SAAS

SaaS Definition: What Is SaaS

The acronym?SaaS?stands for?software as a service. It is a software distribution method that typically involves paying on a?subscription model?for a product, tool, or service.

(Suggested reading: make sure to read our in-depth guide on?SaaS marketing).

In most cases, SaaS products are now?hosted in the cloud?and are accessible from anywhere via your web browser or mobile device.

In the past, software companies relied on a licensing model to sell their digital products and make money.

The difference between a licensed software product and SaaS is that you install and run traditional software on your own computer or server. With SaaS, the company typically hosts and manages the software solution for you.

So instead of just buying the code, you pay for the service of hosting, updating, and maintaining the software, servers, and databases as well.

SaaS Diagram (Image source: atlantic.net)
SaaS vs PaaS vs IaaS

You might be confused about what all the different acronyms in the SaaS industry stand for.

In this section, we will quickly cover the differences between SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

Software as a Service (SaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS, as we mentioned above, stands for software as a service. It typically is a hosted software solution that helps businesses or individuals?improve their productivity.

What Are Some Examples of SaaS?

SaaS?products are typically software solutions that help businesses or individuals solve specific problems.?Salesforce?helps companies keep track of customers and prospects and understand them better.

Dropbox?helps businesses and individuals keep files safely in the cloud and share them.

More Examples:?BigCommerce,?Google Workspace, HubSpot, Microsoft Office 365,?Shopify,?WooCommerce, Slack, Zendesk,?Zoom.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS?is short for platform as a service. Rather than software that directly solves business problems, PaaS solutions focus on offering a development platform for their service. These tools help businesses instance, test, and deploy original code and forks of their software.

Examples:?AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku, OpenShift, Magento Commerce Cloud.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a service or IaaS?is almost synonymous with?cloud computing platforms. These solutions allow businesses to deploy, host, and scale web-based applications. Virtual machines enable almost limitless scaling of server capacity.

Rather than a set monthly fee, the pricing model is often pay-as-you-go.

Examples:?Amazon Web Services (AWS),?Google Cloud,?Microsoft Azure,?Rackspace.

B2B vs B2C SaaS Products

The final differentiator between these cloud services is their intended target audience. The functionality, design, and even pricing model is vastly different between B2B and B2C products.

What Is a B2B SaaS Product?

B2B or business-to-business SaaS products are hosted software solutions designed to solve business problems.

Think software solutions like?CRM,?ecommerce platforms,?analytics, and more.

What Is a B2C SaaS Product?

B2C or business-to-consumer SaaS products are cloud-based software solutions designed to solve individual problems.

Think?online editors, file sharing,?website builders, streaming services, and even social media networks.

For an in-depth look at the differences, make sure to read our?B2B vs B2C marketing guide.

Horizontal SaaS vs Vertical Saas

SaaS applications don’t just fall into categories based on whether or not their target market is consumers or businesses.

There are also categories based on how companies design their products and what needs they serve.

Horizontal SaaS

The Horizontal SaaS model includes SaaS solutions that serve the business needs of a wide variety of companies.

Instead of focusing on solving the specific business problems of one particular industry, they offer a broader range of tools that serve companies across industries and borders.

Vendors that succeed in this SaaS market are typically more mature companies. It’s almost a necessity to start a strong foothold in multiple industries and verticals.

Examples:

Salesforce?offers CRM and workflow automation tools suitable for virtually any industry.
QuickBooks?offers accounting, bookkeeping, and invoicing tools mostly to online professionals but not exclusively. We also use their service here at Kinsta (more on that below).

Most successful horizontal SaaS vendors have “crossed the chasm” and managed to win a significant portion of the mass market.

Vertical SaaS

Vertical SaaS refers to software solutions specifically designed for a specific industry need.

Instead of general solutions that companies need to integrate and customize, users can plug-and-play with little up-front effort. That’s possible because the software doesn’t have to be general enough for mass-market use.

Examples:

Opentable?is a table booking system tailored to restaurants.
Guidewire?is an insurance platform designed explicitly for property insurance companies.

Some SaaS companies start by providing a vertical solution and expand to become horizontal at a later stage or launch new related products/services as cross-sells and upsells.

Now that you know a bit more about SaaS products, how would you like to know which ones we’re using to power up our company?

Here they are…

40+ of Our Favorite SaaS Products

If you are a brand new startup, we don’t recommend going out and immediately subscribing to all the tools below. We are merely highlighting SaaS products that help us be more effective as a company.

A lot of entrepreneurs have had great?success bootstrapping their companies?from the ground up and adding additional tools as they grow their revenue.

That is what we did here at Kinsta. Tools and services like these can add up fast, so do your research, be smart, and determine which ones you might need first to help you accomplish your priority goals more quickly.

Accepting Payments
Tracking Revenue
Customer Support
Collaboration and Internal Communication
Marketing and Sales
SEO and Content Marketing
Analyzing Web Traffic
Server and Hosting
Billing and Accounting
Design
Data Visualization
Password Management
Digital Signatures
Accepting Payments

These are the SaaS products we use to accept and handle payments online.

1. Stripe

The very first thing most companies have to decide is what payment processor they are going to use to accept payments from their customers. There a lot out there to choose from, such as PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, etc.

Stripe

Here at Kinsta, we decided to go with?Stripe?because it is very developer-friendly, has low credit card processing transaction fees, and was easy to integrate into our backend dashboard.

Those of you who have followed us for a while know that our?Stripe relationship had a rocky start?back in 2014. But all companies make mistakes at some point, and Stripe did everything in its power to resolve the situation we encountered.

Fast forward two years, and we can say we still love Stripe! We think it is the best thing that has happened to online payments since PayPal, and are happy to call them a business partner. The takeaway is that customer support is more important than ever!

Recommended for further reading:?How to Prevent and Reduce Credit Card Fraud by 98% Using Stripe Radar

2. PayPal
PayPal

PayPal?is another leading tool for handling, sending, and accepting payments online for businesses and individuals.

You can transfer money, create and send invoices, create recurring payment subscriptions, and more.

At Kinsta, we mainly use Paypal for handling?affiliate payouts, not for handling recurring customer payments or invoices.

Suggested reading:?PayPal vs Stripe, which payment gateway should you use?

Tracking Revenue

Other than Stripe’s internal tools, these are the SaaS products we use to stay on top of our revenue.

3. Baremetrics

Baremetrics?is just like its brand name says: it is all about the metrics! It offers analytics and insights for payment processors such as?Braintree, Stripe, and Recurly.

When it comes to choosing some SaaS products for your business, this is a must-have.

Baremetrics

Why do you need Baremetrics? Well, it simplifies the process of understanding your business’s revenue income stream and helps you make data-driven decisions.

You can instantly see juicy bits of information such as monthly recurring revenue, average revenue per user, refunds, upgrades, lifetime customer values, user churn, and probably the two most important ones: your net income and revenue growth rate.

You could calculate all this information yourself in a spreadsheet, but then immediately, you should be weighing the cost of your time for doing this.

Check out its?dashboard demo?(seen below). We love using Baremetrics at Kinsta, along with the Stripe integration. It gives us an instant overview of our business performance.

Baremetrics dashboard analytics
Customer Support

These are the tools we use to handle customer requests and inquiries at Kinsta.

4. Intercom

Intercom?is a customer platform with a suite of products for live chat, marketing, feedback, and support. Remember,?support is key?to any successful company. So if you want our advice, make sure you have a sound support system in place, whether this is chat, tickets, etc.

Intercom

We have used Intercom since day one here at Kinsta, and it has worked very well for us. We pride ourselves on providing support from team members who are professional developers, and work with WordPress every day, contribute to WordPress Core, and other open source projects.

As a result, the expertise of our support department is second to none. Nothing is worse than launching a chat session and feeling like you know more than the person on the other end. That will never happen at Kinsta!

Intercom has provided an easy way for us to integrate chat and support tickets (see below) it into our dashboard, so customers know we are always one click away, 24/7. Our?median support ticket response time?in 2019 was?1 minute and 27 seconds!

Intercom chat

It is one of our favorite SaaS products.

Collaboration and Internal Communication

We use a range of SaaS products to help improve our collaboration and internal communication.

5. Slack

You have probably heard of?Slack?by now! If not, you should immediately give it a try.

Slack is a messaging app for teams designed to make communicating with your colleagues fast and easy, no matter what platform they are on.

slack

Every member of the team at Kinsta uses Slack on a daily, or probably hourly basis. It helps us do everything from chat about industry news, collaborate on team projects, and of course, share an?occasional Giphy.

Giphy preview in Slack

We use the paid version, but the free version works great as well if the few limitations do not bother you. Slack is excellent for any company just starting, especially for?remote teams.

Kinsta’s team is spread across multiple continents, so we depend on Slack for communication across timezones and platforms. When it comes to SaaS products, this is a must-have.

Make sure to check out our guide on?how to use Slack effectively.

Obviously, there are some really great Slack alternatives out there. We collected them together in this?detailed post.

6. Trello

Trello?is an online collaborative tool that allows you to easily create boards, lists, and cards to organize your projects. Trello is used by businesses all over the world, some of which include Adobe, Pixar, Google, PayPal, and National Geographic.

Trello

We love Trello here at Kinsta!

Trello allows us to easily create tasks and keep track of who is working on what. Even for our blog and?inbound marketing activities, we have a Trello board to keep track of new topics, ideas, and setting deadlines.

Sharing a board is as simple as one click. We use the free plan, which makes this another must-have tool for startups!

Btw, Asana is another great project management tool worth to take a look. To compare the features, make sure you check out our detailed?Trello vs Asana?guide or this comparison on the?best Trello alternatives.

7. Google Workspace (Email + Collaboration Tools)

In 2019, nobody likes getting emails, and it seems that everyone is continually striving and failing to reach that inbox zero goal (is it though? ??).

But every company needs a way to communicate through email. When it comes to email hosting, there are a lot of options to choose from, such as Zoho, Office 365, Rack Space, and?Google Workspace.

Google Workspace

The?Google Cloud Platform?powers Kinsta’s?managed WordPress hosting, so obviously, we’re big fans of its infrastructure and apps.

We use Google Workspace for email hosting, which allows every employee to?have a professional and unique @kinsta.com email address?and access it via Gmail or their favorite email client.

And when it comes to Gmail (and?its add-ons and extensions), you hardly can go wrong. According to?Email Market Share, as of December 2019, Gmail accounts for 25% of email clients usage based on the number of opens.

The basic Google Workspace plan, which is the one we use at Kinsta, is priced reasonably at $6 per user per month. It also gives everyone 30 GB of online storage for Google drive and access to Google Docs, which we use a lot here at Kinsta.

For more tips on how and why we use it, please check our detailed guide:?The Benefits of Google Workspace for Your Business.

8. Dropbox

500 million people around the globe, along with over 200,000 businesses, use?Dropbox?on a regular basis to access and share documents and files on the go.

Dropbox

We use Dropbox at Kinsta to share large files and enable them to be more easily accessible by remote team members from anywhere, no matter what platform they are working on.

9. Zeplin
Zeplin

Zeplin?is a collaboration tool specifically designed for?developers?and designers. It makes it easy to create, collaborate on, and share design and style guides complete with assets, specs, and code snippets.

Our developer teams use them to ensure that everyone follows the same standards, and stay on the same page during complicated projects.

10. Zoom
Zoom

Zoom?is a next-level video conferencing tool. It works great on all devices, from smartphones to tablets to desktop.

At Kinsta, we use Zoom to enable close-knit collaboration between team members that are on all different corners of the globe. Plus we run monthly AMAs where team members share more details about their role within the company and personal hobbies.

11. Atlassian: Jira + Confluence
Jira

For software development, deployment, and documentation we use a combination of Atlassian’s?Jira Software?and?Confluence.

This helps our team maintain a modern and efficient workflow and minimizes errors in the long run. On top of this, we have an internal resource where all procedures are documented so new employees can conveniently browse through right after their onboarding.

12. Airtable
Airtable

Airtable?is a unique tool for task management that enables your teams to organize their work the way they want to.

Our teams mostly use Airtable to collaborate, manage projects and tasks related to customer relationships and lead generation and nurturing as a pretty advanced spreadsheet, which might recall a database some times.

Marketing and Sales

Below, we cover the suite of tools we use to improve our marketing and sales processes.

13. Mention

Keeping up with monitoring your brand on social media is a never-ending process and can sometimes be overwhelming and time-consuming.?Mention?scans billions of sources in over 40 languages so you won’t miss anything anyone says about your brand.

Mention

We use Mention to keep track of social mentions of Kinsta around the web. One great feature they have is their?integration with Slack.

It allows us to quickly see Tweets and mentions from right within a private Slack Channel, along with an influencer score.

This way, we never have to waste time logging into a separate dashboard or get yet another email.

14. Close

Close?is a SaaS product created by salespeople for salespeople.

Nobody likes manual entry and Close tries to automate as much as possible. From calls, emails, and activity, so you can spend more time closing deals instead of entering data.

Close

Our sales team at Kinsta uses Close?for lead management, along with the powerful?Zapier integrations, to automate it even more. And of course, some of these automation’s include Slack integrations.

15. Hunter
Hunter

Hunter?is the most reliable solution for?finding email addresses?for leads and prospects, without having to call up and ask every time manually. With Hunter.io, email outreach becomes a much more valuable and efficient sales tool.?