The Cost of Selling Software: New B2B Buying Research | Cleverbridge

Benchmark report finds 96% of sellers expect routine renewals, expansions, and smaller purchases to shift toward self-serve digital channels, yet only 17% have a meaningful path in place at scale.

Cleverbridge, a global commerce partner and digital reseller for software and SaaS companies, today released The Cost of Selling Software, a new benchmark report showing that B2B software companies now have more ways to sell than ever, but many standard transactions still carry the cost and effort of high-touch sales and partner-led motions.

Conducted in partnership with Ascend2 Research, the report surveyed 608 B2B software sellers and 551 software buyers across six global markets. The findings show that direct sales, channel partners, cloud marketplaces, owned digital channels, and app stores all contribute meaningful revenue across the B2B software market. Each route carries a cost, from sales compensation and partner margin to marketplace fees and internal processing effort.

Those costs can be justified when transactions require negotiation, custom terms, complex procurement, or strategic human support. But the research shows that a significant share of software transactions are routine: standard renewals, seat additions, upgrades, low-complexity expansions, and smaller purchases that often follow known terms and require less intervention.

That mismatch creates unnecessary cost and operational drag. At the same time, buyers increasingly prefer digital purchasing for standard software transactions and are willing to complete meaningful purchases online when the experience is clear, trusted, and allowed by company policy.

“The direction of the market is clear: buyers want simpler digital purchasing, and sellers know routine transactions are moving online,” said Richard Stevenson, CEO of Cleverbridge. “A standard renewal, seat expansion, or usage true-up should not require the same cost, effort, and human coordination as a strategic enterprise purchase. For software companies, the opportunity is to make those transactions faster and more efficient while keeping sales and partners focused on the deals where they create the most value.”

Key Findings from The Cost of Selling Software include:

• Software sellers use every path available: Sellers generate revenue through cloud marketplaces (63%), direct sales (61%), owned digital channels (55%), channel partners (53%), and mobile app stores (47%).
  
  
• Every route has an economic tradeoff. Among sellers generating revenue through each route, 71% using direct sales report variable compensation of 10% or more of first-year contract value, 69% using channel partners report partner margin, discounts, or commissions between 10% and 30% of deal value, and 38% using cloud marketplaces report an effective take rate of 10% or more.
  
  
• Standard transactions represent a meaningful share of volume. Nearly three-quarters of sellers say more than 25% of their new purchase, renewal, and add-on or expansion volume is routine.
  
  
• Lower-complexity work is still expensive to process. More than half of sellers spend $1,000 or more internally to process a typical routine transaction, while more than one-third spend six or more internal hours. 
  
  
• Buyers are willing to purchase online. 93% of buyers would use self-serve digital checkout for routine software purchases if given the option and allowed by company policy. More than half would complete a routine purchase of $25,000 or more online, and 17% would go beyond $100,000.
  
  
• Seller execution lags market expectations. 96% of sellers and 95% of buyers agree that routine software transactions will increasingly move through self-serve digital channels, but only 17% of sellers have a meaningful path in place at scale.
  
  
• Human support remains important. More than half of buyers still want a person involved when a purchase requires security or compliance review, procurement exceptions, complex configuration, custom pricing, or special terms.

The report recommends that software companies evaluate transactions by complexity and cost-to-serve rather than defaulting to the motion that has historically handled them. Larger new purchases, negotiated expansions, renewals with exceptions, procurement-heavy deals, and partner-influenced opportunities may still require support from sales, channel partners, customer success, or other teams. For standard, repeatable transactions, governed digital buying paths can work alongside sales-led and partner-led motions — reducing manual effort and cost-to-serve, improving buyer experience, and making revenue easier to process, measure, and scale.

The full report is available at grow.cleverbridge.com/cost-of-selling-software.

About the Research

Cleverbridge, in partnership with Ascend2 Research, developed a custom online survey to gather insights from both buyers and sellers of B2B software. A total of 608 professionals working for companies selling software or SaaS products to businesses and 551 professionals involved in purchasing B2B software for their company participated in the study. Respondents represented companies across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, and Australia. The survey was fielded in March and April 2026. All findings are reported at a 95% confidence level.