Question 1

How does Ramp compare to Expensify, Navan and SAP Concur?

Accepted Answer

The meter is what separates them. Ramp charges per user and earns on card interchange, which is why its entry tier costs nothing at all. SAP Concur charges per expense report, so its bill tracks how often people file rather than how many people you employ. Expensify and Navan each meter differently again, and the pages beside this one on the hub go through them properly rather than compressing them into a sentence here. The thing to settle first is which of those meters matches the way your company actually spends, because that narrows the shortlist before any feature does.

Question 2

Is Ramp actually free, or is it a trial?

Accepted Answer

Actually free, and it is a complete product rather than a stripped one. Unlimited cards, travel booking, receipt matching, invoice capture, bill payment and the QuickBooks Online and Xero syncs all sit on the free tier with no timer running. Ramp also offers a thirty day trial of Plus on top of that, which is a separate thing. The catch is not a clock, it is the business model. Ramp issues the card and earns interchange on what you spend, so the plan is free because the payments are the product.

Question 3

What does Ramp Plus cost?

Accepted Answer

Fifteen dollars per user per month, plus a platform fee that Ramp describes only as based on team size and does not print anywhere. We fetched the pricing page on 24 August 2026 and the fee was not on it. Annual billing is advertised as twenty percent cheaper. So the honest answer is that we can tell you the per user half and not the total, and you should ask Ramp for the platform fee before comparing anything. Treat any page that quotes you a single all in Plus figure with suspicion.

Question 4

What actually triggers the jump from Ramp Free to Plus?

Accepted Answer

Your accounting system, more often than your headcount. Free syncs to QuickBooks Online and Xero and nothing else. NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Acumatica and Dynamics 365 Business Central are Plus features, and Workday and Oracle Fusion Cloud are Enterprise. Multi entity support is Plus as well. So a ten person business on Sage Intacct is on a paid plan while a forty person business on Xero may not be. Work out which side of that line you sit on before you model anything.

Question 5

What do you only get on Ramp Plus and Enterprise?

Accepted Answer

Plus adds phone support rather than chat, AI driven expense review, cards that lock themselves when compliance is unmet, auto coded line items, batch payments, payment release approvals, the wider accounting integrations, multi entity support, custom user roles and an audit log. Enterprise adds Workday and Oracle Fusion Cloud, locally funded reimbursements, card issuing in more than thirty countries, a dedicated success manager and implementation services. Procurement is an add on to either one and is included in neither.

Question 6

Ramp Free is zero and you are five hundred. Why would I pay you?

Accepted Answer

Because the software is not the work, and here the software is genuinely free, which makes the point unusually clear. Somebody still has to decide what can be claimed and by whom, write the approval chain, map every category to an account, set the per diem and mileage rules, reconcile the card feeds and redo all of it when you add an entity or change accountants. Ramp sells you an excellent tool and leaves that part with you. If your team is happy owning it, take the free plan and spend the five hundred somewhere it earns more. We mean that.

Question 7

At what point does Ramp stop being cheaper?

Accepted Answer

On licence cost alone, never, as long as you stay on the free tier, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Zero is zero. The crossover is not a price crossover, it is a labour one. It arrives when the hours somebody in your business spends maintaining categories, chasing receipts and repairing the accounting sync are worth more than five hundred a month. For plenty of companies that never happens. For companies with several entities, project costing or rebillable expenses, it usually already has.

Question 8

Is Ramp an expense tool or a card company?

Accepted Answer

Both, and it grew in that order, which is what explains the pricing. Ramp began with the corporate card and built the spend software around it, and it earns interchange every time the card is used. That is a description rather than a criticism, it is why a free tier can exist at all, and it lines up with what the product is genuinely good at. It does assume your spend moves onto Ramp cards. If a large share of yours is reimbursements, mileage or cards you have no intention of leaving, weigh it against tools that started life at the expense report.

Question 9

Does Ramp handle reimbursements and mileage, or only card spend?

Accepted Answer

Both, on every tier including the free one. Employee repayments and reimbursements are in Free, and Plus adds bulk review, weekly batching and spending limits on top. So this is not a gap, and we would rather say so than build an argument on something that is not true. The real question sits one level down: whether the reimbursement lands in the right account against the right project without somebody keying it in twice. That is a configuration question rather than a feature one.

Question 10

Does Zoho Expense connect to the rest of Zoho?

Accepted Answer

That is the reason to choose it. Expense sits alongside Books, CRM, Projects and Desk, so a claim becomes a posted transaction, a project cost and a rebillable line on a client invoice without a connector holding the whole thing together.

Question 11

What exactly do you do for five hundred a month?

Accepted Answer

We build the spend categories and limits, set the approval routing, configure the per diem, mileage and receipt rules, write the submission and rejection wording, set up corporate card reconciliation and the multi currency handling, connect Expense to Books and the rest of your Zoho apps, and then keep tuning all of it as your policy, your entities and your headcount change.

Question 12

Do I need a Zoho subscription on top of your fee?

Accepted Answer

You need a Zoho plan that includes Expense, and that account is yours. We manage it, we do not resell it, and if you leave the account and the data stay with you.

Question 13

Can you move us off Ramp?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Categories, policies, approval chains, historical claims and your card feeds come across, and we build the equivalent in Zoho Expense before anything is switched over. The part to think about first is the card. If you are spending on Ramp cards, leaving Ramp means moving your card programme as well, and that is a larger decision than changing expense software. Some clients keep the Ramp cards and run Zoho Expense beside them, and we will tell you plainly which of those fits.

Question 14

Is there a minimum term?

Accepted Answer

No. Five hundred a month, month to month.

Question 15

What if we only have five people?

Accepted Answer

Then take Ramp Free, or run Zoho Expense yourself, and keep your five hundred dollars. Five people filing a handful of claims a month is not a problem worth paying anyone to manage. Come back when the month end close starts costing somebody a full day, or when a second entity turns up.

Question 16

What happens if we outgrow Zoho?

Accepted Answer

Some businesses do. Once expenses are one small part of manufacturing, inventory or full project accounting, the honest answer is ERPNext rather than another Zoho app, and we run that as well.

A Ramp Alternative for Businesses Whose Spend Is Not All on One Card

The free plan is complete, and the card is how it gets paid for

Plus is fifteen a user, and then there is a platform fee

If your books are not in QuickBooks or Xero, Free is not your plan

Cascadia

Without Cascadia

Someone sits with the people who actually spend the money and turns your written policy into categories, limits and approval chains

Someone writes the approval, rejection and reminder wording your staff will actually read, and tests what lands in an inbox

Categories, limits and approval routing reviewed every month against the claims that actually came in

A tool whose economics do not depend on your spend moving onto the vendor's own card

The same named person every time, who configured your approval chain and remembers why

One expense policy every entity agreed on, instead of four managers each approving to their own standard

Every number in the quote published before you have spoken to anybody in sales

The claim, the bill, the project it belongs to and the customer invoice living in one system

An honest no on the first call if the Ramp free plan really is all you need

Reporting that joins the expense to the project and the customer invoice without a connector in between

Where Ramp fits

Where a free expense tool stops being the cheaper option

Where Ramp is strong

What five hundred a month covers when the software itself is genuinely free

What the first sixty days look like when nobody in house has to own the policy

Nothing gets built until we have followed one real claim from receipt through to posted transaction

The open claims and the card feeds move first, and get reconciled before anyone files in the new system

The categories, the limits and the approval chain get built around you, not left on defaults

You run a full month on it, including a real month end close and a real rejected claim

Don't Take Our Word For It

A contractor that outgrew the free tier the day it left QuickBooks

A firm where the expense report was never really the point

Dollars a month, published on this page, whatever your headcount does

Dollars per user, per card, per claim filed or per platform fee

Weeks, usually, before the close runs a full month without us in it

Ramp alternative and managed Zoho Expense FAQs

Ask Us Anything