Since takeover chatter surrounding cloud-software provider Salesforce (CRM) first started at the end of April, the stock has risen as much as 17% and reached a new all-time high at $78.46. Recently trading in the low $70s, Salesforce shares sport a mega market cap of $47.5 billion. A massive software deal involving a company of this size would be welcomed by the market (mainly because it could kick off a new round of M&A across the entire software sector), but the odds of it actually happening appear slim, mainly because of the price. There’s also the fact that most mega acquisitions usually only sound good on paper—once completed they almost never work out as planned.

Tacking on a typical 30% deal premium to where the stock was trading just before Bloomberg reported the company had hired financial advisors after being approached by a potential buyer would result in a transaction valued at nearly $57 billion. There simply are not too many acquirers that could afford that price tag.

Salesforce is one of the pioneers of cloud software in the enterprise, so its shares have always been awarded a rich multiple. Investors have justified the premium valuation on the stock because Salesforce has historically delivered impressive top-line growth, helped out in part by a series of acquisitions of its own. However, as the company matures and gets larger, the growth rate naturally will begin to slow. For fiscal 2016 (ending January), the consensus revenue estimate of $6.5 billion represents growth of 21.1%, deceleration from the fiscal 2015 growth rate of 32%, which had been helped out by the $2.5-billion purchase of ExactTarget (completed in fiscal 2014).

Looking ahead, Salesforce (without any major acquisitions of its own) can chug along with annual revenue growth of around 20%. As it stands now, the company is on a path toward $10 billion in revenue in calendar 2017, according to BofA/Merrill. Salesforce at the end of January had deferred revenue of $3.32 billion (up 32% from the year-ago level) and unbilled deferred revenue (contracted business not yet billed or on the balance sheet) of $5.7 billion (up 27% year over year). BofA/Merrill estimates Salesforce could be valued at $60 billion (5 times estimated calendar 2018 revenue) on its own in two years if the company can keep the growth “humming.”

While Salesforce made reaching $5 billion in annual revenue look relatively easy (it did so faster than any other enterprise software company in history), hitting the next $5-billion milestones will be much more challenging. In addition to facing the major test of maintaining growth at size, Salesforce must deal with the maturation of its core customer relationship management market; increased competition from cloud-software upstarts; and integration issues involved in building out its product portfolio to include marketing automation and analytics. It’s easy to see why Salesforce would consider a buyout now.

For potential acquirers, there are other more attractive (and less costly) targets in the software space. Here are a few names (ranked by market cap) that I believe are solid buyout candidates:

ServiceNow (NOW)—With a market cap of $11.6 billion, this provider of cloud-based software used to automate enterprise IT and operations management functions is not cheap, trading at 11.7 times the 2015 consensus revenue estimate of $990 million. But the company would be appealing to a buyer because it’s expected to grow the top line at least 45% this year and close to 36% next year. ServiceNow focuses on the Global 2000 market, counting 545 of the world’s largest companies as its customers, representing a penetration rate of 27%. As the company continues to build out its base of large customers (adding 23 Global 2000 accounts in the first quarter alone), deal sizes are getting larger. On a trailing four-quarter basis, the average revenue per customer in the first quarter stood at $345,000, up 21% from the year-ago level. ServiceNow has nearly $1 billion in cash on its balance sheet.

Ultimate Software (ULTI)—A provider of cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solutions, Ultimate has a robust portfolio covering onboarding, recruiting, time management and performance management. The recent market cap of $4.7 billion is 7.6 times the 2015 consensus revenue estimate of $616.2 million. On its current growth path of 21% to 22% annually, Ultimate is on track to top $1 billion in revenue in 2018. The company is a well-liked HR/HCM vendor, boasting a customer retention rate of 96%. In the first quarter, Ultimate closed the largest deal in its history, adding a new customer with more than 185,000 employees. Ultimate is also expanding in the mid-market, with this segment of the company experiencing the strongest first quarter in its history.

Qlik Technologies (QLIK)—With analytics solutions featuring advanced data visualization functionality starting to gain more usage across the enterprise sector, Qlik is well positioned. Demand is building for its recently released Qlik Sense product, an easier-to-use version of the core Qlik View analytics offering. An enhanced version of Qlik Sense, enabling users to more quickly prepare data for analysis, is scheduled for release in June. Revenue growth for 2016 is expected to accelerate to 17% from 9% this year. The company stands out as a viable acquisition candidate based on its modest size and reasonable valuation. At a recent market cap of $3.3 billion, Qlik trades at 5.4 times the 2015 consensus revenue estimate of $607.8 million. The company has more than 35,000 customers and a big presence in Europe.

HubSpot (HUBS)—This is an emerging provider of cloud-based solutions used to manage inbound marketing. By using the company’s software, customers hope to increase website traffic and the number of new-customer leads. HubSpot went public in October at $25 a share; the stock opened for trading on its first day at $32.95. Following a strong first quarter earnings report earlier this month (revenue rose 58% to $38.2 million, easily beating the consensus of $38.2 million) and a boost to top-line guidance for the year, the shares last week hit a new post-IPO high at $51. At the recent market cap of $1.62 billion, HubSpot trades at 9.7 times the 2015 consensus revenue estimate of $166.3 million. The company, with more than 13,500 customers in 90+ countries, this year is expected to deliver revenue growth of nearly 44%.