Curious about Auto-Renews

Kevin Burnett

At my last company, we offered many SaaS offerings billed in a typical fashion - licenses for "x" years, with or without auto-renew. Since moving into payments, the pricing model is different, but reading some threads here has spurred my curiosity once more about auto-renewing SaaS contracts.

What I'd like to ask the community is:

1. What percentage of your customers are on auto-renewing contracts?
2. What percentage of those customers on auto-renewing contracts KNOW they will auto-renew?
3. How will they be notified before the renewal date?
4. Does your company do enough to notify customers before their auto-renew?
5. How often are your CSMs having to "hold the line" about a contract after an auto-renew is invoiced?
6. Are poorly notified (or otherwise silent) auto-renews happening for SaaS clients with or without the CSM and Sales leadership awareness?
7. Do you think this is a bad practice?

Brian Hartley

Great questions, I will share what we do/have done - not perfect though!

1. I would guess it is greater than 80% as that is standard unless red-lined by customer
2. 10% or maybe less. To be honest most forget.
3. 60 days
4. No, however we are changing that. Leveraging Gainsight to automate touch points in which we call out the contract is going to be auto-renewed in X days.
5. We give a lot of leeway...our ACV isn't high enough to hold the line or send to collections, etc.
6. Yes
7. I think the practice is a result of poor processes and tools to help achieve a superior proactive workstream