Best SaaS M&A Advisory Firms: Lower Middle Market 2026

The right M&A advisory firm for a SaaS company is the one whose typical deal size matches your revenue, whose buyers already know your category, and whose partners will still be on your calls in month seven. Most founders pick on brand instead, and brand is the weakest of the three signals.

Updated October 13, 2026. 11 firms scored out of 100 on what each firm publishes, with sources.

This guide scores 11 SaaS M&A advisory firms, including our own, out of 100 on public evidence, groups them by the revenue they serve, and gives you an interview scorecard for the final choice. It also tells you plainly where Livmo fits and where we do not. Choosing the firm is the first real decision in any SaaS exit strategy, and it is the one founders spend the least time on.

Key takeaways

• A SaaS M&A advisor runs a competitive sale process, builds the materials buyers read, contacts buyers in parallel, and negotiates terms. They do not fix a business that is not ready to sell.
• We scored 11 firms out of 100 on public evidence. Corum Group scored highest at 83, and the lowest score was 48.
• Advisory firms are separated far more by deal size than by quality. A firm built for $200 million transactions will not give a $6 million deal its senior people.
• Boutique software specialists are the right category for most founders between roughly $2 million and $30 million in ARR.
• Business brokers and marketplaces suit smaller, simpler businesses. They are a different product, not a cheaper version of the same one.
• Typical sell side economics are a retainer in the low tens of thousands, credited against a success fee that usually lands between 2 and 5 percent of transaction value.
• Vertical experience beats general M&A experience. A buyer list for vertical SaaS looks nothing like a buyer list for developer tools.
• The partner you meet in the pitch should be the partner who runs the process. Ask directly, and ask for references from founders whose deals did not close.
• A full sell side process runs 6 to 12 months from first preparation to wire transfer.

What a SaaS M&A advisor actually does

Four jobs, and one important thing that is not on the list.

A sell side advisor does four things. They prepare the company and its story for scrutiny. They build the confidential information memorandum and the financial model that buyers work from. They run outreach to strategic and financial buyers at the same time, which is what creates competition. And they negotiate the letter of intent and shepherd the deal through diligence to close.

The competitive process is the part that produces the money. One buyer talking to you alone sets the price. Six buyers talking to you in the same window let the market set it. Everything else an advisor does exists to make that competition possible.

Here is what a good advisor does not do. They do not turn a company with 70 percent gross revenue retention into a company with 90 percent. They do not clean up a cap table or an unassigned IP problem in the middle of diligence without cost. Those are preparation problems, and preparation happens before an advisor is worth hiring.

For a week by week view of the role, we wrote a longer breakdown of what an M&A advisor actually does across a live process.

Advisor, banker, broker, or marketplace

Four different products. Choosing the wrong category costs more than choosing the wrong firm inside the right one.

These four terms get used as if they were interchangeable. They are not. They differ in who they call, how many of them call, what they charge, and how senior the person doing the work is.

The fee percentages move in the opposite direction to deal size, which surprises people. Smaller deals cost more as a percentage because the work does not shrink in proportion to the price. A $4 million sale needs a data room, a buyer list, and a diligence process just like a $40 million sale does.

We have written separately on the difference between an M&A advisor, a business intermediary, and a business broker, including the fiduciary distinction that founders usually discover too late.

SaaS M&A advisory firms ranked by score

11 firms, scored out of 100 on what each firm publishes. Scores checked October 13, 2026.

On public evidence checked on October 13, 2026, Corum Group scores highest at 83 out of 100. Software Equity Group and Vista Point Advisors follow at 81.5 each. Discretion Capital scores 78 and AGC Partners scores 74.5.

Each score uses 7 criteria with fixed weights. The biggest is the public deal record at 30%. The full method, with every weight and rule, is in how we scored the firms. Each firm’s score breakdown and sources are in the firm scorecards.

Under $2 million ARR: marketplaces and brokers

At this size a full sell side process is usually uneconomic for both sides. The realistic routes are self service marketplaces and small business brokers. Acquire.com, Empire Flippers, Flippa, FE International, and Quiet Light Brokerage all operate in this range. We did not score them, because a marketplace does a different job from an advisor.

Expect a listing rather than an outreach campaign, and expect to do more of the work yourself. Multiples here are typically a revenue multiple in the low single digits, and the buyer pool skews toward individual operators and small holding companies rather than strategic acquirers.

Where Livmo sits here. Our stated range starts at $2 million in ARR, and below that a marketplace is often the more sensible route. We do take selective mandates under $2 million, so it is worth asking rather than assuming. The answer depends on retention quality and how identifiable your buyer set is, not on revenue alone.

$2 million to $5 million ARR: boutique M&A advisors for software

In 2026 this is the band where a real competitive process starts to pay for itself, and where the specialist firms live. It is also the band where the largest number of founders get the category wrong, hiring a generalist business broker because the deal feels small.

$5 million to $10 million ARR: specialists with more buyer reach

The buyer universe widens here. Private equity dry powder remains the dominant force in this band through 2026. Private equity platforms start looking at you as an acquisition rather than a tuck in, and strategic buyers can justify the diligence cost. The firms above still serve this band, joined by firms that work slightly larger deals.

$10 million to $30 million ARR: the crossover band

This is where boutiques and lower mid market banks compete for the same mandates. Both can run the process. The question becomes whether you want a senior specialist who knows twenty buyers personally, or a larger institution with a wider net and a deeper bench.

$30 million ARR and above: mid market and bulge bracket

Above this line the process changes shape. Deals are more likely to be auctions with formal rounds, more likely to involve debt financing, and more likely to attract public company buyers with their own bankers. We did not score these banks, because they serve companies larger than this guide covers.

• Baird, Houlihan Lokey, Lincoln International, Piper Sandler, Raymond James, and William Blair in the middle market.
• Evercore, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Qatalyst Partners at the top of the market.

Livmo does not work in this band either. Above roughly $30 million in ARR you should be talking to firms with institutional buyer coverage that we do not have.

Firm scorecards

Each firm’s score on all 7 criteria, the reason for each score, and the pages we checked.

How we scored the firms

Public evidence only, fixed weights, 2 separate scorers.

We scored each firm from 0 to 10 on 7 criteria, using only what the firm or the press publishes. A criterion with no public evidence scores 0. The total is out of 100. We set the weights and the scoring rules before we looked at any firm, and we did not change them after.

• Deals. A deal counts only with a visible date since October 13, 2023. Growth investments and minority stakes count as financing, not as sales. Most firms do not publish deal sizes, so the count covers all named software deals.
• Revenue bands. A firm appears in a band when its own stated range covers it. Firms that publish no range stay in the bands where this guide placed them in August 2026.
• Awards. Paid directory badges do not count. Only Livmo had a qualifying award since October 2023: Axial named Livmo and its founder in its Top 12 Deals of 2024.
• Two scorers. 2 scorers worked from the same evidence without seeing each other’s scores. They agreed on 71 of 77 scores. We checked the other 6 against the source pages.
• What a low score means. A low score means the firm does not publish that evidence. It does not mean the firm does poor work. Many good firms keep deals private.
• What we left out. Chemistry, and whether the partner who pitches you runs your deal, need a conversation. Use the interview scorecard below for those.

What it costs

Retainer, success fee, and the tail clause nobody reads.

Sell side advisory has three cost components in 2026, and founders usually only ask about one of them.

The definition of transaction value is where money quietly moves. If the success fee is calculated on total consideration including a three year earnout you may never collect, you are paying today on money that is not certain. Ask for the fee to be calculated on cash at close, with a separate rate on contingent consideration when it is actually received.

The tail clause protects the advisor from being cut out of a deal they sourced. That is fair. What is not fair is an uncapped tail that covers every buyer in the market for two years. Ask for a named list.

On why the retainer exists at all, we set out the reasons an M&A advisor charges a retainer and what it should buy you.

The advisor selection scorecard

Eight criteria, weighted. Score every firm you meet and the answer usually stops being a feeling.

The ranking above uses public evidence. This scorecard is for the interviews that come after, where you can test what no website shows.

Founders interview two or three firms and choose on rapport. Rapport matters, and it is the last thing on this list rather than the first, because everything above it is harder to recover from.

The references criterion is the one that separates firms. Any advisor can produce three happy sellers. Ask instead for a founder whose process did not close, and watch what happens. A firm that hands you that name is confident about how it behaves when things go wrong, which is the only time you will really need it.

For a longer version of the interview itself, we published ten questions that filter out the wrong fit.

What a generalist advisor misses about SaaS

The metrics that decide the multiple are not the ones on a standard M&A checklist.

Business valuation for software runs on different inputs than it does for most companies, and that gap is where value quietly disappears. A generalist advisor will ask for revenue, EBITDA, and a customer list. A software specialist asks for five things that a generalist often does not know to request, and each of them moves the price.

A specialist also builds a different buyer list. Vertical SaaS sells to the platforms consolidating that vertical. Developer tools sell to infrastructure companies and to private equity platforms rolling up adjacent tools. These are not the same twenty phone calls, and a generalist working from a database will make the wrong ones.

The sell side process, phase by phase

Six to twelve months, five phases, fourteen milestones.

Every credible process follows roughly this shape. The durations below are the ones Livmo plans against, published in full in our M&A process roadmap.

If an advisor tells you a full process takes eight weeks, they are describing a single buyer conversation, not a competitive sale. That is a different transaction with a different price.

Preparation is the phase founders want to skip and the phase that decides the outcome. On when to start that clock, see our note on the 18 month lead time most founders miss.

Deal killer traps, by phase

Most broken deals break in a small number of predictable places.

Early engagement

Signing a letter of intent before any valuation work is done. Sharing detail before an NDA. Talking to one buyer, which removes your only source of negotiating power. Not qualifying whether a buyer can actually finance the purchase.

Letter of intent and negotiation

Accepting vague language that resolves in the buyer’s favour later. Granting exclusivity with no time limit. Letting too much of the price sit in an earnout. Agreeing no break fee if the buyer walks late.

Due diligence

A disorganised data room, which reads as risk and slows everything. Surprises, because anything undisclosed becomes ammunition for the buyer. Defensive answers to routine questions. Verbal agreements with no paper trail.

Closing

Uncapped indemnification. An escrow that is too large or held too long. Vague employment terms for your post close role. Last minute changes made when you are too tired to fight them.

Red flags when hiring

• The pitch partner cannot tell you who will run the weekly calls.
• No named transactions at your size, only a logo wall.
• A valuation range offered before they have seen your retention data.
• An uncapped tail clause, or a refusal to name the covered buyers.
• Success fee calculated on total consideration with no separate treatment of earnouts.
• They cannot name six likely buyers for your specific category.
• Pressure to sign the engagement letter in the meeting.

How Livmo works, and when we are the wrong choice

The part where we describe ourselves the same way we described everyone else.

Livmo is a sell side M&A advisory firm for SaaS and digital businesses between $2 million and $30 million in ARR. Khaled Azar has more than 25 years in technology and entrepreneurship, has launched more than 14 companies and sold two of his own, and has spent the last four years advising software founders through exits. Livmo was a 2024 Axial Top Deal Award winner.

That mix is deliberate and it is also the honest limitation. Most advisors on this page have spent their careers selling companies. Khaled spent his building them and then moved to the other side of the table. If you want a banker with 25 years of transaction volume, several firms above will serve you better. If you want someone who has been the founder in the chair, that is the trade.

Our process is the five phase, fourteen milestone roadmap described above, published openly so you can hold us to it before you sign anything.

Frequently asked questions