Technology for a new business — what to buy in week zero, and what can wait

We recommend buying technology for a new business in the order events actually happen, not in one order in the first week. In week zero you need a name, a domain and mail on that domain. The first client requires an invoice and a place online where they can find you. The first enquiries call for one place to log contacts, and the first employee calls for shared accounts. The brand — logo, brand guidelines, a registered trade mark — can in our view wait until the market has answered the offer.

Most of these items are cheap. EU member states are encouraged to let you register a new business within three working days and for under €100, and a mailbox on your own domain costs between €0.90 and €8.10 a month. This page sets the buying order and, at every stage, links to the article that covers it in detail. We checked amounts and dates on 2 October 2026 unless a different date is given next to a figure.

Before you start: registration in one paragraph

Your Europe, "Starting a business in the EU" (last checked 31 August 2026) says the exact requirements vary by country, but the EU encourages member states to meet certain targets: registration in no more than three working days, costing less than €100, through a single administrative body, completed online. These are targets, not guarantees — check the actual process for your country before you plan around them. Most businesses operating in the EU must also register for VAT once turnover crosses a threshold that is set nationally; we cover that threshold and the rest of the money side in how much it costs to start a business.

Week zero: name, domain, mail

The first week is three decisions worth making immediately. Your name, your web address and your e-mail address end up on every invoice and every business card, so changing any of them later costs more than getting them right now.

Name. There is no single EU rule for checking a business name before you use it — the mechanism is national registers plus trade-mark databases, so that your name doesn't collide with a mark someone else already owns. TMview and the EUIPO eSearch plus database cover trade marks registered across the EU and beyond; your national business register covers company names in your own country. How to think about competitors from the customer's side is in our article on the business model; the trade-mark databases a logo project should check are listed in logo design.

Domain. There is no single EU-wide domain price — renewal multiples vary by registrar and by extension far more than by country. For a .com, for example, Strato's post-promotional rate renews at €21.60 a year and Gandi's at €31.98 — for the same technical object. The rule that matters is to compare the renewal price, not the first-year price, before you buy; details and more examples are in web hosting cost. Turn on auto-renewal from day one.

Mail. An address on your own domain stays with you if you switch provider; an @gmail.com address doesn't. A standalone mailbox runs from around €0.90 a month (Zoho Mail Lite, billed annually) up to about €8.10 (Google Workspace Business Starter, no annual commitment) — prices read from the vendors' own EUR price pages, 2 October 2026. More important than the price are the DNS records: Google requires that, since 1 February 2024, every sender writing to personal Gmail accounts has SPF or DKIM configured — including a one-person business. Where a mailbox can live and how to set those records up is in business email. How to secure the mailbox, including a second sign-in factor, is in protecting company data.

First client: an invoice, and a place where they can find you

At the first client, a business needs two things: an invoice it's allowed to issue, and somewhere online the client can check it out. EU invoice content is harmonised at the directive level: VAT Directive 2006/112/EC, Art. 226 sets out the required fields for a full invoice — a sequential number, the supplier's VAT number, the date and nature of the supply, the rate and amount of VAT, and so on. E-invoicing is a different matter: it runs on each member state's own domestic schedule, not one EU-wide date — ViDA, Council Directive (EU) 2025/516, in force from 14 April 2025, harmonises the cross-border B2B layer with digital reporting from 1 July 2030 and aligns existing domestic systems by 1 January 2035. Neither date is "when e-invoicing becomes mandatory everywhere" — that depends on your own country. We cover the full timeline, a free tool, and the data checklist a small business needs in invoicing software.

The second matter is being findable. How to set up and run a business listing is covered in our guide to the Google Business Profile, and when a simple site is enough — and what has to be on it — in brochure website. If the site has a contact form, it needs a data-processing notice too; what belongs in it is in the GDPR information duty on a website.

First enquiries: where to log the client

Before you buy a customer-management system, log every enquiry in one place: who asked, when, about what, and what the next step is. Enquiries arrive by e-mail, phone and web form, so without a shared log a client's history ends up scattered across channels. In our view a paid CRM earns its place once that log stops being enough — because by then there's actually something to organise.

We found no EU-market vendor pricing we can stand behind for this hub, so we're not naming a figure: most systems charge per seat, and the sensible number depends on the size of the team you're planning for. When a CRM is actually worth it, and how to choose one, is covered in CRM for a small business.

Where the next enquiries come from is a separate question. The order of marketing activities is set out in our guide to internet marketing, visibility in search in the article on SEO for your website, acquisition channels in advertising your business online, and collecting reviews in Google reviews.

First employee: shared accounts

With a second person in the business come shared calendars, shared files, and the need for an account to belong to the business rather than to the employee. That's the point to buy an office suite. Google Workspace Business Starter costs €6.80 per user a month with an annual commitment and €8.10 without one. Microsoft 365 Business Basic costs €6.07 with an annual commitment and €7.28 billed monthly; the EEA edition without Teams runs €4.67 on the annual commitment. Both vendors sell these plans for up to 300 users (prices read 2 October 2026; Microsoft's prices exclude VAT, Google's page does not say either way).

The differences in storage, desktop apps, meetings and AI are covered in our comparison, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Who should have access to what, and how to close an account when someone leaves, is in protecting company data. Once repetitive tasks start eating into the team's time, the first automation examples — including handling incoming invoices — are in business process automation.

Brand: when a logo, when brand guidelines

In our order, the brand is the last stage, because its cost only makes sense once you know the offer is landing with clients. Before that, a vetted name from week zero is enough. Once the market responds, start with a logo that comes with rights: a delivered file is not the same as a transfer of rights, so set the assignment out in the contract (how it must be done depends on the member state), and elements from Canva's library (other than fonts) can't be used in a trade mark under its licence. We cover this in logo design. After that, write down the rules for using the mark — variants, clear space, minimum size, colours, typefaces. What that document looks like is in brand guidelines.

An EU trade mark costs €850 at EUIPO — the basic fee for an online filing in one class (read 2 October 2026).

Buy now, buy later: the table

The table collects the items from the sections above in purchase order. We've been explicit where no EU-wide figure exists and described the mechanism instead of inventing one.

There's no single EU-wide figure for what the first year of technology costs a new business — prices vary too much by country and by provider for one number to mean anything. If you want a number for your own case rather than a market average, price it in our maintenance cost calculator. Our own study of SaaS tool costs measures the Polish market specifically — it isn't a European benchmark, so we don't quote its figures here.

Articles in this section

• How much does it cost to start a business: registration, social-security and VAT basics, and what actually drives first-year costs.
• Business email: three places a mailbox can live, vendor prices, SPF/DKIM/DMARC records and step-by-step setup.
• Google Workspace or Microsoft 365: prices from both vendors, storage, desktop apps, meetings and AI.
• Invoicing software: what an EU invoice must contain, the e-invoicing timeline, and free versus paid tools.
• Business model: the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and building a persona from real conversations.
• Brand guidelines: what published brand guidelines actually contain, and how to write the core of one for a small company.
• Logo design: copyright and the designer's contract, a logo from Canva or an AI generator, trade-mark registration, and the files you'll need.