RaaS Is Just Consulting With Better Marketing
Results-as-a-Service is being pitched as the future of software. The next evolution beyond SaaS. A revolutionary business model where you only pay for outcomes, not features.
Here’s the thing: this isn’t new. Consulting firms have been doing outcome-based pricing for decades. We just rebranded it and added APIs.
What RaaS Actually Is
Traditional SaaS: You pay for access to software. Monthly or annual subscription. Whether you use it, whether it works, whether you get results—irrelevant. You’re paying for the tool.
RaaS flips this: You pay only when the software delivers a measurable outcome. Marketing platforms charge per qualified lead, not per user seat. HR tools charge per successful hire, not monthly subscription. You get results, they get paid. No results, no payment.
The pitch sounds great: aligned incentives, lower risk for buyers, providers only win when customers win.
The reality? It’s outcome-based pricing with a software wrapper. And if you’ve ever worked with agencies, consultants, or recruiters, you’ve seen this model a thousand times.
Why This Feels Familiar
SEO agencies charge per ranking improvement. Growth consultants work on commission. Recruiters take a percentage of placement. Performance marketing firms bill on conversions, not hours.
This is how professional services have worked forever. The model isn’t new—what’s new is using software to scale delivery instead of relying purely on human labor.
iPhase, my web development agency, could technically be “RaaS” if we charged clients per completed feature instead of by project or retainer. But we don’t. And there’s a reason most agencies don’t either.
The Problems Nobody Talks About
Who Defines “Results”?
Here’s where it gets messy: what counts as a result?
A marketing platform might charge per lead. But they can’t control whether your sales team actually closes those leads. Is a bad lead still a result? Who decides if it’s qualified?
You’re also betting on attribution. Did the result come from your software, or from the ten other things your customer is doing simultaneously? Good luck isolating that.
The cleaner the outcome definition, the more viable RaaS becomes. The fuzzier it gets, the more you’re just asking for disputes.
You’re Betting the Business on Customer Execution
This is the brutal part: you can build the perfect tool, but if the customer doesn’t use it correctly, no results means no revenue.
You’re transferring pricing risk from customer to provider. But execution risk stays with the customer. They can mess up implementation, ignore best practices, or just not use the product—and you absorb the cost.
That asymmetry destroys most RaaS attempts. You need customers to succeed for you to get paid, but you don’t control whether they actually do the work.
The Economics Don’t Work for Most Cases
Let’s be honest about the math: RaaS requires massive scale to absorb revenue volatility.
If you’re bootstrapped and three of your ten customers don’t get “results” this month, that’s 30% of your revenue gone. Can you survive that? Most can’t.
You need thousands of customers so that individual failures average out. You need predictable outcomes with statistical confidence. You need margins high enough to cover the months where results don’t materialize.
Most early-stage companies don’t have any of that.
When RaaS Actually Makes Sense
I’m not saying RaaS never works. It does—under very specific conditions.
Three things need to be true:
1. You control 80%+ of the outcome. Payment processing works because the transaction either goes through or it doesn’t. You’re not dependent on someone else’s behavior. Fraud detection works because the software catches fraud directly. You’re in control.
2. Results are immediately measurable. Not “improved brand awareness” or “better team collaboration.” Those are too squishy. You need clear, instant metrics. Email delivered. Transaction completed. Lead captured.
3. You have volume to absorb variance. Thousands of customers using your product so that individual failures don’t tank your month. The law of large numbers protects you.
Examples that work: fraud detection (charged per fraud prevented), email delivery services (per email sent), payment processors (per transaction).
Examples that don’t: “growth tools,” “productivity software,” anything requiring sustained behavior change from users.
If your product needs customers to log in daily and do work, you’re not RaaS. You’re SaaS with creative pricing.
Why We’re Seeing the Hype Now
AI agents are driving the current wave of RaaS hype—and there’s some logic to it.
Instead of selling software that helps someone complete a task, AI can increasingly do the task. Autonomously. Without human input. That makes charging per completed task (result) more viable than charging per user seat.
An AI that writes your social media posts and publishes them? That’s closer to true RaaS. You’re buying the outcome (content published), not the tool (access to an AI writing assistant).
But here’s the reality check: most businesses calling themselves RaaS aren’t there yet. We’re in the hype phase where everything gets rebranded as RaaS because it sounds innovative and differentiates in a crowded market.
If your “RaaS” product still requires customers to log in, configure settings, and manually execute workflows, you’re not RaaS. You’re SaaS with outcome-based pricing tacked on.
Would I Build a RaaS Business?
Maybe. Under very specific conditions.
I’d need complete control over outcome delivery. Something like Sitewise automating contractor workflows end-to-end, where the software does the work, not just facilitates it.
I’d need outcomes I can measure instantly. Not “improved project profitability over six months.” Something binary: invoice sent, payment collected, report generated.
And I’d need enough volume that one customer’s bad month doesn’t kill mine. Either high transaction count or a large customer base to smooth the variance.
But here’s the bigger question: Is RaaS actually better for customers, or just a marketing angle to stand out in a crowded SaaS market?
I think it’s mostly the latter.
Customers love the idea of paying only for results. It sounds like less risk. But in practice, outcome-based pricing is often more expensive than subscription pricing—providers charge a premium to absorb the risk you’re transferring to them.
And if results are hard to define or measure, you’re just setting up future arguments about whether the software “worked” or not.
The Bottom Line
Don’t get me wrong—outcome-based pricing can work. Consultants and agencies prove it every day. It’s a legitimate business model with real applications.
But calling it “Results-as-a-Service” and pretending it’s a revolutionary shift in how software works? That’s just good branding.
Which, ironically, might be the real result we’re all paying for.
If you’re building a RaaS business—or considering one—I’d love to hear what you’re working on and how you’re solving the attribution and execution risk problems. Hit me up: hi@odeh.me