. Its $4,000 yearly minimum changes the sums. On our reading, Performance reaches that minimum at about 34 seats, so a 15-person team pays well above the list rate per head. Ask Lattice to confirm.
Nautis people tools
Employee Management holds records, compensation history, leave and pay runs. Process marks a run as paid, but Nautis doesn't move money or file statutory payroll, so you still need a provider. Burnout Radar is a private weekly check-in of six questions that gives a 0 to 100 score, and it isn't shared or used for performance review. The guides don't document a one-on-one or review tool, so at 40 people choose one of the two above.
Managing money
A founder needs two numbers quickly: cash today and months of runway. Good books feed both. Ask your accountant which package they already use before you pick, because their answer usually settles it.
Xero and QuickBooks Online
Xero's US plans are $27 a month for Early, which caps you at 20 invoices and 5 bills, then $59 for Growing and $97 for Established, with no per-user licence fees. QuickBooks Online lists $38 for Simple Start with 1 user, $85 for Essentials with 3, $140 for Plus with 5 and $340 for Advanced with 25. Both were discounting new customers when we read them, so check what you'd pay after the promotion. The user limits matter more than the first-year price if several people need access.
Mercury and Brex
These control spending, which accounting software only records. Mercury's base tier is $0 a month, with Plus at $29.90 and Pro at $299. It says plainly that it's a fintech and not an FDIC-insured bank, with banking through partner banks. Brex lists Essentials at $0 per user and Premium at $12 per user a month, adding expense policies and approval chains. Choose by how many people spend company money.
Nautis finance modules
Startup Health takes a monthly check-in of cash, MRR and burn, then shows runway and raises alerts, for example when runway falls below 6 months. Nautis also has customer invoicing and expense tracking with approval chains. It has no bookkeeping or tax filing, so it sits next to Xero or QuickBooks and doesn't replace them. If you only want the sums, the runway calculator costs nothing.
Managing customers
Until someone other than a founder sells, a CRM's job is to stop a warm conversation going cold. Almost any tool will do that if you log the next step on every deal.
HubSpot and Attio
HubSpot's free tools cover 2 users and 1,000 contacts with no time limit. Starter shows $7 a seat billed annually upfront or $10 monthly as a limited-time rate for new customers, against a regular $20. Attio has a $0 version for up to 3 seats, then Plus at $35 a user a month billed annually or $44 monthly, and Pro at $79 or $99. HubSpot makes more sense when marketing and sales share one record. Attio's data model suits a team that wants to shape its own objects. We couldn't read Pipedrive's site, so it isn't priced here.
Nautis Leads CRM
The Leads CRM runs pipelines with custom stages and shows pipeline value and win rates, separately from the Investor CRM. Pipelines are limited on the Launch plan, so check the plans. A dedicated CRM will go deeper. The argument for ours is that deals appear in the same morning Briefing as cash and tasks, which matters only if you keep the rest of the company in Nautis too.
One illustrative set of picks at each size
To show how the bill changes, here is one possible combination at each size, using regular prices we read today. These sets are examples for scale and not recommendations, and your sellers, plans and billing terms will differ. A doc for decisions adds nothing to the total. For full stacks and their monthly totals, see the startup software stack page.
| Team | Example set | Monthly total | Per person |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 people | Notion Plus $50, Xero Early $27, Xero Payroll $66, HubSpot $0, Mercury $0 | $143 | About $29 |
| 15 people | Asana Starter $164.85, Fellow Team $105, Xero Growing $59, Xero Payroll $126, HubSpot Starter 4 seats $40 | $494.85 | About $33 |
| 40 people | Asana Advanced $999.60, 15Five Perform $440, Xero Established $97, Rippling from $320, Attio Pro 8 seats $632 | From $2,488.60, plus Rippling's base fee | About $62 or more |
Cost per head roughly doubles between 15 and 40, and the reason is per-seat goal and performance tools rolled out to everyone. Before you add one, ask whether a smaller group could use it. HubSpot's rate above is the limited-time monthly one, so model the $20 regular price too.
Can one product do all five jobs?
Partly, and at a price in depth. Suites and startup workspaces reduce the joining-up work, while specialist tools do more in each job. Nautis is one attempt: all five jobs sit in one workspace, with a Chief of Staff reading across them, at $49, $99 or $129 a month for 5, 10 or 25 members as of November 2026, with a 14-day trial. Below about 25 people that flat price is simple to plan around. Fleet stops at 25 members, so a 40-person company is past our published plans and should look at the specialists above. It's also a young product that launched publicly in July 2026, and it isn't an accounting system or a payroll provider.
Our page on the startup management platform looks at how needs change with headcount, and startup operating systems sorts the products that claim the whole job.
Symptoms that say it's time to add a tool
Buy on the symptom and not the headcount. If you can't match a purchase to a line below, wait a month.
| What you notice | Job | What to add |
|---|---|---|
| A task gets done twice, or not at all | Tasks | A shared board with one owner per task |
| A new hire asks why you did something and nobody knows | Decisions | A decision log with review dates |
| One-on-ones keep getting cancelled | People | A one-on-one tool, or a recurring invite with an agenda doc |
| The first honest conversation about performance comes at resignation | People | A light review cycle, twice a year |
| Your runway figure takes a day to produce | Money | Accounting software, closed monthly, plus a monthly check-in |
| A deal goes quiet for three weeks and nobody sees it | Customers | A pipeline with a next step and a date on every deal |
| Founders spend hours each week chasing status | Several | A shared workspace, or an agent reading across your tools |
FAQ
What does "best startup management software" mean in practice?
It means the tool that handles the job costing you the most right now, at your size. Tasks, decisions, people, money and customers each need something different. A set of three cheap tools used daily will beat an expensive suite that nobody opens.
What software do I need to manage a 5-person startup?
A shared task board, accounting software, a payroll provider, a $0 CRM and a written decision log. One illustrative set came to about $143 a month as of November 2026. Most teams this size don't need HR or performance software yet.
When should a startup buy performance management software?
Usually when managers appear, which is often somewhere between 15 and 40 people. Before that, a recurring one-on-one with an agenda doc does most of the work. Check for minimums first, since Lattice has a $4,000 yearly minimum while 15Five lists no seat minimum on its core plans as of November 2026.
Is Nautis a replacement for accounting and payroll software?
No. Nautis covers runway, invoices and expenses but does no bookkeeping or tax filing. It tracks pay runs and marks them paid, but doesn't move money or file statutory payroll. Most companies should keep an accountant's package and a payroll provider beside it.
Disclosure: We make Nautis, which appears in each group here, so we aren't neutral. This page draws on vendors' published information from 2 November 2026, with no hands-on testing, scoring or ranking. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.