A landscaping business with 30 employees needs payroll and personnel files, accounting with stock control, quotes, a document filing system and a quality system. Often that means five contracts, five logins and five invoices. On top of that, many providers charge for modules, set-up fees and AI credit that are not included in the base price. We have recalculated what this costs over three years. Note: The comparison comes from KMU | base, one of the providers compared. That is why we disclose the calculation.
The result in three sentences: For 30 employees, the five apps from KMU | base cost CHF 16’335 over three years. With one well-known product per area, it comes to CHF 51’664 to CHF 101’689. And with KMU | base, much is included for which other providers charge modules, credit or set-up.
Total costs over three years
All amounts are list prices over 36 months excluding VAT, in Swiss francs. Mix A consists of widely used products, Mix B of cheaper ones (composition under «How we calculated»).
| Employees | KMU | base, 5 apps | Mix A | Mix B | KMU | base as a share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | 9’585 | 55’464 | 28’109 | 17 % and 34 % respectively |
| 30 | 16’335 | 101’689 | 51’664 | 16 % and 32 % respectively |
| 80 | 38’070 | 203’631 | 104’668 | 19 % and 36 % respectively |
| 250 | 88’290 | 518’953 | not calculable | 17 % (Mix A) |
The gap between Mix A and Mix B shows how strongly the choice of product determines the price; KMU | base comes in clearly below both. If you only need HR, Finance and Docu, you pay between CHF 6’250 and CHF 56’448 with KMU | base. Mix A costs CHF 29’594 to CHF 343’411 for the same three areas, Mix B (up to 80 employees) CHF 20’414 to CHF 85’498.
What is included in KMU | base
KMU | base brings an AI assistant to every app that works with your permissions and carries out every change only after your approval. Payroll, document archive, quality management and Office in the browser are part of the respective app and not add-on modules. For these, other providers state the following on their price pages, partly as a requirement, partly on request:
| Service | KMU | base | Elsewhere according to the price page |
|---|---|---|
| AI assistant | in every app, with a monthly allowance; paid add-on packages beyond that | Business Central: Copilot included in the plan, the sales order agent and the payables agent «require Copilot credit (sold separately)». Salesforce: according to the price page «AI can be added from “Core”» (Core EUR 195 per user and month). Odoo: AI invoice scanning via paid in-app credit |
| Payroll with withholding tax and salary certificate | in HR | base; payroll calculation according to ELM 6.0, transmission via Swissdec not yet available (see «How we calculated») | bexio: in Advanced and Optima as an add-on (CHF 7 per month for 1, CHF 25 for 5 employees), in Ultimate 25 employees included, beyond that on request. Personio: the Swiss price page mentions no payroll, the German one an additionally bookable payroll app without a price. Abacus: separate subscription, according to the price list of the Abacus partner Arcon CHF 152.10 per month, user and client up to 50 employees. BambooHR: payroll according to the page only for employees in the USA |
| Document archive with text recognition | in Docu | base, text recognition runs locally in four languages | Abacus: archiving and scanning as a separate subscription (according to abacus.ch from CHF 11 per month, excluding hosting and the provider’s services); according to the partner list, the digital filing of receipts is included in the finance subscriptions. Proffix: document management is listed under «Functions and third-party solutions», not in the packages and without a price |
| Quality management | audit, actions and risks in the price of QMS | base | QM-Pilot: risk, organisation, audit and action management as add-on modules, each from CHF 70 (monthly payment). Qsistant: plan with 200 documents, each further 100 documents EUR 25 per month |
| Office in the browser | edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in the browser, in Docu | base | Microsoft 365 Business Basic (Office in the browser with email and Teams): CHF 5.67 per user and month |
| Set-up and data transfer | no set-up fee; data transfer by us free of charge, within 24 hours on working days (the minimum term begins with the order) | bexio, on request: basic set-up CHF 220, coaching on data migration CHF 320 per data type (contacts, products); support and starter help free of charge. HubSpot: mandatory onboarding USD 1’500 (Sales Hub Professional). QM-Pilot: set-up fee CHF 600 (cloud). Odoo: implementation not included, packages from EUR 587 (new customers EUR 499 for the first package). Personio: one-off set-up fee, amount not published |
| Employees use the app | self-service for all employees without a user licence; HR | base is priced per package tier (e.g. CHF 129 per month for 21–50 employees) | Zoho One: either a licence for all employees (EUR 37 per person and month) or EUR 90 per user with free allocation |
Some providers also include AI in the plan, such as BambooHR (AI Assistant) and M-Files Essentials (Aino). KMU | base also includes hosting in Switzerland and free access for your fiduciary. Depending on usage, KMU | base also charges for additional storage, bulk emails beyond the monthly allowance, SMS, AI add-on packages and companies from the fourth.
Why the calculation turns out this way
Anyone combining five products pays for several platforms and implementations and has to connect them via interfaces. KMU | base is built as a whole from the start. Payroll flows into accounting, a won deal in Sales | base becomes an invoice in Finance | base with one click, and booked receipts are stored in the archive of Docu | base. The AI assistant is available in every app, answers questions about key figures, open items and incoming invoices, and prepares changes that you approve. You upload your existing data in the portal; we transfer it within 24 hours on working days, free of charge (the minimum term begins with the order). The fiduciary works with its own access directly in the accounting, and the employee app for iOS and Android is included at no extra charge. One login, one invoice, one contracting party in Switzerland, and for every app the same simple pricing principle without a module list.
Practical example: group with around 150 employees
A Swiss company showed us quotes from third-party providers, anonymised and without naming the industry. It is an empirical value, not list prices, and we cannot substantiate it publicly. One provider’s HR software was to cost around CHF 2’000 per month, plus several thousand francs for commissioning. For document management, quotes of CHF 25’000 to CHF 50’000 per year were on the table. Over three years that is CHF 147’000 to CHF 222’000, excluding commissioning.
HR | base (Business package) and Docu | base for 150 users (Enterprise 500 package with 30 further users) together cost CHF 42’840 over three years, less than a third of the cheapest quote. The scope of the quotes may differ; it is an order of magnitude, not an exact comparison.
How KMU | base helps
HR | base is based on the number of employees, the other apps on the number of users. Prices in CHF per app and month, excl. VAT:
| Package | HR | Finance, Sales | QMS, Docu | Users included | Further user |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start (up to 20 employees) | 79 | 49 | 89 | 5 | 12 |
| KMU (21–50) | 129 | 99 | 139 | 15 | 10 |
| Business (51–200) | 290 | 250 | 310 | 50 | 8 |
| Enterprise 500 (201–500) | 650 | 590 | 720 | 120 | 6 |
| Enterprise 1000 (501–1’000) | 890 | 820 | 990 | 200 | 5 |
From three apps there is a 20 % discount, with all five 25 %. To get started, the first month is free (for bookings from 1 November 2026, as long as offered on the price page; with the order for data transfer the minimum term begins immediately), after which a minimum term of 12 months per app applies. All prices are on the price page. The apps: HR, Finance, Docu, QMS, Sales. With a demo company you can try it out for seven days.
How we calculated
- Date and prices: retrieved on 27.10.2026 from the providers’ price pages (links under «Sources»), list prices without discounts and promotions. Where the manufacturer states no price or only a “from” price, but a sales partner publishes a list (Abacus, SAP Business One), we use that and label it. All amounts are excl. VAT; where a price page does not state VAT (for example BambooHR, Salesforce, M-Files, QM-Pilot), we take the amount over unchanged. Euro and US dollar are converted at the ECB rate of 27.10.2026 (1 EUR = CHF 0.9239, 1 USD = CHF 0.8286). With constant prices over 36 months; free months are not deducted, neither for KMU | base nor the free first month per new user at Abacus.
- Users: 5, 10, 20 and 50 people per app at 15, 30, 80 and 250 employees. For payroll and HR every employee counts; for KLARA we calculate with one payslip per person and month. Bexio Ultimate includes payroll for 25 employees; we calculate payroll uniformly with KLARA in both mixes. Additional users do not arise at KMU | base in these scenarios.
- Mix A: BambooHR Core (USD 10 per employee) with KLARA Payroll (CHF 4.90 per payslip), Business Central Essentials (CHF 64.80 per user), Salesforce Pro Suite (EUR 100; the price page mentions quote creation only from this plan), M-Files Essentials (from EUR 65) and QM-Pilot Cloud (CHF 240 per month plus CHF 600 set-up, lowest tier).
- Mix B: as A, but with bexio (Optima or Ultimate), Zoho CRM Professional (EUR 23) and easo Team (CHF 1’290 per year). Not calculable for 250 employees, because bexio states no price above 25 users.
- Other products: SAP Business One costs CHF 91 per user in the cloud according to a partner (Professional), Abacus according to the price list of the partner Arcon around CHF 48’859 over three years for 10 users (assumption: order processing for all ten with a 40 % volume discount, two finance packages; other partners may differ). In this calculation both are above Business Central; for SAP the partner does not state whether hosting and implementation are included. Workday, HiBob, SwissSalary, SAP SuccessFactors and Suiteify (on whose site the Swiss Sage page for Sage 50 Extra redirected on 27.10.2026) state no price; they are missing from the mixes.
- Scope: It is not the same for every product; you are best placed to check function lists yourself. Not included are implementation and add-on modules of the competitors (apart from the QM-Pilot set-up fee) and the usage-dependent extras of KMU | base (storage, bulk emails, SMS, AI add-on packages, companies from the fourth).
- Payroll: payroll calculation according to the guidelines of Lohnstandard-CH (ELM 6.0). Swissdec certification has not yet taken place; electronic transmission via Swissdec is therefore not yet available.
Sources
Price and product pages of the providers named, retrieved on 27.10.2026 (links in the article’s source references). The practical example is based on quotes held by KMU | base; there is no public source for it. Prices change; the price page of the respective provider is binding. This comparison is not a substitute for advice and makes no claim to completeness; because of conversion, totals may deviate by CHF 1. Please report errors to info@kmubase.ch; we check the prices every three months. As at: 27 October 2026.