Strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday SaaS Deals
Analyzing the Discounts, Time Frames, and Fine Print
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest days of the year for sales of hardware devices such as smartphones, laptops, and printers, but they’ve never been big shopping events for software buyers. SaaS companies are trying to change that. In recent years, more and more business software companies have introduced promotional incentives during the Thanksgiving weekend to drive new customer acquisition.
I doubt that many business leaders put SEO plug-ins or accounting software on the holiday wish lists they send to Santa. However, there is usually a running list of new applications that most tech decision makers need but haven’t had the time to buy. A promotional incentive like 50% off just might be the nudge that busy tech buyers need to motivate them to purchase. At least, that is the behavior that SaaS companies are hoping to encourage.
In this article, we will analyze the Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign strategies for 10 SaaS and cloud companies to understand how industry leaders such as Zoom, Adobe, Cloudways, and QuickBooks are capitalizing on the holiday shopping season to boost sales.
Which SaaS Companies offer Black Friday Deals?
Product-Led Growth
Let’s start by analyzing the types of companies that offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions, because not all SaaS companies have these types of promotions. You won’t find deals on SAP’s ERP applications or Crowdstrike’s cybersecurity suite. Most of the SaaS companies with these Thanksgiving weekend promotions are lower price point SKUs targeted at small businesses. And all of them have product-led growth motions that include
- Self-Service Buying – Customer can purchase online without a sales rep
- Online Payment – can be made with a credit card or digital wallet
- Lower Priced SKUs – Typically less than $100 per month
- Monthly Plans – Options to pay-as-you go or make an annual commitment for a discount
Horizontal SaaS
The bulk of the SaaS Black Friday promotions we found were in horizontal SaaS segments targeting small businesses, such as:
- Marketing Tools – SEO, website content management systems
- Sales Tech – Lead generation, outbound BDR enablement
- Finance & HR Apps – Payroll, general accounting, expense reporting
However, not all horizontal SaaS categories offer these types of promotions. We were not able to find Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals in categories such as:
- Online File Storage – Dropbox, Box.com
- Office Productivity – Microsoft 365, Google Workspace
- CRM Applications – Salesforce.com, HubSpot, Pipedrive
- Project Management – Monday.com, Asana, Wrike
Another category you will not find for is eCommerce. Users of Shopify, WooCommerce, and other storefront technologies aren’t a good target for Black Friday promotions because they typically don’t implement new technology during the holiday season. Instead, they are focused on maximizing sales.
Campaign Strategies for Black Friday Deals
We analyzed ten Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions from SaaS companies to understand the mechanics of the campaigns. We aimed for a mix of larger, established market leaders (Zoom, Adobe) and smaller, high-growth players (vidIQ, Smartlead). For each promotion we analyzed the:
- Incentive offered – Percentage discount, waived fees, credits
- Length of promotion – First year or just a few months
- Contract commitment required – Annual plan or monthly, pay-as-you-go
- Promotion cycle duration – From Black Friday to Cyber Monday or an extended period before and after Thanksgiving weekend
- Customer eligibility – Net new accounts or existing customers
SaaS Black Friday Campaign Examples
Below is the list of ten promotions we analyzed. You can read the whole list one by one or skip to a specific company you are interested in:
Adobe Creative Cloud
Black Friday Promotion
Adobe is a San Jose-based marketing and e-commerce powerhouse that boasts one of the highest market capitalizations of publicly traded SaaS companies. Adobe is best known for its Creative Cloud suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, InDesign, and recently introduced Firefly-powered generative AI features for images, video, and audio.
Adobe ran two campaigns – one for Black Friday and another for Cyber Monday – each of which offered a 50% discount on the first year of a new Creative Cloud subscription.
Adobe Black Friday and Cyber Monday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday and Cyber Monday (two separate campaigns)
- Product = Adobe Creative Cloud Pro
- Discount = 50%
- Timeframe = 12 Months
- Eligible = First-time subscribers purchasing direct
- Ineligible = Education, OEM, or volume licensing resellers
- Contract Term = Annual plan (billed monthly or billed annually)
- Promotion Cycle = Black Friday – November 13 through November 28
- Promotion Cycle = Cyber Monday – November 29 through December 7
Webflow
Black Friday Sale
Webflow is a San Francisco-based company that offers a visual web development platform. Its flagship product lets users build, launch, and optimize custom, responsive sites in a visual canvas backed by a composable CMS and hosting. The company serves freelancers, agencies, small businesses, and enterprises across sectors like software, media, e-commerce, and consumer brands. Webflow boasts over 3.5M+ users, $335M in funding, and adoption by more than 300,000 organizations globally.
Webflow’s Black Friday promotion offered three months free for new customers registering for its CMS and eCommerce plans.
Webflow Black Friday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday
- Plans = Basic, CMS, Business, eCommerce, Workspaces
- Discount = Free
- Timeframe = Three Months of the first year
- Eligible = New and existing customers
- Ineligible = Existing plans. Add-ons and enterprise subscriptions
- Promotion Cycle = November 17 through December 2
- Contract = Annual plans
Intuit QuickBooks
Black Friday Sale
QuickBooks from Intuit is one of the world’s most widely used finance and accounting platforms. Small businesses, tax and accounting (CPA) practices use QuickBooks to track income and expenses, send invoices, collect payments, file taxes, and manage cash flows.
QuickBooks Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotion offered a 70% discount for the first three months of a new customer subscription.
QuickBooks Black Friday Offer Details
- Plans = QuickBooks Online Start, Plus, Advanced
- Discount = 70% monthly price
- Timeframe = 3 months
- Eligible = New customers
- Ineligible = Existing customers
- Contract Term = Monthly
- Limitations = Cannot be combined with any other offers
CookieYes
CyberMonday Sale
CookieYes is a UK-based company that operates in the consent management platform (CMP), providing tools for GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, LGPD, and other privacy regulations. The flagship offering is the CookieYes cookie consent solution that manages cookie banners, and automates consent for WordPress and Shopify. CookieYes is used by over 1.5 million small businesses, ecommerce storefronts, and non-profits.
The CookieYes Cyber Monday promotion offered up to 50% discounts for new paying subscribers for its privacy management applications.
CookieYes Cyber Monday Offer Details
- Plans = All Basic, Pro, and Ultimate
- Discount = 20% of Basic, 40% off Pro, and 50% off Ultimate
- Timeframe = First billing cycle
- Eligible = New paid subscribers.
- Ineligible = Customers on active free trial. Prior customers
- Contract Term = Monthly and Annual
FreshBooks
Black Friday Sale
FreshBooks is a Toronto, Canada-based company that competes in cloud accounting and invoicing software. Its flagship product provides invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking, payments, and reporting on its web and mobile apps. FreshBooks has more than 30 million customers, including freelancers, small businesses, and service-oriented firms across verticals like construction, IT, legal, marketing, and creative agencies.
FreshBooks Black Friday promotion offered new customers a 60% discount on all plans for the first four months of the subscription term.
FreshBooks Black Friday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday
- Plans = Lite, Plus, Premium
- Discount = 60%
- Timeframe = Four months
- Eligible = New customers
- Ineligible = Existing customers
- Contract = Monthly or Annual
- Limitations = Cannot be combined with any other offers
Yoast
Black Friday Sale
Yoast is a Dutch company that competes in the SEO software market. The company is best known for its Yoast SEO plugin (including free and premium editions), which provides on-page SEO guidance, structured data, readability analysis, and related tooling “for SEO for everyone.” Yoast is active on over 13 million websites supporting bloggers, ecommerce stores, agencies, and enterprises using WordPress or Shopify.
Yoast’s Black Friday promotion offered new customers a 30% discount on its flagship SEO products for their first year subscription.
Yoast Black Friday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday
- Plans = SEO Premium, WooCommerce SEO, SEO AI+
- Discount = 30%
- Timeframe = First Year
- Eligible = No details specified
- Ineligible = No details specified
- Promotion Cycle = November 27 through December 2
- Contract Length = Annual
- Limitations = None specified
Other Yoast Products
Yoast also offers discounts on some of its premium products such as Yoast SEO for Shopify and Yoast SEO Google Docs, but with different time frames:
VidIQ
Black Friday Sale
vidIQ is a San Francisco-based company that competes in the creator-economy and video marketing SaaS space, offering tools to optimize YouTube channels and content performance. The company’s flagship product includes browser extensions and web apps that provide keyword research, channel audits, AI-assisted coaching, and analytics for YouTube creators. vidIQ primarily serves tens of millions of creators, media publishers, small businesses, and large enterprise brands.
vidIQ’s Black Friday offered new customers a 25% lifetime discount for all of its paid plans.
VidIQ Black Friday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday
- Plans = Coaching, Coaching and Boost
- Discount = 25%
- Timeframe = Forever
- Eligible = New Customers
- Contract Length = Monthly
Cloudways
Black Friday Sale
Cloudways operates in the managed cloud hosting segment, sitting between developers or agencies and infrastructure providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and DigitalOcean. The flagship product lets users deploy and manage PHP and CMS applications (e.g., WordPress, Magento, Laravel) across multiple cloud providers via a single console. Cloudways serves over 15,000 agencies and 100,000 customers, including ecommerce merchants, developers, and SMBs.
Cloudways was one of the few infrastructure providers we found offering a Black Friday sale. The company offered a 50% off all hosting plans and add-ons for the first three monthly invoices.
Cloudways Black Friday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday
- Plans = All hosting plans (Flexible and Autonomous) and add-ons (Support, CDN, malware)
- Discount = 50%
- Timeframe = First three invoices
- Eligible = New customers
- Ineligible = No details specified
- Promotion Cycle = December 5th
- Contract = Monthly (no annual plans offered)
- Limitations = Three months to request free migrations
SmartLead.ai
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale
SmartLead.ai competes in outbound sales, email deliverability, and cold-email marketing automation software. The flagship product provides unlimited mailboxes, AI-driven warmups, a unified master inbox, and automation features designed to keep outreach out of spam folders. Smartlead is used by over 87,000 businesses, which include B2B lead-generation and marketing agencies as well as the sales and business development teams of SMBs and large enterprises.
SmartLead’s Black Friday promotion offered customers one month of free Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mailboxes to use for prospecting new accounts.
SmartLead Black Friday Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday
- Plans = Google and Microsoft mailboxes only
- Discount = 100%
- Timeframe = One month
- Eligible = New and existing customers
- Contract = Monthly or Annual
Zoom
Black Friday and Cyber Monday
San Jose-based, Zoom, is best known for its video conferencing product, Zoom Meetings, but the company also offers a dozen other products including phone, chat, webinars, virtual events, and contact center software. The company is widely recognized as the leader in the space and is highly rated by tens of thousands of users on G2 and TrustRadius.
Zoom’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers targeted existing accounts with a promotional discount of 50% off webinars and large meeting packages.
Zoom Upsell Offer Details
- Title = Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- Plans = Large Meeting and Webinar add-ons
- Discount = 50%
- Timeframe = Two Months
- Eligible = Existing Customers
- Ineligible = Federal, state, and local government customers
- Contract Length = Monthly
- Promotion Cycle = November 20 through November 30
