SaaStr

JULY 26, 2025

HubSpot was selling primarily to small businesses with a rigid 3-tier pricing structure ranging from $3K-$18K annually. Companies serving larger enterprises can achieve 120%+ NRR, but expecting that from SMB-focused businesses is often unrealistic. The result? 70% NRR — far below the 100%+ target for healthy SaaS companies.

Retention

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

Annual contracts combined with prepaid cash are a huge benefit, when done right: You get all the cash up-front (this is how I went cash-flow positive in fact) — IF you can collect it a timely fashion; and Your churn almost by definition goes down, at least nominal churn. Think about yourself as a consumer.

SaaS

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2025

Here’s how early-stage founders should approach it: Hire Early, Even Before It Feels Necessary Don’t wait until churn becomes a problem. Early on, your CS hire should focus on onboarding customers effectively, reducing churn, and ensuring customers are successful with your product. But expansion can wait.

Sales Hiring

Stax

MARCH 16, 2025

The average churn rate for the software industry as a whole is 14%. Thats actually one of the lowest churn rates across all industries. That said, industry experts agree that your SaaS companys goal churn should be below 2%. TL;DR The average software industry churn rate is 14%, but SaaS companies should aim for under 2%.

Payment Solutions

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Pricing is more than just a number on a contract — when used thoughtfully, it can become a strategic tool for your SaaS product that can drive product adoption, customer satisfaction, and business growth. Miro’s pricing strategy evolved with their business goals: Early stage: Minimum five-user paid plans to ensure collaborative value.

Payments

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2025

If these teams arent working together, deals will stall, and churn will rise. Ignoring Churn : Closing deals is great, but if customers dont renew, youre in trouble. Misaligned sales incentives can lead to churn, which kills enterprise SaaS businesses.

Outsourcing Services

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 17, 2025

Q1 ‘25 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., As you can see from the data below most cloud businesses beat the consensus estimates for Q1.

Cloud

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

What Most SaaS Companies Get Wrong The standard playbook is: Hire sales Hit growth targets Eventually add CS when churn becomes painful But that’s backward. Don’t wait until you’re forced to fix churn. The best customers are ones your CS team fights to work with. Way earlier. Build it into your DNA from the start.

Sales Hiring

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2025

Gross Dollar Retention (GRR) is a critical metric for SaaS businesses, especially when presenting to investors. Subtract Churned ARR : This is the revenue lost from customers who canceled their subscriptions during the period. Dear SaaStr: How Should I Calculate Gross Dollar Retention For Our Investors? moved to a lower-tier plan).

Retention

User Pilot

OCTOBER 19, 2024

In this article, we explore the concept of customer satisfaction – how to measure it, why it is important for your business, and how you can improve customer satisfaction levels. However, what satisfies customers differs from one business to another. What does customer satisfaction look like for SaaS businesses?

Business

FastSpring

JULY 29, 2025

If you’re looking for a payment services provider and merchant of record to help you grow your subscription business, we can help. FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video games, and digital products businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support.

Merchant Services

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2025

Basic questions like “What’s our churn rate?” By solving a universal developer pain point and executing relentlessly on product development, they’ve built the picks-and-shovels business for the mobile subscription economy. ” or “What’s the lifetime value of subscribers?”

Payments

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

Average Monthly Self-Serve (“Online”) Churn Hit New Low of 2.7% a Month Churn especially SMB churn remains Zoom’s biggest challenge at its mature state, but it’s been pushing customers to annual and longer contracts and more. It’s seen churn fall to 2.7% And it still trades at 5x ARR. #1.

SMB

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2025

Track churn, retention, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), GRR and upsell rates. Be consultative, solve problems, and help them achieve their business objectives. Learn to Drive Net Negative Churn : The best SaaS companies achieve net negative churn, meaning they grow revenue from existing customers faster than they lose it.

Customer Success

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2025

What’s your churn rate? This approach not only makes your numbers more credible but also shows you understand the mechanics of your business. Acknowledge potential challenges—like longer sales cycles or higher churn—and explain how you’ll address them. What’s your average deal size?

Scale

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

The document contains a plethora of information on the company including a general overview, up to date financials, risk factors to the business, cap table highlights and much more. There are hundreds of thousands of trades businesses providing essential services in every corner of the country.

Benchmarks

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

Even a fairly small business can pay $10,000-$20,000 a year for one app, usually. Churn is all over the place with SMBs. and Is the app so core, or at least is on a path to become so core, that they can charge $20,000+ a year for it? Or at least $10,000 at a minimum? Oftentimes, only one. So be honest.

Payment Solutions

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Increasingly, you’ll hear the term “business outcomes” popping up in software marketing. While I initially loathed the phrase for its vagueness, over time I’ve come to believe that, much like the frequently abused word “ solutions ,” there is a right and a wrong way to use “business outcomes.” It’s not great.

Marketing

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2025

In theory, collecting upfront for annual and even multi-year contracts can be a fantastic strategy, especially in the earlier days of your B2B business when cash is tight. Customer Commitment : Annual and multi-year contracts do lock in customer more, reducing churn risk and keeping competitors at bay.

Payments

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2025

Segment Your Churn Data Immediately Too many don’t do this. Break down churn by customer segment, use case, and ACV. Are SMBs churning faster than mid-market? Is churn concentrated in a specific vertical? Often, churn is disproportionately high in one segment, and fixing that can stabilize the whole business.

Scale

User Pilot

JULY 17, 2025

What’s your biggest challenge with customer churn right now? Understanding the root causes of customer churn is the first step to reducing it. Identifying why users are leaving Proactively engaging at-risk users Measuring churn accurately How do you currently track customer health and predict potential churn?

Churn

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

A strong GRR (80-90%) ensures your base is solid, and youre not just masking churn with upsells. They need to own metrics like DAU/MAU ratios , feature adoption rates , and churn reduction tied to product improvements. VPP Quotas : Product adoption, feature stickiness, churn reduction, and roadmap execution.

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud)

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2025

You’ll stop settling for “good enough” and find the truly exceptional hires who can 10x your business. A misaligned hire can create churn and drag down morale in a small team. If you find the perfect candidate at #12, great—but plan for. Hire for cultural fit, especially early. In the beginning, cultural fit is non-negotiable.

Startup

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

Tracking churn is crucial in SaaS, but deciding when to recognize customers as churned can be tricky. Deciding when to classify a customer as “churned” isn’t always straightforward. Exactly when churn is recognized is often different between SaaS companies. Recognize churn at the end of the paid subscription period.

Churn

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2025

Dear SaaStr: We Have a $7m ARR Business But Our CAC is Way Too High. High CAC Is a Symptom, Not the Root Problem If your CAC is too high, its likely because of one (or more) of these issues: Churn is too high : If customers arent sticking around, your CAC payback period will balloon. Should We Cut and Marketing To The Bone?

Marketing

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

In-App Messages Have Higher Impact During Business Hours The assumption that in-app notifications work best “24/7” turned out to be wrong. higher during business hours, even for consumer users. Les Mills discovered their in-app engagement rates were 2.4x The hypothesis?

Scale

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2025

Incentivize Retention If churn is an issue, consider tying part of the commission to retention. Review and Adjust Regularly As your business evolves, revisit the commission plan every 6-12 months. For example, if a customer pays $100/month, the rep earns commission on $1,200 (12 x $100). You can and likely should all clawbacks here.

Scale

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2025

It combines renewals, churn, and upsells. High net retention (120%+ for bigger customers) is a sign of a healthy, scalable business. Track metrics like churn, NRR, time-to-value, and customer health scores. Focus on Net Retention Net retention is the ultimate metric for customer success. Start Early.

Sales Hiring

User Pilot

OCTOBER 10, 2024

When done well, it can be the difference between a user becoming a loyal customer or churning after the first week. The purpose of this detailed survey is to gather as much information as possible about your business so Mailchimp can tailor its features to your specific needs.

Onboarding

User Pilot

OCTOBER 31, 2024

How to apply actionable metrics to different SaaS business stages. A product analytics strategy is essential for any business looking to make informed decisions about product development and user experience. These issues might range from low engagement with specific features to a high churn rate or poor user onboarding.

Strategy

ChurnZero

JULY 25, 2025

Quick Summary: Churn in 2025 looks different. Meet “DIY”, ChurnZero’s newest Churn Monster, and get re-acquainted with five others who are especially relevant this year. Customer churn risks in 2025 aren’t coming from where they used to. Meet the DIY Churn Monster Your customer isn’t unhappy.

Churn