CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

A couple of items to consider:

(1) Cost of downloading CiviCRM and installing it on a webserver to use. You pay nothing for CiviCRM and generally a monthly fee for the hosting.

(2) Cost of configuring CiviCRM once you download. If you teach yourself, the cost is just in your time. For a person familiar with web applications, I would suggest 40 hours would be sufficient to get a basic install up and running (not including CiviMail).

(3) Cost of accepting credit cards. There is no cost for the CiviCRM side, but you do need to pay your processor (much like your web host). If you use basic paypal, the cost is around 3% that goes to paypal.

(4) Managing memberships is part of the software, therefore free. But you do need to teach yourself how to use the software, which costs you time. If you are charging membership fees, then you need to pay your processor.

If you don't want to do-it-yourself, you can expect to pay around $100/hr for consulting.

Recap:
CiviCRM: $0
Hosting provider (e.g. linode.com): $20/mo
Payment Processor (e.g. PayPal): 3% of transactions
Learning/consulting: Do it yourself ($0) or consulting (~$100/hr)