Would you buy this software again today? Five questions for your next renewal

When a software renewal comes in, someone usually checks that the price has not gone up too much, confirms the team is still using the tool, and approves another year. For a long time that was a reasonable approach, because for most organisations building an alternative was not realistic. Today it is worth asking a different question before you sign: would you buy this software again if you were starting from scratch?

Why that question lands differently now

In most organisations, SaaS costs increase step by step, without one big decision behind them. Users are added, a module is switched on for one team, and a higher tier turns out to be necessary for a feature someone needs. Each of those steps makes sense at the time, but after a few years the organisation is paying for a setup nobody would have chosen in this form.

At the same time, something has changed on the other side of the decision. For years, having software built took so much time and capacity that renewing was almost always the sensible choice. With AI-assisted development, a small team now builds in weeks what used to take months, which has made bespoke software a serious alternative in more situations. That does not mean you should replace everything, but it does mean the renewal has become a real decision rather than a formality.

The five questions below help you make that decision well. They work for a CRM, a marketing platform, a BI tool or any other package you pay for every year.

What do we actually use?

Start with usage, and look further than the number of people who log in. Which features are used every week, and which modules are we paying for that nobody opens? In most organisations that turns out to be a smaller share of the package than expected. The overview of users and their activity is usually available in the tool's admin settings, and it is worth spending an hour on it before the renewal is signed.

What does the bill grow with?

With many SaaS packages, the price grows with something other than usage: the number of seats, the number of contacts in your database, the data volume, or the tier you need for one feature. That is not a hidden cost, but it does mean the bill goes up as your organisation grows, even if you do no more with the tool than the year before. Put the invoices of the last three years side by side and see how much of the increase you can trace back to what the team achieves with it.

Who owns the data, and how do you get it out?

This question is often only asked when someone wants to switch, and by then it is late. Can you export all your data, including the history of contacts, campaigns or reports? Is that data also in your own environment, for example in a data warehouse, or only with the vendor? If the answer is unclear, you are more tied to the package than the contract suggests. That is a good reason to sort out the export now, even if you plan to stay.

Is the team working around the package?

It also helps to look at what happens next to the tool. Teams update spreadsheets every Monday because the report in the package is not quite right, export data by hand to another system, or adjust a process because the template does not allow anything else. Workarounds like these cost time that never shows up on the invoice, and they show where the package and the way your organisation works have grown apart. With our own marketing platform, that was the first sign the setup no longer fitted.

Who maintains it if you build it yourself?

A SaaS package takes infrastructure, updates, security and a large part of the operational work off your hands. If you build yourself, you take that work on, or hand it to a partner. For organisations without engineering capacity, that is often a reason to stay, and that is a perfectly good outcome of this exercise. If you do have that capacity, in house or through a partner, the question becomes whether the maintenance outweighs the licence and its limitations.

What the answers tell you

If the first four questions show that you are paying for a lot you do not use, that costs grow with something other than value, and that the team works around the package, then the fifth question decides it. If there is a good answer to that one, it is time to work out the alternative properly.

You do not have to replace everything at once. De Mandemakers Groep first replaced only its BI environment with a reporting platform of its own, and moved the existing reports over in about a month. With our own marketing stack we started with the website, and then followed with the CRM, email and social planning. In both cases it was custom software built around the organisation, one part at a time, with the old system as a safety net until the new one had proved itself. You can read how that went for us in the story of our own migration.

Curious how your largest software renewal holds up against these five questions? We are happy to go through them with you before the contract is signed for another year.