SaaS businesses for sale

A SaaS business is valuable because its subscriptions renew without anyone selling them again. Ask for MRR (monthly recurring revenue) month by month for the last 12–24 months, broken down into new customers, expansion, contraction and cancellations. Growing MRR spread across many small customers is sturdier than the same MRR from three large accounts.

Then look at churn: how many customers, and how much revenue, leave each month? Find out where new customers come from, what it costs to acquire one, and how many hours the founder spends on development, support and sales. If the seller is the only developer, their knowledge of the codebase is part of what you are buying.

SaaS is usually priced on revenue rather than profit. Sitavo’s indicative range is 3–6 times ARR (annual recurring revenue), cross-checked against 3–6 times annual profit. Growth and low churn point to the top of the range; high churn, few customers, ageing technology and dependence on the founder pull it down. These are general market ranges, not a valuation of a specific business — try Sitavo’s price estimate and the SaaS market data.

• MRR and ARR — subscriptions only, excluding one-off fees and set-up charges.
• Churn, measured in both customers and revenue.
• Customer concentration: the share of revenue from the largest accounts.
• Running costs: hosting, third-party services and licences per month.
• Billing mix: monthly versus annual plans and prepaid revenue.

• An export from the billing system (such as Stripe) showing subscriptions and cancellations that reconcile with the accounts.
• Access to the source code, so you or a developer can judge quality, documentation and technical debt.
• IP rights: was the code written by the seller, employees or freelancers, and have the rights been assigned in writing?
• Open-source licences and third-party components the product depends on.
• Customer contracts: notice periods, price commitments, SLAs and change-of-control clauses.
• Data processing agreements with customers and the list of sub-processors under GDPR.
• Hosting set-up, backups and any security incidents.

Source code and customer lists are confidential, so sellers usually share them in a data room behind an NDA. See also the pre-purchase checklist.

In an asset purchase you typically take over the source code and repositories, domain, hosting and cloud accounts, the billing account and subscriptions, customer database, documentation and support desk. Subscriptions cannot always be moved to a new billing account as they are, so agree early how customers will continue to be charged. Customers often need to be told about the new supplier, and data processing agreements must be assigned or signed again. In a share purchase, contracts and liabilities stay with the company. Buyers from outside Denmark should expect Danish-law contracts, a Danish CVR-registered company on the other side and Danish VAT on the invoices; a local adviser helps. Agree a transition period in which the seller supports code, operations and key accounts.

Smaller SaaS businesses are often bought with own funds; larger deals may include vendor financing or an earn-out tied to MRR after the handover. Sitavo does not provide financing. Messaging sellers and making offers is free, and price and terms are agreed in the deal workflow. The purchase price goes straight to the seller — Sitavo never holds the money. You may also want to browse websites and apps for sale.