What Your Third Hire Costs You in Software
Free tiers cap two different things: how much you can do, and how many of you there are. Only one kind breaks when you hire, and the gap is about $1,000 a year.
What's in this guide
Most advice about free software tiers compares what they include. That is the wrong axis. The thing that decides whether a free tier survives contact with your business is much simpler:
Does it cap what you can do, or how many of you there are?
Only the second kind breaks when you hire. And because the people-capped ones overwhelmingly cap at two, a large number of small businesses discover their entire stack has become billable in the same week — the week they hire their third person.
The two kinds, from the 28 plans we track
Capped on people. Free until a specific head-count, then paid. The number is almost always two.
| Product | Free up to | What it costs the moment you pass it |
|---|---|---|
| Bitwarden (password manager) | 2 users | $12/mo at 3 people |
| Capsule (CRM) | 2 users | $54/mo at 3 people |
| HubSpot (CRM) | 2 users | $21/mo at 3 people |
| Asana (project management) | 2 users | $32.97/mo at 3 people |
| Trello (project management) | 10 collaborators | $55/mo at 11 people |
Capped on usage. Free regardless of head-count; the limit is storage, volume or features.
| Product | Free limit | What your third hire costs |
|---|---|---|
| ClickUp | 60 MB storage, unlimited members | nothing |
| Wave | unlimited invoicing and bookkeeping | nothing |
| IDrive | 10 GB | nothing |
| Jotform | 5 forms, 100 submissions/month | nothing |
| SignWell | 3 documents/month, 1 sender | it is already capped at one |
Figures read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-09-22. ClickUp’s free plan states “Unlimited Free Plan Members” in as many words; Trello’s says “Free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace”. Notion’s free tier is positioned for individuals and states no member cap on its pricing page, so we are not claiming one.
What that difference is worth
Two businesses, both with two people, both paying nothing. Both hire a third.
The one that picked people-capped free tiers — Bitwarden, Capsule, Asana:
| 2 people | 3 people | |
|---|---|---|
| Password manager | $0 | $12 |
| CRM | $0 | $54 |
| Project management | $0 | $32.97 |
| Total | $0 | $98.97/mo — $1,187.64/yr |
The one that picked usage-capped free tiers — Bitwarden, Trello, ClickUp:
| 2 people | 3 people | |
|---|---|---|
| Password manager | $0 | $12 |
| Project management (Trello, free to 10) | $0 | $0 |
| Docs and tasks (ClickUp, unlimited members) | $0 | $0 |
| Total | $0 | $12/mo — $144/yr |
A difference of $86.97 a month — $1,043.64 a year — decided entirely by which free tiers were picked back when both businesses were two people and both bills were zero.
Nothing about that decision felt like a decision at the time. That is the point.
The category where it always costs you
Password management is the exception, and worth naming because it is also the one you should not economise on.
Bitwarden’s free two-person organisation is the only genuinely free business option among the password managers we track. 1Password, Proton Pass, Keeper, NordPass and Dashlane offer no free business tier at all — only trials. So at three people a shared password manager becomes a bill for everyone, and the cheapest real option we track is Bitwarden Teams at $4/user.
$12 a month is the right thing to pay. The alternative people actually choose is a shared spreadsheet or a pinned chat message, and that costs nothing until it costs everything. Our security stack guide covers where this sits among the other foundations.
What this does not mean
Do not pick a worse tool to dodge a bill. If Asana fits how your team works and Trello does not, $32.97 a month is a reasonable price for the tool that fits. The argument is not “choose the usage-capped one” — it is “know which one you chose, and price the third hire before you commit rather than after”.
Migration is the real cost. Moving a filled CRM or project tool at the moment you are also onboarding somebody is worse than the subscription you were avoiding. The cheapest time to switch is before there is anything in it, which is exactly when you have no information about whether you will need to.
Free tiers get worse. A free tier is a marketing decision, not a contract, and the one you rely on today is not guaranteed at your next renewal. That is a reason to know your paid price in advance, not a reason to panic — and it is why we publish every price change we find.
What to do about it, in ten minutes
- List what you currently pay nothing for. Most two-person businesses have four or five of these and have never written them down. The SaaS inventory template has a column for it.
- For each, find the cap — on the vendor’s own pricing page, not from memory. The number you want is “free up to how many people”, and for several products it is not on the pricing card at all; it is in the feature table further down.
- Add up what those become at your next head-count. The cost calculator now fills in verified rates for 28 plans, so you can price the whole stack at three, five and ten people without typing a figure from memory.
- Write the number down next to your hiring plan. Not to change the hire — to stop it being a surprise. A thousand dollars a year is manageable when you saw it coming and an unpleasant afternoon when you did not.
The point is not to spend less. It is that the cheapest moment to find out what your software costs at five people is while you still have two.
Free-tier limits and prices read from each vendor’s official pricing page on 2026-09-22; see the pricing tracker for sources and check dates. Figures are the annual-billing rate. This page contains no affiliate links, and Bitwarden — the one product it recommends paying for — runs no affiliate programme at all.
Get told when these prices change
We re-check every tracked pricing page weekly — 28 plans today. When something moves you get one short email: what changed, by how much, and what it means at your head-count.