A typical small clinic, salon, or contractor pays for 6 to 8 separate software subscriptions to win and keep customers, costing roughly $180 to $330 a month at entry prices. Each tool is reasonable on its own. Together they mean several logins, customer details typed twice, and connections that break without anyone noticing.
Below are three example stacks with published prices, what you should keep no matter what, and a 30-minute way to audit your own bills.
How we priced these stacks
We used the published list price of a popular tool in each category, checked on October 2, 2026.[1] We picked the cheapest realistic plan, the fewest seats, and the annual price where one is offered. We left out usage charges such as extra texts and card fees. That makes these totals low on purpose. Your own bills are likely to be higher.
A dental clinic: about $262 a month across 6 tools
| Job | Entry price a month |
|---|---|
| Two-way texting and reminders (500 texts) | $33.20 |
| Review requests | $75.00 |
| Email newsletters and recall (up to 2,500 contacts) | $45.00 |
| Website | $19.00 |
| Business phone (2 users) | $40.00 |
| Call tracking | $50.00 |
Many clinics use a single patient-messaging suite instead of separate texting and review tools. Published prices for those start around $399 a month, which takes this stack to about $553.[1]
A salon or spa: about $182 a month across 6 tools
| Job | Entry price a month |
|---|---|
| Online booking (up to 6 calendars) | $27.00 |
| Two-way texting (500 texts) | $33.20 |
| Review requests | $75.00 |
| Email marketing (up to 500 contacts) | $13.00 |
| Website | $19.00 |
| Social media scheduling (3 accounts) | $15.00 |
A salon with 1,500 clients on its email list will pay more than $13 for email. We used the smallest tier to stay conservative.
A home services company: about $263 a month across 7 tools
| Job | Entry price a month |
|---|---|
| Sales CRM for estimates (2 users) | $28.00 |
| Business phone (2 users) | $40.00 |
| Call tracking | $50.00 |
| Two-way texting (500 texts) | $33.20 |
| Review requests | $75.00 |
| Website | $17.00 |
| App-connection tool to link the others | $19.99 |
The connection tool is the one people forget. It exists only because the other six do not talk to each other. Add after-hours AI call answering, from $66 a month on published plans, and it becomes 8 tools at about $329.[1]
What to keep, whatever you choose
Some software does a job a customer system should not try to do. Keep it.
- Practice management and charting for clinics, including anything that holds health records.
- Point of sale for salons and spas that sell retail at a counter.
- Dispatch and job management for contractors with technicians in the field.
- Accounting and payroll for everyone. A good customer system sends invoices to your accounting software. It does not replace it.
A stack audit that tells you to cancel these is selling something.
The costs that do not show on the invoice
Subscription prices are the visible part. The rest shows up as time.
- Double entry. A new customer gets typed into the booking tool, the texting tool, and the email list. Each copy drifts out of date.
- Broken connections. When one tool changes its settings or a login expires, the link between two tools stops. Nobody gets an alert. You find out when a customer complains they never got a reminder.
- No single history. When a customer calls, their texts are in one app, their emails in another, and their reviews in a third. Staff answer without the full picture.
- Many renewals. Each tool renews on its own date, often on a different card, and prices rise at renewal.
We cannot put a sourced dollar figure on these. Ask your team how many minutes a day they spend copying details between tools, and multiply by their hourly rate.
Audit your own stack in 30 minutes
- List every subscription. Search your card and bank statements for the last 3 months for software charges. Include annual ones.
- Write the job each one does. One line each: "sends review requests", "books appointments".
- Mark overlaps. Two tools that both send texts, or both hold customer details, are a sign of drift.
- Mark the keepers. Practice software, point of sale, dispatch, accounting, and payroll.
- Total the rest. That is the number to compare against an all-in-one system, alongside the time cost above.
What one system covers
Pinn.Media CRM puts customer records, the phone line, texting, email, booking, reviews, the website, forms, and automations in one place, with one inbox, one login, and one bill. Plans start at $149 a month on Build, which you set up yourself. On Grow and Scale, our team sets it up, moves your contacts across, and keeps checking that the automations still run.
Be honest about the maths. The Build plan plus 500 texts and a local number from the wallet comes to about $165 a month at our published rates. Against the lean salon stack above, that is about the same price, and the difference is one system instead of six. Against the lean clinic stack it is about $94 a month less, and against the contractor stack about $95 less. Against a clinic on a $399 messaging suite, it is several hundred dollars less.
Call minutes and emails on our side are billed from the wallet too, so check your own volumes. You can switch tools on and off for your business and see the total change, or read how clinics, salons and spas, and home services use one system.
See which of your subscriptions you could cancel. Book a walkthrough and bring your list.
Sources
- Published list prices of a popular tool in each categoryEach tool's own pricing page, checked October 2, 2026. Annual-billing prices where offered.Prices change often. The mix of tools in each stack is an example, not a survey.