Why We Charge Per Deal, Not Per Dollar: The Case Against AUM Pricing

Here's a question nobody in investor management software wants to answer: why does your bill go up when you raise more capital?

Most platforms in this space charge based on assets under management (AUM). The more money you manage, the more you pay — for the same login, the same dashboard, the same features. It's the industry default, and nobody questions it because that's just how it's always been.

We questioned it. And we couldn't justify it. So we built deeltrack with flat per-deal pricing instead.

How AUM Pricing Actually Works

Most investor management platforms don't publish their pricing (that's a whole separate rant). But from what sponsors report, AUM-based pricing typically runs 0.02% to 0.05% of assets under management, with minimums starting around $500/month.

That sounds reasonable until you do the math at scale:

At $100M AUM, the difference is $23,000 per year — for the same type of software doing the same job. The only difference is the number on your balance sheet.

The Misalignment

AUM-based pricing creates a perverse incentive: your software vendor profits when your fund grows, even if they do nothing differently.

Think about what actually drives the cost of operating investor management software:

• Number of deals — more deals = more data, more distributions, more documents
• Number of investors — more users, more portal access, more K-1s
• Feature usage — AI tools, document generation, email notifications

Notice what's NOT on that list? The dollar amount of your investors' commitments. Whether an LP committed $50K or $5M, the software does the same work: store the record, calculate the pref, generate the K-1, show the portal.

AUM pricing charges you for something that has zero correlation with the cost of serving you.

Why Per-Deal Makes Sense

A deal is the natural unit of work in syndication. Each deal has:

• Its own entity and legal structure
• Its own investor table and commitment ledger
• Its own distribution history and capital accounts
• Its own documents, deal room, and compliance requirements

When you add a deal, deeltrack does more work. When you close a deal and it exits, deeltrack does less work. Per-deal pricing aligns your cost with the actual operational load.

And when a deal exits, it stops billing.

This is the part that really matters. With AUM pricing, you're paying a percentage of assets currently under management. As deals exit and return capital, your AUM (and your bill) should go down — but many platforms have minimums or annual contracts that lock you in regardless.

With deeltrack: deal exits → remove the deal → your monthly bill drops by $49. No negotiations. No contract amendments.

The "But It Scales" Argument

AUM pricing advocates argue that larger sponsors get more value from the platform, so they should pay more. There's a kernel of truth here — a $100M shop needs more reliability, more support, and more features than a $5M operator.

But that value scales with deals and complexity, not dollars. A sponsor managing 12 deals at $100M AUM should pay more than a sponsor managing 2 deals at $5M AUM — and they do, because they have 12 deals at $49 each instead of 2.

The pricing scales naturally with the work. No need to peg it to a dollar figure.

What You Get for $49/Deal/Month

Every feature. No tiers. No add-ons. No "contact us for enterprise."

• Waterfall distribution calculations and one-click posting
• Branded LP portal with self-service K-1 downloads
• Capital account tracking per investor per deal
• Document generation (OAs, notices, reports)
• 10 AI-powered tools (underwriting, deal comparison, DD checklists, etc.)
• Investor CRM with accreditation tracking
• Deal room with document management
• Pulse portfolio health dashboard
• Email notifications and investor communications
• KMS encryption for sensitive data

That's the list. All of it. For every deal. Whether you manage $1M or $100M.

The Transparency Principle

Here's our actual pricing page in its entirety: $49/deal/month. 3-month free trial.

No "book a demo to learn more." No "let's schedule a call to discuss your needs." No custom quotes. No NDAs. No surprises.

We believe the price should be on the website — like a normal product sold by normal people. If you need to talk to a salesperson before you know what something costs, the price is too high or too confusing. Ours is neither.