Don't waste your software dollars: How to pay less for your SaaS with Buyer

There’s never been a more opportune time to negotiate pricing with your vendors. In a downturn, vendors are highly motivated to retain valuable customers, even if it means lowering their prices. They know it usually costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.  

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But negotiations take time and effort that you might not be able to afford. Ramp’s Buyer team is here to help. We are a negotiation service that helps Ramp customers save on their SaaS purchases and renewals. Our team leverages Ramp's thousands of transaction data points to identify areas where you could be saving. We negotiate with vendors on your behalf to get you better pricing and terms.

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Ramp can help you determine if you're paying a fair price for your software

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Why should you negotiate your contracts? 

Businesses spend 27% more on average when they fail to negotiate their software contracts. With the typical small business spending more than $175k on software each year (based on Ramp transaction data), that amounts to over $43k in potential savings annually. Think of how you can use that kind of capital to grow your business in new ways. 

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To be sure, vendor negotiations require time investment and deal-making savvy. You need to come to the negotiation table prepared with pricing benchmarks and competitive bids. Most negotiations take several weeks of back-and-forth with the vendor. Given the effort required, it’s understandable why many businesses don’t negotiate as much as they should and eat the extra cost instead. 

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Ramp’s Buyer team offers time-strapped leaders a way to save on software without sacrificing their time.

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How Buyer works

Buyer offers SaaS negotiation services to Ramp customers—for free. Our contract analysts, negotiators, and relationship managers analyze your software costs and find areas where you might be overpaying or terms could be improved. Using insights from Ramp’s transaction data, we are able to establish pricing benchmarks to drive negotiations with your vendors. We handle all the back-and-forth, so you can focus on running other parts of your business. 

“Ramp has an incredibly large data set. You know what good deals look like, what bad deals look like, [resulting in] massive time savings.” - Sid Upadhyay, WizeHire CEO

What’s eligible for negotiation

We specialize in negotiating SaaS contracts with a minimum of $10k in annual contract value. In addition to pricing, we can help you negotiate the following terms: 

• Seat volume 
• Usage capacity 
• Pricing escalators 
• Payment terms 
• Renewal clauses 
• Cancellation windows
• Ramp orders

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The best time to engage our services is a few weeks before a new purchase or contract renewal. We can also work with you on mid-term contract expansions if you need to adjust your terms to accommodate growth.

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Unfortunately, we’re not able to negotiate the following at this time: 

• Ad spend, e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook ads 
• Cloud infrastructure, e.g. GCP, AWS, Azure
• Payments, e.g. Stripe

Our 5-step negotiation process

1. Submit a negotiation request in Ramp 

To get started, Ramp admins can upload a contract or proposal within the app. 

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Upload your contract to Ramp to kick off the negotiation process

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2. Analyze your contract

We’ll consider whether the vendor is a SaaS product that we can support and compare your current pricing to our benchmarks. We’ll let you know if we think there is an opportunity to improve the proposal or if you’re already getting a fair price. 

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3. Kick off negotiations 

If we think we can help you find savings, we’ll work with you to gather your requirements and preferences. With those in hand, we’ll reach out to the vendor to develop a proposal that covers all of your needs. We know we’re representing your company in these conversations and will always approach these discussions with respect and cooperation. 

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4. Review the final vendor proposal

Once we are certain we have the best price possible, we’ll share a summary of the deal for you to review and consider. We never sign anything on your behalf, but instead aim to arm you with the information you need in order to make the decision. 

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5. Finalize the contract

Once you approve and sign the new contract, the service is complete!

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Case studies

SwagUp and WizeHire are two happy Buyer clients.

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We helped SwagUp save over $30k across three contracts, including a Google Workspaces reseller subscription. The vendor initially offered a 30% discount for 250 seats. We ultimately secured a 35% discount for 250 seats and locked in this rate for three years, creating better cost predictability for SwagUp. “Those savings decrease our burn as a bootstrapped company. We made no effort, and we’re paying less,” says SwagUp CFO Artem Mashkov. 

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WizeHire saved nearly $100k in just seven months with Buyer. In particular, we helped them negotiate with messaging software company Intercom and increase their discount from 29% to 40% through levers like account expansion, upgrades, and a multi-year term. “Ramp is one of those secret advantages that maybe we shouldn’t be talking so much about,” says WizeHire CEO Sid Upadhyay.

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Save more time and money with Ramp

With Buyer on your side, you can rest easy knowing that you’re making the most out of your software budget—and time. Don’t forget all the other ways that Ramp can help you save, including our card controls, hundreds of perks, and powerful saving insights. 

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Ready to give Buyer a try? Upload your first contract. Not yet on Ramp? Sign up today.