SaaS is a software category that delivers services to its users in the cloud. This category has exploded over the past decade and has become one of the biggest markets for technology companies. The B2B SaaS market has grown rapidly as more businesses have realized how faster and more efficiently they can operate using SaaS applications to handle key tasks.
Below are 10 examples of top B2B SaaS companies that everyone should know about:
Salesforce
Salesforce is a CRM that helps small businesses and large enterprises manage their sales, marketing, and customer service activities. Salesforce is used by over 150,000 companies, including Facebook, GE, Coca-Cola, AT&T, and more. The platform allows you to set up an online store for selling products or services directly on your website.
HubSpot
HubSpot is a marketing platform and CRM that helps businesses optimize their online presence. Founded in 2006, HubSpot has over 143,000 customers, including big names like Salesforce and Microsoft.
HubSpot’s product offerings include a suite of software tools for marketing automation (including email marketing), lead generation, web analytics, etc. The company has offices across the globe—in Cambridge, MA; Dublin, Ireland; Singapore; Sydney, Australia—as well as a large research center in Bangalore, India.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud storage and file hosting service founded in 2008. It offers the ability to host, manage and share files online. Dropbox can be used to create backups of work files or as a way to collaborate with team members by sharing documents with them.
The company’s freemium business model has made it one of the most widely used services on the internet today, with over 700 million users worldwide (and counting). Because of this huge user base, many developers also use Dropbox as their primary storage platform when building apps on top of their APIs, such as Mailchimp. In fact, thousands of companies use Dropbox APIs every day—from small businesses up to high-tech giants like Nike!
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools out there right now. It’s also an excellent option if you want to send messages to your customers or subscribers. The Mailchimp service offers a freemium model and can be used by up to 2,000 subscribers for free; after that, you’ll need to upgrade your account or pay per subscriber.
Mailchimp features drag-and-drop email design templates, an intuitive interface for managing lists and campaigns, and integrations with other software like Salesforce and Google Analytics. It also provides analytics on who opens your emails as well as their content preferences so that you can personalize future communications accordingly.
Slack
Slack is a messaging and collaboration platform that allows teams to communicate with one another. The software allows users to create channels or groups within the app, which they can then invite others to join. That way, if someone has an idea or question during work hours, they can send a message via Slack without disrupting those around them (and vice versa).
Slack is used by many companies across a variety of industries, including media and entertainment; e-commerce; education and training; construction; health care; technology hardware/software development; transportation and logistics; manufacturing; travel & hospitality (hotels & tour operators); financial services; government agencies like police departments & fire departments, etc., just to name a few.
Pardot
Pardot is a marketing automation platform that helps companies engage with leads, nurture prospects, and generate leads. Pardot is a Salesforce company and works seamlessly with the popular CRM software system to deliver targeted campaigns that drive better performance for your marketing team. The platform’s features include lead scoring, email marketing, website analytics, etc.
Pardot has over 150 integrations with other apps like HubSpot and Marketo, making it easy for you to synchronize all of your contacts into one database rather than having them spread across multiple platforms, which can be a huge time saver! It also offers robust reporting tools so you can see how your campaigns are performing at any time during their lifecycle; this makes it easy for marketers to tweak their strategies as needed without losing track of what worked best previously.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is another excellent example of SaaS. It is a social media management platform that allows users to manage multiple social media profiles from one place. It comes with features such as publishing content, monitoring your brand mentions, creating reports, and more. The platform was created in 2008 by Ryan Holmes, Dario Meli, and David Tedman.
Hootsuite has been used by small businesses and large companies, such as Tesla Motors, Twitter Inc., IBM Corp., Disney Parks & Resorts, McDonald’s Corp., Coca-Cola Co., Dell Inc., PepsiCo Inc., Netflix Inc., Toyota Motor Corp., Lego A/S, and many more.
The company’s headquarters are located in Vancouver, Canada, but they have offices around the world, including New York City, San Francisco, London, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Dubai.
Qualtrics
Qualtrics is a survey software company based in Utah. Founded in 2002, the company has grown to more than 5,000 employees and boasts over $1 billion in annual revenue. Qualtrics offers both self-service and custom enterprise versions of its software. The company’s customers include Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, and NASA.
WebEx
WebEx is a cloud-based meeting and web conferencing service. The company was founded in 1995 in San Jose and now has offices in San Francisco, California. WebEx is used by many large companies such as IBM, Google, Deloitte, and Proctor & Gamble. It’s also used by many small businesses and individuals who want to meet with others online for free or at a low cost of $10 per month.
WebEx meetings can be run from the desktop or mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets (including the iPad).
InVision
InVision is a design collaboration platform that makes it easy for teams to create and iterate on designs. InVision is used by more than 200,000 customers to create 1,000,000 prototypes every week.
InVision Cloud provides the tools you need to create stunning user interfaces (UI) to make your product more appealing and easier to use. Whether you’re building an animated prototype or interactive mockup—or just want to share your latest wireframe with colleagues—InVision makes it simple and fast.
Conclusion
Each and every example of SaaS business is unique, but they all have a few basic elements in common that make or break their products. Their target audiences differ from industry to industry, and their use-cases vary from vertical to horizontal, but ultimately the SaaS model is about reducing ownership costs for any company. Learn from them and think through your own business model and marketing plan in order to compete in the B2B SaaS market.