Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the collective Cyber Weekend, and the rest of the global “shopping season” is just around the corner again.
And as our annual SaaS and software benchmarking data report has shown across the last few years, the shopping spike doesn’t just apply to physical goods like clothing, jewelry, toys, or electronics.
End-of-year budget spending certainly contributes to this effect too.
Is your SaaS or software business ready to take advantage of the B2B and B2C spending sprees?
FastSpring is a merchant of record for over 3500 companies that use our platform daily. By analyzing years’ worth of aggregate sales data, we have helpful insights to share about Q4 sales spikes for software and SaaS businesses.
Below, we share this year’s insights into:
- The latest U.S. trends in year-end SaaS and software sales data.
- The latest global trends in year-end SaaS and software sales data.
- How FastSpring can help you best capitalize on Q4 sales spikes.
FastSpring is a merchant of record that can help you easily grow your business internationally. We provide an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital product businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and award-winning consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.
Our Data Sources and Analysis Methodology
Where the Data Are From
FastSpring helps companies sell digital products in over 200 countries, but to help us keep this study consistent and repeatable, we’ve pulled sales data from eight countries around the world.
Each year, we include the U.S., Canada, Germany, Great Britain, India, Brazil, Australia, and China.
This data are specific to where the sales took place, not where the companies are located.
To show a glimpse into one specific country that’s also a large, often-targeted SaaS and software market, we also show the same trends for just the United States.
When the Data Are From
To highlight useful trend data while avoiding any major outliers skewing the data, we use aggregated data for the most current five calendar years. The data below represent sales across 2020-2024.
We also use a seasonal index to show quarterly or monthly sales against a year’s monthly or quarterly average (read more about that in the How section below).
What We Measured
FastSpring supports the sales of a vast array of digital products, including SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, AI, and eLearning.
To narrow this report to a specific type of industry, we’ve excluded everything but software and SaaS.
We also used U.S. dollars as the currency for all figures to make comparison easy and clear.
How We Measured It
To establish a baseline, we calculated monthly and quarterly averages for each year.
For a very simplified example, if four quarterly totals were $200, $200, $100, and $300, the quarterly average for the year would be $200.
Then once we had the period average for the year, we compared each period’s actuals to that period average to get a percentage.
So for example, if Q3 shows a percentage of 90%, it means the sales total that quarter was 10% lower than the year’s quarterly average. If Q4 shows a percentage of 111%, that means Q4 sales totals were 11% higher than the year’s quarterly average.
We then combined that data across five years to get the five year averages and avoid any outliers causing a sharp spike that might have skewed the results too much.
US Year-End Trends for SaaS and Software Purchases
The following data show the monthly and yearly averages for U.S. software and SaaS sales across the last five years.
5YR Average US SaaS and Software Sales by Month
In the U.S., the three highest monthly spikes of SaaS and software sales are in March (104%), December (105%), and as expected, November (112%).
5YR Average US SaaS and Software Sales by Quarter
Similarly, Q4 is the highest-performing quarter for software and SaaS sales at 106%, with Q1 at 99%, Q2 at 97%, and Q3 at 98%.
Global Year-End Trends for SaaS and Software Purchases
Global trends show even stronger spikes in November and Q4, thanks to particularly strong sales in China and Germany (more on that below).
5YR Average Global SaaS and Software Sales by Month
Just like in the U.S., global sales of software and SaaS spiked slightly to 104% in March and 105% in December.
But as expected, the spike in November was higher than just in the U.S., at 118% globally.
While Black Friday and Cyber Week have traditionally been anchored to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., seasonal sales surges have caught on worldwide, perhaps thanks to other countries such as Germany observing Black Friday and Cyber Monday (or even an entire Cyber Week), and China observing Singles Day on November 11 (11.11).
5YR Average Global SaaS and Software Sales by Quarter
Quarterly sales reflect a slightly smaller spike over the shopping holiday season when Oct.-Nov.-Dec. are averaged together, but the spike is still significant at 8%.
Because the quarterly spike isn’t as high as the single spike in November, it reinforces that software and SaaS companies should focus their marketing and sales efforts specifically in November to get the best return and see the most growth.
5YR Average SaaS and Software Sales by Month per Country
To illustrate the changes in various countries (and give you an idea of which countries may be most worth targeting), we’ve also broken out the monthly data by country for the eight countries we included in this survey.
Here’s what monthly software and SaaS sales fluctuations look like with five years of data for the United States (US), Canada (CA), Germany (DE), Great Britain (GB), India (IN), Brazil (BR), Australia (AU), and China (CN).
We mentioned the China and Germany shopping holidays in November above, but China also sees spikes in April and June, likely due to the 418 (April 18) and 618 (June 18) shopping holidays.
Regardless of other monthly spikes throughout the year, November is still the single highest spike for any of the eight countries we included — ranging from 112% in the U.S. and 117% in India on the low end, to 148% in Germany and 149% in China on the high end.
SaaS and software companies can capitalize on this trend with:
- Email promotions.
- Custom partner coupon codes (which they can help you promote).
- Social media campaigns.
- Upsell or bundle offers.
- Localized promotions that would especially appeal to customers in each of your targeted regions.
- A merchant of record partner for online payments that can help you easily sell your software or SaaS worldwide.
How FastSpring Can Help
Software companies that already use FastSpring know why we’re a trusted partner in the global payments space. (Check out what Avid and Stardock have to say about the great experiences they’ve had with FastSpring, or find more FastSpring customer stories here.)
But if you’re new to FastSpring (or to the merchant of record model), here are some of the reasons our customers love using FastSpring to sell their software around the world.
FastSpring Makes Global Payments Easy for You and Your Customers
Payments Localization
Making your product available for purchase in more countries is only part of taking a software business global.
You also have to make it very easy for users to make the purchase, with the least hesitation possible.
That requires presenting a localized checkout experience — including automatic conversions to local languages and currencies, offering dozens of the most popular payment methods (which vary by region), intelligent payment routing to regional payment gateways (to help reduce failed payments), and more.
To support improved payment localization, we work closely with our customers and payment partners to understand which payment methods are the most valuable in different regions and industries across the globe.
This has materialized in the release of UPI in India and Pix in Brazil throughout 2025.
By the end of October 2025, we plan to improve our Pix capabilities with support for recurring payments on subscription purchases. We’re also excited to add Toss payments in South Korea, providing additional support beyond Kakao Pay in the region.
Custom Discounts, Offers, and Coupons
When you’re running campaigns for Cyber Weekend or other regional holidays, you’ll need a partner who can support customizable offers and coupons.
This includes the ability to:
- Offer percentage discounts on individual items.
- Preapply coupons via custom links.
- Stack multiple coupons.
FastSpring already supports all of those today, but now, we’re adding the ability to apply discounts at the order level to add even more flexibility on promotional planning. Instead of offering discounts on a per-item basis, you can now apply the discount to the entire order — which translates into clearer promotions for your customers, and ultimately, more completed orders. This feature is set to launch by the end of October, with plenty of time for Cyber Weekend prep.
Robust At-a-Glance Reporting
Once you’ve launched your Cyber Weekend campaigns, you’ll need to monitor their success throughout the course of the promotional holidays.
With FastSpring, you get access to our Welcome Dashboard, which provides an instant view of the health of your business and campaigns. This dashboard shows key metrics such as net sales, orders, subscriptions, and chargebacks — without the need for extra navigation. That makes it easy to understand at a glance how your campaigns are performing.
If you need to dig deeper, you can simply click into an individual dashboard to dig into more specifics around individual products, chargeback rates, churn rates, and even revenue recognition for the future.
With the wide variety of reports available, you won’t have to wonder how your campaigns are performing. Instead, you can glean clear insights into your campaign’s successes or make tweaks to your campaigns if something is trending in the wrong direction.
FastSpring has localized payments, flexible discounts, and visual reporting covered. Learn more about FastSpring’s global payments.
FastSpring Calculates, Collects, and Remits Global Taxes so You Don’t Have To
FastSpring doesn’t just facilitate payments — we’re a merchant of record, which means we become the entity actually selling the digital products.
That also means that we’re the ones who handle sales taxes and VAT.
FastSpring’s team of experts stays current on global tax regulations so we can calculate, collect, and remit those taxes — so you don’t need to worry about it.
Learn more about FastSpring’s global tax management.
FastSpring Has World-Class Support for You and Your Users
FastSpring’s award-winning support team is standing by and ready to help both the companies that use FastSpring as their merchant of record, and the customers who purchase software, SaaS, and other digital products.
For consumer support, customers can submit an online request and get personalized assistance. FastSpring also provides a helpful list of support topics for consumers to browse, including Licenses and Downloads, Checkout and Purchasing, and more.
For software companies using FastSpring as their MoR, you can submit a request from within the FastSpring app, or simply visit our support page.
Read more about our Stevie® award for Front-Line Customer Service Team, our Globee® award for Customer Excellence in the “Achievement in Team Customer Success” category, or submit a seller or consumer support request.
Partner With FastSpring
For over 20 years, FastSpring has been a trusted payment provider that can help you easily grow your business internationally. As a merchant of record, we provide an all-in-one payment platform that includes VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, award-winning consumer support, and more — making us an excellent partner for SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, AI, eLearning, and other digital goods businesses.
Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.
