Over the years, we have witnessed tremendous growth in the SaaS industry. New software solutions appear on the market every day in an attempt to help businesses in fulfilling their goals. The most exhausting day-to-day operations of yesterday are a piece of cake today thanks to great tools that automate, organize, and facilitate the processes.
In this article, you’ll learn about the best solutions that SaaS technology has to offer. Before we get to them, let’s see what SaaS software offers these days.
Understanding SaaS software
SaaS software is one of the technology branches that are in highest demand today, especially in the business world. Software-as-a-service in Layman’s terms can be defined as follows:
“… A cloud-based service that does not require purchasing and installation on individual devices.”
This makes it easily accessible, widely available, and most importantly, very convenient to use. SaaS tools provide a variety of features to streamline different business functions. These are so widely used today, chances are you are using at least one in your business.
According to Timedoctor’s report, this industry has grown from $31.5 billion to $145.5 billion in only six years since 2015. It is projected to grow to $171.9 billion by the end of 2022, marking its largest annual growth so far.
The best SaaS software to use nowadays
There’s no doubt that SaaS tools make the lives of businesses much easier. Thanks to feature-rich, advanced apps and solutions, businesses can facilitate every process from analytics to business communication to customer service.
As in every other industry, some tools are much more popular and feature-rich than others. Let’s take a look at the best of them.
Best for UX research and testing: Maze
Maze is a platform that facilitates testing and analytics. Why is this important, you might ask?
Every business nowadays needs to collect information on their users to optimize the marketing strategies, production processes, support service, and much more. Maze takes first place in the list of UX research tools today because it makes this much simpler for businesses.
By using Maze, you can turn a prototype into actionable, analyzed insights from actual users. The data you’ll collect thanks to Maze’s usability tests can be vital to your company’s success.
Nowadays, it is more important than ever to analyze the behaviors, demands, and thoughts of the user audience. To that goal, Maze allows you to run and create in-depth usability tests, share them with testers, and get accurate reports in no time.
Maze integrates with Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma, InVision, and will allow you to import prototypes from the design tools you use. Furthermore, it offers features like task analysis, heatmaps, A/B testing, multiple path analysis, and guerilla testing.
When the testing is completed in Maze, it will automatically document and record everything from time spent and completion rates to misclick rates and click heatmaps. Users then get a usability report almost instantly, one that is downloadable as well as shareable.
Best for email marketing: Mailchimp
Mailchimp belongs on the list of best email marketing tools for many reasons. This is one of the most feature-rich software solutions of today, as well as one that is easy to use and fits businesses of different sizes.
Email marketing is as important as ever. To this day, it remains one of the most-used methods for attracting, retaining, and communicating with customers. Approximately 59% of customers say that the emails they receive influence their purchase decisions. Furthermore, every dollar spent on email marketing has an estimated return of $41.
To get a high return on your investment, you need a good email marketing strategy, which is something that Mailchimp can help a lot with. This popular tool has a very generous free-forever plan with limited features, as well as a paid plan with more advanced options.
In Mailchimp, you can access every feature you need for email marketing. Companies use it to schedule their email campaigns, analyze open and click-through rates, track unsubscribe rates, and perform A/B testing.
Best for project management: ProofHub
You can have the best ideas and plans for your business and still see them fail just because you didn’t manage the project well. Project management is one of the most important things for a business. If you want to make it simpler and more effective, you should definitely consider ProofHub.
ProofHub is one of the best-rated SaaS project management tools. It is rich with features that allow you to assign and track task completion, collaborate on projects, and get valuable insights into your team’s performance.
Available both in the Google Play and App Store, ProofHub is accessible for all of your team members. It has two plans: Essential and Ultimate, as well as a free trial of all features for a limited period.
Best for social media management: Zoho Social
Businesses put a lot of time, money, and effort into creating content that will attract the right audience. Once you do this, you need to make sure that your messages reach the right audience at the right moment. That’s where social media comes really handy, and tools like Zoho Social can help you tremendously.
There are many reasons to promote your brand and its offerings on social media, one of them being that almost everyone uses it these days. Knowing this, it’s only natural that you want to make your company popular on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
However, since there are many platforms to juggle, this demands a lot of effort. You need to post at the right time across different platforms, keep track of the activity on your profiles, communicate with people, etc. Zoho Social is a great tool to make this simpler for you.
ZohoSocial will allow you to promote your business across multiple networks, engage with the audience in real-time and from a single dashboard, and stay up-to-date with the latest trends on your social media profiles. By using ZohoSocial’s insights and reports, you can automate almost everything, and also find important information to optimize your social media marketing.
Best for scheduling: SimplyBook.me
Missing deadlines and delaying important tasks is never good for a business. If you want to keep track of meetings and deadlines, you should use tools like SimplyBook.me.
SimplyBook.me is an easy-to-use, flexible SaaS scheduling software that you can use to streamline your booking procedures and your schedules. It works on all devices and allows access to all parties involved in the process.
The booking page on SimplyBook.me is very customizable and easy to use. You can also add it to your company’s site or social media profiles to facilitate bookings and make them automatic. In order to keep everything running smoothly, SimplyBook.me will send notifications to people included in the meetings, as well as give them an option to cancel it if a problem occurs.
Best for onboarding and customer retention: Userlane
Onboarding new customers and users is vital to the success of your business. It’s what makes customer retention possible. How you welcome people who start using your brand will determine if they’ll be loyal to you or look elsewhere. Knowing this, you should try Userlane.
Userlane is a customer retention and user onboarding platform. It offers interactive experiences and steers users through various processes based on your customization.
The tool completely eliminates the need for video tutorials or pdf documents that show new users how to navigate through the website or use the product. It will guide the customers onscreen in real-time, offering an immersive and much-simplified experience.
Best for link management: Rebrandly
Have you heard of Rebrandly? This is link management and URL shortener SaaS tool. You can use it to brand, shorten, and track every link you share on social media or create for your website.
Branded links are important for your ranking and authority online since they increase awareness and trust. If you use Rebrandly, you’ll have branded links instead of generic ones, which can increase your click-through rate by 39%.
Rebrandly has an analytics feature that tells you where your clicks are coming from, when people click on them, and where the clicks originate from.
Best for keyword search: Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a greatly ranked, all-in-one keyword search tool. It’s amazing for your SEO thanks to the Keywords Explorer feature, which gives users access to billions of keywords. These keywords originate from 171 countries and grow almost daily.
In addition to this feature, you can also use the Site Audit tool to check your SEO performance and find ways to improve it further. With the Rank Tracker feature, you can check your performance and rankings over time, both on mobile and desktop.
Ready to make your job easier? Pick your first tool and get started!
These and other SaaS softwares are made specifically to make your job easier and your work more effective. With them, you can achieve many of your business’ daily and important tasks with minimal effort and the chance of error. That being said, pick your favorite and try it out today!