Buying a Micro SaaS: What to Check Before You Pay

Buying a micro SaaS is closer to buying a used car from a stranger than acquiring a company through an M&A process. There's no broker vetting the numbers, no escrow holding funds until conditions are met — it's you, the seller, and whatever due diligence you do yourself. That's not a reason to avoid it, but it is a reason to be thorough.

Start with the numbers, not the pitch

Ask for screenshots of revenue and traffic dashboards if the listing doesn't already include them, and treat self-reported numbers as a starting point, not a verified fact. A seller who gets defensive or vague when asked for specifics — churn rate, customer concentration, why revenue moved the way it did — is telling you something, even if the numbers themselves look fine.

Ask about customer concentration

A product with $2,000 MRR spread across 40 customers is a very different risk than $2,000 MRR from one customer who could cancel next month. Always ask what percentage of revenue comes from the largest customer.

Check the tech stack against your own skills

A well-built product in a stack you don't know how to maintain is a liability, not an asset — you're either learning a new stack under pressure or paying someone else to. Factor realistic maintenance cost (your time or a contractor's) into what you're willing to pay.

Understand what's actually included

• Domain and hosting — will these transfer, or do you need to set up your own?
• Source code — full repository access, or just a handoff call?
• Customer list — can you legally contact existing customers, and under what data policy?
• Any third-party accounts (payment processor, analytics, email) — do they transfer or do you start fresh?

Pay in a way you can dispute if something's wrong

Since there's no escrow on most micro SaaS deals, use a payment method that gives you some recourse — and consider structuring payment around milestones (e.g. a deposit, then the balance after a working handoff call and access transfer) rather than paying the full amount upfront to someone you've never dealt with before.

None of this is meant to make buying a micro SaaS sound risky — thousands of these deals happen without incident. It's meant to make sure the ten minutes of questions you ask upfront save you a much worse conversation later.