INEYA Cost per seat
The instrument
What does one seat cost over three years?
Three figures are enough: how many seats you pay for, the monthly price of each, and how fast your headcount grows. The maths runs in your browser, the formula is on the page, and nothing leaves your machine.
Over three years
Projected seats: 24, then 27, then 31.
How the figure is computed
A calculator that hides its formula is an advertisement. Here is ours, in full.
One year costs the number of seats times the monthly price, times twelve. The following year’s seat count is the previous one increased by the growth rate, rounded up to the whole seat, because no vendor sells half a seat.
The three-year total is the sum of the three years. The share attributed to growth is the difference between that total and the one you would get at constant headcount: the line nobody budgets, because it does not exist yet at the moment of signing.
The formula, exactly as it runs
cost of one year = seats × monthly price × 12
seats for the next year = round up (seats × (1 + growth))
total = year 1 + year 2 + year 3
share due to growth = total − (cost of one year at constant headcount × 3)
What this calculation does not tell you
Tiers
Most vendors change plan beyond a certain number of seats or contacts. The price per seat does not rise on a gentle slope, it steps. This calculator ignores the step, so it understates.
Separately billed modules
The per-seat price on the public pricing page almost never includes the automation module, the telephony connector or extra storage. Read your invoice, not the pricing grid.
Contractual indexation
Many contracts carry an annual uplift that has nothing to do with your headcount. It stacks on top of everything above.
The cost of leaving
The day you leave, the record export is clean. The automations, the sequences, the templates and the conversation history stay with the vendor. That cost is not computed here, it is discovered on the way out.
What to do with it
Renegotiate your renewal
A finance director who arrives with a three-year total and a hiring plan is no longer arguing about this month’s price, they are arguing about the trajectory. That is an entirely different conversation.
Price a switch
This calculator handles one line. The exit audit does the same work across every subscription you hold, including the ones nobody inventoried, and compares it against the cost of owning them.
Frequently asked questions
How do you calculate the three-year cost of per-seat software?
Multiply the seat count by the monthly price, then by twelve, to get one year. Carry your headcount growth into the following years, rounding up to the whole seat, then add the three years together.
Why project over three years rather than one?
Because an annual budget hides the trajectory. A line that looks reasonable in year one becomes the second largest software expense in the company by year three, purely because the team grew.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser: the three figures you type never leave your machine and are stored nowhere.
Does it work without JavaScript?
The page shows a complete and correct result from starting values, computed at publication time. The script only recomputes when you change a figure.
What follows
One line priced is a clue. The whole stack is a decision.
The exit audit applies this calculation to every subscription you hold, including the ones nobody inventoried. €1,500 excl. VAT, delivered in 5 working days, deducted from the first deployment.
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