What a UK Marketing Stack Costs in 2026: Five Jobs, Priced

Data last verified: 1 October 2026. Figures re-checked against their primary sources under the Whito rolling re-verification programme.

Last Updated on October 2, 2026

Read: 30 September and 1 October 2026. 19 marketing tools, five jobs, prices taken from each vendor’s own pricing page on a UK connection. Annual costs are before VAT unless we say otherwise.

A UK business planning next year’s marketing budget usually prices the agency, the ads and the staff. The software arrives one subscription at a time, and nobody adds it up.

So we priced the stack. On 1 October 2026 the brand-name marketing stack for a one-person UK business cost £2,667.00 a year before VAT. Tools doing the same five jobs cost £1,319.73. For three people and 5,000 email contacts the figures were £5,678.16 and £1,871.58.

The five jobs and the two stacks

Most small business marketing runs on five pieces of software. We defined each by the job it does, then priced two ways of doing it: the brand-name tool, and the cheapest paid plan we found that does the same job. Free plans get their own section below.

Why these brand names: each was named in Google AI Mode’s answer when we asked for the best tool in its category for a UK small business on 1 October 2026, and four of the five also appeared in ChatGPT’s answers. Analytics is the same in both stacks because Google Analytics 4 is free and nothing cheaper exists.

Two business sizes. One person: one login on every tool, 1,000 email contacts, three social channels, one website. Three people: three logins on the CRM and the social tool, one person running email, SEO and analytics, 5,000 email contacts. We used annual billing wherever it was offered, because it is the cheaper option, and converted dollar and euro prices at HMRC’s October 2026 monthly rates (£1 = $1.3456, £1 = €1.1665).

One person: £2,667 or £1,320

The brand-name stack costs 2.02 times the cheaper one. The biggest single line in both is SEO: Semrush’s SEO plan at £1,140.84 a year is 43% of the brand-name total, and SE Ranking Core at £912.00 is 69% of the cheaper total. If all you need from an SEO tool is keyword and competitor research, Ahrefs Starter at £23 a month (we did not read its annual price), which Ahrefs describes as “See what people search and spy on competitors”, would bring the one-person cheaper stack to £683.73.

HubSpot is the line to watch. Its pricing page showed Sales Hub Starter at £7 a seat a month on annual billing, and £9 on monthly, against a struck-through £18. The page did not say how long the lower price lasts or who qualifies, so we used £18. At £7 the one-person brand-name stack would come to £2,535.

Three people: the three-login jump

We call the difference between the one-person bill and the three-person bill the three-login jump. For the brand-name stack it was £3,011.16 a year. For the cheaper stack it was £551.85.

Most of the brand-name jump is logins. Hootsuite charges per user, so two extra people add £2,136 a year, which is 71% of the jump on its own. Two extra HubSpot seats add £432. The bigger email list adds £443.16 on Mailchimp. On the cheaper side, Buffer’s Team plan charges by channel and allows unlimited team members, so going from one user to three added £133.77 a year in total.

Before you add a login, ask which tool charges for it. A per-user social tool and a per-seat CRM grow with headcount. Email tools grow with the list. In our model the SEO and analytics lines did not change at all.

What VAT adds

The prices above are as the vendors display them. Hootsuite’s page says its prices exclude applicable taxes and MailerLite’s says prices may be subject to them, so we treated every price as before VAT. A business that is not VAT registered cannot reclaim VAT it is charged, so for most sole traders and micro businesses the real bill is higher. With 20% added, the one-person brand-name stack is £3,200.40 a year and the cheaper one £1,583.68. For three people the figures are £6,813.79 and £2,245.90. How VAT applies to software bought from overseas suppliers is covered in our per-seat software pricing research. This is not tax advice; check your own position with your accountant.

The £0 stack, and where it stops working

A one-person business can run all five jobs for nothing, with limits. Zoho CRM is free for up to three users and HubSpot’s free CRM for up to two. Brevo’s free plan allows 300 emails a day. Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 are free. Buffer’s free plan connects up to three channels for one user account, with ten scheduled posts per channel.

The first job to force a payment as the business grows is email. At 300 emails a day, one newsletter to 5,000 contacts takes 17 days to send. The second is the social tool: Buffer’s free plan has one user account, so a second person scheduling posts means paying.

Prices that move overnight

Mailchimp’s pricing page showed sterling prices to the penny, and they changed between our two reading days. The Standard plan for 2,501 to 5,000 contacts was £76.04 a month on 30 September and £76.14 on 1 October. Essentials for 501 to 1,500 contacts went from £20.15 to £20.18. Every band we read moved up by a similar small amount. Odd-penny prices that change day to day behave like a converted foreign-currency price, though Mailchimp’s page does not say how its sterling prices are set.

Six of the 19 tools we priced showed no sterling price at all on a UK connection: MailerLite, BrightLocal, Fathom, Buffer and Later in US dollars, and Metricool in euros. For those, the pound cost moves with the exchange rate. HMRC’s monthly rate went from $1.3554 in September to $1.3456 in October, so a dollar subscription cost 0.73% more in pounds this month than last, with no change on the vendor’s side.

What AI search quotes for these tools

Before opening a pricing page, a buyer can now ask an AI assistant what a tool costs. On 1 October 2026 we asked Google AI Mode and ChatGPT for the best CRM, email tool, SEO tool, analytics tool and social scheduler for a UK small business, then checked the prices either answer gave against the vendor pages read the same morning.

We counted a quote as matching if at least one price on the vendor page fell inside the quoted range, give or take 10%. We left out quotes for tools we did not price (Freshsales, Klaviyo, EmailOctopus, Mangools, Screaming Frog, Microsoft Clarity, Meta Business Suite and monday CRM) and AI Mode’s BrightLocal figure, because BrightLocal’s page displayed only its annual-billing price. Of the 23 quotes left, 19 matched and 4 did not.

Two of the four misses are dollar or euro prices written with a pound sign. Buffer charges $5 a channel (£3.72) and Metricool starts at €16 or €20 (£13.72 or £17.15); AI Mode gave both in pounds. Sendible’s £23 matches a yearly discount the page offers, but the page displayed £27 on both billing settings. One match also deserves a note: AI Mode put SE Ranking at about £37 to £76 a month, and the lowest plan on SE Ranking’s page was £76 a month on annual billing.

Where our own pages were behind. Our July 2026 software price index and our social media tools guide gave Buffer at about £5 a channel and Hootsuite Standard at about £74 a month. On 1 October Buffer’s page showed $5 a channel (£3.72 at HMRC’s October rate) and Hootsuite’s UK page showed £89 a user. AI Mode cited our guide in its scheduler answer and repeated the £5 Buffer figure and a range starting at £74. Both pages now carry a dated price note pointing here.

What this does not prove

• These are list prices on two days. Vendors change prices, run offers and show different prices to different visitors. Mailchimp’s moved overnight while we were collecting.
• The cheaper tool in each job is our choice, made against the job definition above. The tools differ in features beyond that job, and the brand-name tools often do more. The comparison prices the job only.
• We left out one-off and optional costs: HubSpot Professional’s required £1,310 onboarding fee (we priced Starter, which showed no onboarding fee), Brevo’s £7.20 a month to remove its branding, add-ons and extra seats beyond the stated assumptions.
• Some prices were read on 30 September for our Mailchimp and HubSpot alternatives pages and not re-read. The register below marks which.
• The AI answers are one asking each. Google AI Mode was run on a signed-in account that lists whito.co.uk as a preferred source, and our pages were cited in three of its five answers, so its answers are not independent of us. ChatGPT was run in a temporary, unpersonalised chat; our analytics and scheduler questions would not submit there, so ChatGPT covers three categories only.
• No business paid to be included, and this page carries no affiliate links.

What to do with this

• Write the five jobs down before you price anything. If a tool does a job you have not listed, you are paying for a job you do not have.
• Count the logins. Ask each vendor whether it charges per user, per seat, per channel or per contact. That decides what next year costs.
• Check the currency. If the price is in dollars or euros, your bill moves every month with the exchange rate.
• Add VAT if you are not registered. Where VAT is charged, what leaves your account is up to 20% more than the pricing page shows.
• Read the struck-through price. If a lower price has no end date on the page, budget for the higher one.

The full price register

Download the data

Every price behind this page, with the date read and the page it came from, is free to download and reuse with a link to this page.

Download the data (CSV, 35 rows)

Deeper files behind Whito’s research are sold as Whito Data, including the UK Software Price File. Nobody can pay to be added to a study, removed from one or moved within one. How Whito makes money.

Cite this research

Whito Research (2026). What a UK marketing stack costs: on 1 October 2026 the brand-name stack for a one-person business cost £2,667.00 a year before VAT, and tools doing the same five jobs cost £1,319.73. https://whito.co.uk/research/uk-marketing-stack-cost/

These figures are free to quote with a link to this page. If you think a price is wrong, tell us through corrections. We check it against the vendor page and record any change.

Related Whito research

• UK Business Software Price Index
• UK per-seat software pricing
• UK marketing budgets by revenue
• What dollar-priced software really costs a UK business

Questions

How much does a marketing software stack cost a UK small business in 2026?

On 1 October 2026 the brand-name stack of HubSpot, Mailchimp, Semrush, Google Analytics 4 and Hootsuite cost £2,667.00 a year before VAT for one person. Tools doing the same five jobs cost £1,319.73. For three people and 5,000 email contacts the figures were £5,678.16 and £1,871.58. Source: Whito, vendor pricing pages read 30 September to 1 October 2026.

What is the three-login jump?

It is Whito's name for how much a marketing stack's yearly bill rises when a business goes from one person to three people and from 1,000 to 5,000 email contacts. On 1 October 2026 it was £3,011.16 for the brand-name stack and £551.85 for the cheaper stack. Per-user pricing on Hootsuite was 71% of the brand-name jump.

Can a small business run its marketing software for free?

A one-person business can, with limits: Zoho CRM is free for three users, Brevo's free plan allows 300 emails a day, Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 are free, and Buffer's free plan covers three channels for one user. Email is usually the first job that forces a payment as the list grows.

Do I pay VAT on marketing software?

The vendor prices in this study are shown before VAT. A business that is not VAT registered cannot reclaim VAT it is charged, so its real cost is up to 20% higher. Check your own position with your accountant.

Are AI assistants accurate about software prices?

On 1 October 2026, 19 of 23 prices quoted by Google AI Mode and ChatGPT for tools Whito priced matched a price on the vendor page within 10%. Two of the four misses were dollar or euro prices written with a pound sign.

Whito

Whito is an independent UK research publisher. We publish research on how UK businesses are found, trusted and priced: what they cost to market, how their sectors work, and who actually gets recommended. Studies are free to read, every figure carries the date it was checked, and nobody pays to appear.

See Full Bio