Startup software stack: three priced examples at 2, 10 and 30 people

What a startup software stack costs at each size

Here are the totals first. The tables after this one show how we got them. Per-person cost goes up with size, because bigger teams move to pricier plans and buy tools the small team skipped.

Tools charged on every head means company-wide lines such as email, chat, docs and passwords. At 30 people, those four lines are 60% of the bill, and that's why the seat audit later on this page matters more than any negotiating.

The 2-person stack: $66.80 a month

Two founders, pre-revenue or just past it. The rule at this size is simple: use a $0 version wherever its limit doesn't hurt yet. Only four lines cost money.

Linear's 250-issue cap is usually the first wall. Xero is also the line you'd want to argue about: some very early companies keep records in a sheet and pay an accountant quarterly, though we'd start clean. The day-one checklist explains why each job is on this list at all.

The 10-person stack: $733.45 a month

A seed-stage company with six people building and four selling or running things. Message history starts to matter, customers are real, and payroll is mandatory. We assume annual commitment where it's published, because this team has enough certainty to commit.

HubSpot's page advertised Starter for new customers at $10 a seat paying monthly or $7 paying yearly, against the normal $20. We've used the normal price because a promotion isn't a budget. Slack's pricing page showed us rupees, so the $8.75 comes from the worked example on Slack's own billing help page. We read no US annual price. We also couldn't load Gusto's pricing page, which is why OnPay is on the payroll line. The first 10 employees guide covers what the people side needs at this size.

The 30-person stack: $2,574.20 a month

A company past Series A, or close, with 14 in product and engineering, 6 selling and 10 in everything else. Permissions and reporting start to need real plans, and a dashboard appears because the leadership team can no longer fit round one laptop.

Treat this one as a floor. A sales team of six may need a higher HubSpot plan, and the page we read only covered Free and Starter, so we couldn't price it. Analytics at real traffic will cost more than the $19 shown. Figma's Organization plan and Notion's Enterprise are further steps that some companies take at this size.

What these totals leave out

Software subscriptions are often the smaller part of the true bill. Add these yourself, as they vary too much for us to guess.

• Cloud hosting and infrastructure. For a technical product this can pass everything above.
• AI usage. Figma, Notion and others meter AI through credits or add-ons, such as Notion's Custom Agents at $10 per 1,000 monthly credits. Developer AI tools usually sit outside this table too.
• Advisers. Lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers. Software doesn't remove them.
• Benefits and HR. Health plans and any HR suite you add to payroll.
• Credits and discounts. Startup programmes can cut year-one bills a lot. Stripe Atlas, for example, lists $2,500 in Stripe product credits and partner discounts. Budget for the year after they end.
• Local price differences and tax. Google and Slack both showed us rupee prices on their pricing pages, based on our location. Check what your own billing country shows, as it may differ from the dollar figures here.

What to consolidate, and when

Don't consolidate on a calendar. Do it when one of these triggers shows up, and start with the fewest users who'd object. The full method is in the tool consolidation playbook.

Seat audits come first, because they carry no migration cost. Slack's fair billing policy already credits members inactive for more than 28 days, but most tools won't do this for you. Check the rest by hand each quarter. The Tool Tax calculator gives a quick estimate of what you could cut.

Does an all-in-one change the sum?

Sometimes, and it depends on team size. Using Nautis as the example, because we can describe it accurately, here is how the arithmetic falls out on these three stacks, with Nautis prices as of November 2026.

• At 2 people, no. Launch is $49 a month. The only lines it could plausibly remove here are Dropbox Sign and Bitwarden, worth $23 together, so you'd pay more. Buy it for connected work, if at all, and not to save money.
• At 10 people, it can. Voyage is $99 and covers up to 10 members. Suppose Docsign, the Leads CRM and Notes are enough for your team: you could drop Dropbox Sign, HubSpot and Notion, worth $190 together, for a net saving of $91. That only holds if those modules really suit you, and specialists do go deeper. Email, chat, code, accounting and payroll stay.
• At 30 people, no. Fleet stops at 25 team members. Nautis is built for startups, and a company this size with function leads is usually better served by specialists.

That's a narrower claim than most consolidation pitches make, and it's the honest one. If a shared workspace interests you, read the startup operating system page for what it does beyond the bill. For products sold as a suite, the all-in-one platform page has a buying test.

FAQ

Sources

• Google Workspace Help: Flexible and Annual plan prices
• Slack Fair Billing Policy, with Pro price example
• Notion pricing
• Linear pricing
• GitHub pricing
• Figma pricing
• HubSpot CRM pricing
• Xero US pricing
• OnPay pricing
• 1Password business pricing
• Bitwarden business pricing
• Dropbox Sign pricing
• Plausible pricing
• Geckoboard pricing
• Mercury pricing
• Google Analytics
• Stripe Atlas