The ROI of Software Escrow: Calculating the Value for Your Business  

In today’s fast-evolving tech landscape, start-ups are innovating fast, but many are also shutting their doors just as customers grow more dependent on their solutions. Against this backdrop, there are multiple ways in which software escrow delivers powerful ROI, for both vendors (depositors) and end users (beneficiaries). Here’s how.

For Software and SaaS Vendors: Building Trust, Meeting Client’s Needs, and Closing More Deals 

Accelerated Sales and Competitive Differentiation

When assessing software vendors, especially start-ups and scale-up SaaS providers or in regulated markets, buyers often expect a reliable software escrow as a condition for signing. Offering software or SaaS escrow to mitigate failure risks sets you apart and can significantly shorten sales cycles and new supplier due diligence reviews. Enterprises and regulated clients see software escrow as a simple method to build trust into the project, reduce negotiation friction with new working relationships and speeding up deals to signature. 

By increasing their appeal to enterprise clients, who would otherwise have overlooked them as a risky investment, vendors can secure more lucrative contracts, which increases their ability to then secure more deals with the same resources.

Secure Backup Against Emerging Risks 

Some vendors also use software escrow as a secure backup of their own code. In the event of a ransomware attack, for example, software escrow ensures a clean, retrievable copy is held off-site. While compliance frameworks such as ISO simply require “appropriate backups,” many organisations choose software escrow because it provides a trusted, third-party layer of security that reduces operational risk, whilst also ensuring their compliance. 

Transparent, Predictable Costs 

With clear, fair pricing and global infrastructure, software escrow is a cost-effective way to strengthen client confidence. Instead of lengthy contract negotiations about “what if” scenarios, stringent SLA or financial runway reviews, vendors can point to their software escrow arrangement as a ready-made assurance mechanism. 

The ROI of software escrow to a vendor can be as simple as the value of a contract that would otherwise not have closed with a client who requires certain business continuity risks addressed.  

For Beneficiaries: Ensuring Business Continuity, Minimizing Risk, and Safeguarding Investment 

Access to Critical Software 

If a supplier fails due to insolvency, breaches contract, or is acquired by a competitor of the client, software escrow and SaaS escrow services provide access to application code, client data, cloud environments either production or backup systems and necessary technical assets to continue operating the service. Ultimately, it’s a plan that reduces interruption in operations for mission-critical applications. 

Assurance Through Verification 

Software & SaaS escrow is about more than simply holding code, it’s about providing confidence that continuity measures will work when they’re needed most. Providers like The Escrow Company offer periodic, independent verification, including tests on a wide range of cloud environments including applications hosted on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, to confirm the deposited software assets are complete and useable. As with any disaster recovery solution, testing and reliability is a cornerstone of business continuity, ensuring that what’s in the software or SaaS escrow is not just stored, but usable is an essential part of the process. 

The Escrow Company’s SaaS Access Continuity service ensures verified admin credentials to the vendor’s production environment are escrowed and if released, allows the beneficiary to continue operating the existing production system if the supplier fails. For businesses that want even greater assurances, our advanced services such as SaaS Recovery Escrow and Managed SaaS Continuity go further; providing a secondary cloud environment that can be spun up, tested, and either handed over to your team or managed by us – buying the beneficiary crucial time when an important vendor has had significant issues. This level of support delivers true peace of mind, knowing that there is a partner on hand with the knowledge and skills to assist with the recovery of your critical third-party software applications.  

Safeguarding IP When Using Third-Party Developers 

Another scenario we see occurs when companies outsource development but retain ownership of the IP. Going into a new relationship, often early on into a business’s life can be daunting and a risk. By utilising software escrow during development, beneficiaries gain peace of mind that they’ll be able to access their IP if the relationship with the third-party developer ever changes, as well as validate and document certain releases as appropriate.  Software escrow acts as a safeguard, ensuring they won’t be locked out of their own product and can provide a third-party party review of elements such as code quality or security vulnerabilities. 

Alignment with Risk and Compliance Strategies 

For industries such as finance, insurance, or critical infrastructure, software escrow is often required to align with internal governance or industry regulations. It reinforces due diligence during procurement, vendor onboarding, and even M&A activity. 

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In 

Having materials securely held in a software escrow gives organisations the freedom to continue with another partner if support falters. It’s a powerful reassurance against lost upgrades, failed support agreements, or disputes, keeping the software ecosystem resilient. 

Real-World Value: Quantifying the ROI 

The return on investment in software escrow is clear when you compare the modest cost of implementation to the potential financial, operational, and reputational losses that can arise from supplier failure or service disruption. 

For beneficiaries, the numbers speak for themselves. If access to a mission-critical system is lost, downtime can easily run into millions of £/$ per day in lost revenue, penalties for missed SLAs, reputational damage, and client churn. In regulated industries such as finance or healthcare, the fines for non-compliance alone can exceed the annual cost of software escrow many times over. 

For vendors, the ROI is often found on the sales side. Enterprise-level clients can be worth 6–7 figures annually, yet they may refuse to sign without a software escrow in place to satisfy compliance, procurement, or risk management requirements. In that scenario, the cost of not having software escrow isn’t just the low monthly software escrow fee – it’s the opportunity cost and value of the deal you didn’t close and lost to a competitor who could meet the client’s needs.  Some vendors even sell software escrow as a bolt on additional service to their standard offering 

In both cases, the economics are simple: a relatively small investment in software escrow safeguards against outsized, unpredictable losses, and can even unlock new revenue streams. 

The Escrow Company Advantage 

• Global reach and reliability: Offices in London, Atlanta, and Sydney, serving clients across the globe. 

• Modern, automated workflow: Supporting deposits via Git (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps), encrypted and seamlessly. 

• Comprehensive SaaS and cloud compatibility: SaaS Escrow options extend across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments. 

• Security and transparency at scale: Our company, Escrow London Limited trading as The Escrow Company is ISO 27001 certified and we offer transparent pricing, trusted by businesses worldwide. 

Bottom Line 

Whether you’re selling SaaS products, developing mission-critical custom software, or integrating third-party platforms into your operations, software escrow isn’t just insurance, it’s a strategic investment in a successful software project.

Frequently Asked Questions