Acquire.com review: fees, buyer plans and selling a startup (2026)

What Acquire.com is and who it’s for

Acquire.com is a curated, self-serve marketplace for startups and small online businesses. Its seller FAQ names five listing models: SaaS, Ecommerce, Shopify Apps, Mobile Apps and Marketplaces. You run the sale yourself, but a curation team reviews each listing before it goes live.

The homepage claims 500k+ entrepreneurs, $2B+ in verified buyer funds, $500M+ in closed deal volume and 2,000+ startups sold, with sales “in as little as 90 days”. Those are Acquire’s own figures.

A listing must be operating and making money. The one exception is pre-revenue SaaS under $25,000 that has active customers. It doesn’t take brick-and-mortar shops, franchises, MLM, partial sales or investment raises, broken sites or apps, adult, weapons or gambling.

Right for: software and app founders who want to sell to buyers looking for SaaS, and buyers who want to search that market directly. Content and affiliate sites fit better on Motion Invest or Flippa.

Fees, with the math on a $10,000 and a $100,000 sale

According to Acquire.com’s seller pricing, sellers pay a monthly listing fee plus a closing fee, both set by asking price:

“The closing fee is a percentage of the total purchase price (or transaction value) and is due in full at closing.” Nothing is owed at closing if the business doesn’t sell. Escrow through Escrow.com is free (Acquire pays), and the pricing page says you get “a dedicated acquisition expert for free”.

The math below assumes the listing is live for 3 months. Change the listing line for your own timeline.

A listing that sits for a full year costs $300 in listing fees at the lowest band, whether or not it sells.

Profitable SaaS startups with $100k+ in revenue can apply for “Guided by Acquire”, an advisory service. The pricing page says it is provided “for free” but doesn’t say whether the closing fee still applies, so ask.

What buyers pay

Signing up and browsing are free. To get full access, buyers pay for a yearly plan, according to Acquire’s help center:

• Premium: $390 a year, full access to startups up to $250k in trailing 12-month revenue.
• Platinum: $780 a year, all sizes, priority support and expert matchmaking.

Both are billed yearly and renew. A buyer who searches for three years pays $1,170 on Premium or $2,340 on Platinum before buying anything.

How a sale works on Acquire.com

1. List. You submit the business, and your asking price sets the listing fee. The curation team screens it and checks that the price multiple makes sense.
2. Talk to buyers. Buyers message you; unlimited chats come with the paid buyer plans. Expect to be asked for metrics and for access to revenue and analytics accounts.
3. Letter of intent. Acquire’s LOI builder “automatically includes a no-shop clause (which you can remove if you want)”. A no-shop clause means you stop talking to other buyers while the LOI is active. It has no fixed length.
4. Due diligence and agreement. The buyer checks the business. You can cancel the deal at any time, but you can’t relist until the LOI is cancelled.
5. Escrow and handover. The buyer pays into Escrow.com, you hand over the code, accounts, domain and hosting, and the funds are released. “Acquire.com has no part of any transaction or release of funds.”
6. Closing fee. The 8%, 7% or 6% is due in full at closing.

Vetting, escrow and protections

Acquire’s vetting is a screen, not an audit. The seller FAQ says the team screens listings and verifies pricing multiples, but “we DO NOT conduct in-depth seller due diligence”. A common reason for rejection is customer numbers that can’t be verified. No rejection rate is published.

The escrow is real third-party escrow. Escrow.com holds the buyer’s money and releases it when the buyer accepts the handover or the agreed inspection period ends.

No migration service or buyer guarantee is published. Moving the code, servers and accounts is between buyer and seller. Read moving your website and how to transfer a domain before you start.

What actually changes hands

A startup sale is more than a website. Before you list, make a written list of every account the business runs on, because each one moves in its own way:

• Code and servers. The repository, the hosting or cloud account and any API keys.
• The domain. If buyer and seller use the same registrar, a free account-to-account push avoids a full registrar transfer. At Namecheap, the push is free and keeps the DNS settings, so there is no downtime. Otherwise it is a registrar transfer.
• Payments. Payment processor accounts, subscriptions and the customer list.
• Stores and apps. A Shopify store moves through Shopify’s own transfer, and Shopify’s help center says a store can’t be transferred while Shopify Capital or Shopify Credit is in use. Clear those first.

Put this list in the purchase agreement. Since Acquire runs no migration, it is the only record of what “done” means when the buyer decides whether to release the escrow.

Gotchas

• The fee follows you off the platform. A help article updated January 26, 2024 says “you still need to pay the closing fee” if you close off-platform, and you “lose all our acquisition protections”. No time limit is stated.
• Old terms. The general Terms were last modified January 4, 2023 and contain no closing-fee, tail-period or exclusivity clause. The fee rule lives in help articles, so save copies.
• Auto-renewal. The Terms say fixed-term purchases renew unless you give notice at least 30 days before the next term. Cancel listing and buyer plans you no longer need.
• Buyers pay for full access. That may filter out casual buyers, but it can also mean fewer buyers than on a marketplace that is free to use.
• Not a fit for content sites. Blogs and affiliate sites aren’t among the listing models in the seller FAQ.

What a SaaS business sells for here

Acquire’s multiples report (published February 11, 2026, updated September 1, 2026) gives a median SaaS profit multiple of 3.9x for confirmed sales in both 2024 and 2025, with averages “in the low-to-mid 4x range”. The sample size isn’t disclosed. At 3.9x, a SaaS business with $30,000 in yearly profit would sell near $117,000. See our website valuation guide for the other published ranges.

Who should use Acquire.com

Use it if you have a revenue-making SaaS, app, Shopify app, small marketplace or ecommerce business and are comfortable running your own sale. For comparison, Empire Flippers takes 15% of a $100,000 sale, and Acquire.com takes 8% with free escrow. It also takes pre-revenue SaaS, as long as the price is under $25,000 and it has active customers.

Buyers who want SaaS specifically, and will do their own technical and financial checks, get a focused list for $390 or $780 a year.

Look elsewhere if you want a broker to vet, price and move the business for you (Empire Flippers does that for businesses with $24,000+ a year in net profit), or if you sell a content site.

Alternatives

• Flippa: open marketplace for any size, including apps.
• Empire Flippers: vetted broker with migration included.
• FE International: a full-service M&A advisor for larger deals, covered on our buy and sell websites hub.