The Auto‑Renewal Trap

We picked 298 widely used B2B SaaS vendors across CRM, collaboration, HR, finance, security, data, developer and marketing software. For each one we opened the public customer agreement that governs paid business plans (master subscription agreement, customer terms or terms of service) on the vendor’s own website and recorded the renewal, notice and pricing clauses verbatim.

230 of the 298 documents set out renewal terms we could classify. 54 leave renewal entirely to a non-public order form, and for 14 we could not find or open a customer agreement; those are listed in the CSV but not counted in the percentages. We count a contract as renewing automatically when it continues and bills for a new period unless the customer acts, even if it never uses the word “renew”. Notice periods given in months were converted at 30 days per month; 3 vendors count in business days, which the table and calculator show as such. Where monthly and annual plans differ, the table shows the annual plan. A price cap means the terms limit the renewal increase; a built-in increase means the terms set an increase that applies unless the vendor says otherwise. Every row links to the document we read and shows the date we read it.

Limits: these are default terms. Negotiated enterprise contracts and order forms often change them, and vendors update their terms without notice to the public. Nothing here is legal advice.

Data licensed CC BY 4.0. Spotted a clause that changed? Email team@theprocurementmanager.com.