How much does a CRM cost
in Malta?

When people ask how much a CRM costs, they usually mean the monthly price on a software website. That is only the first of three parts. The second is setup: someone has to decide your pipeline stages and fields, move your customers in from spreadsheets and phones, connect the channels your enquiries come from and show your team how to use it. The third is running it: the plan you outgrow, the add-ons you need later, WhatsApp messaging fees, support, and the hours your staff spend keeping it up to date.

The split changes with the route you take. With a ready-made CRM you pay a subscription and do the setup yourself, or pay someone to do it. With a custom CRM you pay mainly for the build, because the system is designed around how your business already works, and then for hosting and an agreed support plan. Neither is automatically cheaper over time. It depends on your team size, how many channels you need connected and how much your process differs from a standard sales pipeline.

The common mistake is comparing monthly prices and ignoring everything else. A CRM nobody uses because it was never set up properly is the most expensive option of all: you pay for the software and still lose the enquiries.

Setup is where a CRM either becomes part of the day or quietly dies. It starts with decisions only your business can make: what counts as a new enquiry, which stages a deal goes through, who owns each lead and what has to happen before a quote goes out. Then come the practical jobs: creating fields and stages, importing customers from spreadsheets, email and phones, removing duplicates, connecting website forms, Facebook and Instagram lead ads, WhatsApp, email and your accounting tool, setting up reminders and permissions, and training everyone who will use it.

You can do this yourself. Many owners try, usually in the evenings, and get as far as importing a contact list. The cost is your time and the weeks in which the old spreadsheet and the new CRM run side by side, with nobody sure which one is right. Or you pay someone to do it as a one-off project. Either way, it is a real cost and belongs in your budget from the start.

Picture a typical Maltese service business: enquiries arrive through WhatsApp on the owner’s phone, Facebook lead forms that someone downloads once a week, calls to the office and the website form. The subscription is the easy part. The work is getting all four into one list, each with an owner and a next step, without asking staff to retype anything. Our CRM setup checklist lists every step in order, and the lost leads calculator puts a figure on the admin time you would save.

The table below sums up the three routes. It uses no vendor prices, because they change often and depend on your plan and team size. Check each vendor’s own price page for the current figures.

Work out the total for the first two or three years rather than the monthly price. For a ready-made CRM, that is the subscription for every user on the tier that covers your must-haves, times the months, plus the setup, any add-ons, WhatsApp messaging fees and the hours your team spends on it. For a custom CRM, it is the build plus hosting and the support plan. Put the same staff-time line in both, because training and adoption take time either way.

Then compare that with what doing nothing costs. If one in five enquiries gets a late reply or none at all, the lost sales usually dwarf any software bill. Our free lost leads and time cost calculator works this out from your own numbers, with no industry averages.

Before you sign with anyone, ask five questions. Can we export all our data at any time? Where is it hosted, and is it in the EU? What happens to the price when we add users or contacts? What does support cover, and how fast do you reply? Who owns the setup, the automations and any custom code? Clear answers to these matter more than a small difference in price.

We start with a call about how customers reach you today and where enquiries get lost. If a ready-made CRM is enough, we say so and can set it up for you. If it is not, we map your process with the people who do the work, then send a written proposal with the scope, what is included, the price and the timeline before any work starts. Custom CRM projects start from €7,500, excluding VAT.

The build follows the map: pipeline and tasks, your channels connected, your data moved and checked against the source, roles and reports, staff training and support after launch. See the CRM page for everything that is included, and our case studies for systems we have built.