Where your money goes
See what you're paying for.
Most software bills are one number. Ours has two parts: the pipes your business runs on, at close to what they cost us, and a real person who keeps it all running.
Where $100 of rented software goes
When you pay $100 to a public software company, here is about where it goes.1
- about $22 Running the software Servers, support staff and outside fees.
- about $34 Winning new customers Sales and marketing. The biggest part of the bill.
- about $24 Building the product Engineers and new features. This part does make the product better.
- about $11 Running the company Finance, legal and leadership.
- about $9 Profit Some keep $20 or more. Some keep nothing.
The biggest part of the bill, about a third, pays to win new customers. Running your software takes about a fifth. At the small-business tools in the group, selling takes about $40, and profit is close to zero.1
And the servers alone? A separate survey of private software companies puts them at about $5 of every $100.2
Why the bill keeps climbing
Investors expect growth.
Software companies backed by investors spend about 70% more on sales than ones that fund themselves.2 A popular support desk raised its prices in 2023, after investors bought the company.3
More examples are in the notes below.
How our price is built
We think you should be able to see what you pay for. So our price has two parts, shown line by line.10
The pipes
Your server, backups, email sending and site speed. These are priced close to what they cost us. Pipe prices move with the market. If our costs change, we tell you before your price does.
The service
A real person doing the upkeep, security, updates and help. Dave Swift leads it. This part doesn't jump because someone bought the company or changed the pricing rules.
Your plan, line by line
Care$299 a month
| Your own server, with 50 GB of storage | about $56 |
|---|---|
| Off-site backups, 30 days of history | about $1 |
| Email sending, up to 50,000 a month | up to $5 |
| Site speed network | $5 |
| Control panel, shared | about $3 |
| Software licenses | $0 |
| Pipes total | about $70 |
| A real person, assigned to your business, keeping up with security, updates and your support requests | $229 |
| Plan total | $299 |
Systems$799 a month
| Your own bigger server, with 150 GB of storage | about $94 |
|---|---|
| Off-site backups, 30 days of history | about $2 |
| Email sending, up to 150,000 a month | up to $15 |
| Site speed network, 2 websites | $10 |
| Control panel, shared | about $3 |
| Your AI agent (runs on your server) | $0 extra |
| Software licenses | $0 |
| Pipes total | about $124 |
| A real person, assigned to your business, keeping up with security, updates and your support requests | $675 |
| Plan total | $799 |
About these numbers. These are estimates from today's list prices, so we say "about." Server sizes are our best guess for a typical business, email is shown as if you send every email in your plan, and the control panel is one server shared by our clients. The service line also pays to run our business: insurance, payment fees and the tools we use. We update this page when our suppliers or their prices change.9
You pay these directly, with no markup from us: your AI subscription or API account, your domain names, premium plugins and ads.
Going past your plan
Going over on email is fine. You pay for the extra that month only. We tell you before any change to your plan.
| What | What you pay | What it costs us |
|---|---|---|
| Email sends over your plan | $0.12 per 1,000 | About $0.10 per 1,000 |
| Storage over your plan | $7 per extra 50 GB | About $5.50 |
| A bigger server | The price difference, at our cost, plus $50 once to move you | The same price difference. The $50 pays for the move. |
| An extra app | $75 a month | Usually little or nothing in pipes. It's mostly our time keeping it updated. |
| An extra AI agent | $299 a month | About $28 a month in server. The rest is our time, about an hour a month, keeping it current. |
What we don't charge for
- Markup on your AI. You pay your AI company directly. We add nothing.
- A setup fee, when you sign up for 12 months. Month to month, it's one month's price.
- Moving you over. We move what you have for free.
- Software licenses. The tools in your plan have no separate license fee. Most are open source.
- Paying by bank or debit card. No fee.
Know what you're paying for.
Pick a plan, or ask us first. A real person answers, and we aim to reply within one business day.
Notes and sources
- Where $100 goes. Simple average of seven public software companies small businesses pay monthly: HubSpot, Klaviyo, Wix, Freshworks, Zoom, Dropbox and Salesforce. GAAP figures from each company's latest annual report (fiscal years ending Dec 31, 2025, or Jan 31, 2026), as a share of total revenue: cost of revenue 21.9%, sales and marketing 33.7%, research and development 23.6%, general and administrative 11.0% (plus 0.2% restructuring and other, counted here with admin), operating profit 9.6%. Zoom, Dropbox and Salesforce kept 20–27%; HubSpot, Wix and Freshworks kept 0–2%; Klaviyo lost about 5%. The four small-business tools (HubSpot, Klaviyo, Wix, Freshworks): cost of revenue 22.1%, sales and marketing 39.5%, R&D 26.1%, admin 13.1%, operating loss 0.9%. These are company-wide averages, not the cost of serving one account. Amounts are rounded to whole dollars so the bar adds to $100. Annual reports: HubSpot, Klaviyo, Wix, Freshworks, Zoom, Dropbox, Salesforce.
- Servers and growth spending. SaaS Capital, 2026 Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies (survey of 1,000+ companies, published June 10, 2026). Median hosting spend: 5% of annual recurring revenue. Equity-backed companies spend 70% more on sales than bootstrapped ones. These are private companies, a different group from note 1. SaaS Capital.
- Support desk price rise. Zendesk raised the price of Support, Suite and individual products on July 12, 2023, plus 20% on add-ons. An investor group led by Hellman & Friedman and Permira completed its purchase of Zendesk on November 22, 2022. Zendesk pricing update, Zendesk press release.
- Per-person pricing. HubSpot moved to seat-based pricing on March 5, 2024, for new customers. Existing customers "may see a migration-related price increase of approximately 5% or less at the time of subscription renewal." HubSpot announcement.
- Per-contact billing. Klaviyo, from February 18, 2025: "your email plan must cover your active profile count." Klaviyo help center.
- AI added to office software. Google Workspace bundled Gemini AI and raised Business Standard from $12 to $14 per user a month: new customers from January 2025, existing monthly customers from March 17, 2025, or at renewal. Google Workspace blog, Google help center.
- AI added to home plans. Microsoft added Copilot to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family in the US on January 16, 2025, and raised prices by $3 a month, "for the first time since its release." Personal went from $6.99 to $9.99 a month. Microsoft blog, CNBC.
- More price changes, 2024–2026.
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic $6.00 → $7.00 and Business Standard $12.50 → $14.00, from July 1, 2026 (company-confirmed). Microsoft.
- Kajabi: "a price increase across all plans" for existing customers from January 13, 2026, its first in 10 years (company-confirmed). Kajabi.
- Wix: a price increase on premium plans in early 2024 (company annual report, note 1).
- QuickBooks Online: price changes on July 1, 2025 (date company-confirmed). Reported by Woodard: Simple Start $35 → $38, Essentials $65 → $75, Plus $99 → $115, Advanced $235 → $275. Intuit, Woodard.
- Kit (ConvertKit): reported by EmailOctopus, a competitor: Creator plan at 1,000 subscribers $29 → $39 a month from September 2025. No Kit announcement found. EmailOctopus.
- Mailchimp (owned by Intuit since 2021): reported by EmailOctopus, a competitor: several price and free-plan changes from 2022 to 2026. Not confirmed by Mailchimp. EmailOctopus.
- Our costs. List prices read November 7, 2026. Servers: DigitalOcean Premium AMD, 4 vCPU / 8 GB for Care ($56), 4 vCPU / 16 GB plus a 100 GB volume for Systems ($84 + $10). Backups: Backblaze B2 at $6.95 per TB a month. Email sending: Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000. Site speed: Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimization at $5 per site a month. Control panel: one shared server split across clients. DigitalOcean servers, DigitalOcean volumes, Backblaze, Amazon SES, Cloudflare.
- The idea. Itemized pricing, borrowed from Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, which shows each drug's price as manufacturing cost, a 15% markup, pharmacy labor and shipping. Cost Plus Drugs.