SaaS stands for Software as a Service. That means a Software for which the business model is Subscription based with a recurring fees. The opposite would be on-Premise software which you buy once for an upfront fee but don't necessarily need to pay any recurring fee to keep using.
2
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3answers
262 views
Free trial in a tiered SaaS application
Suppose I have a SaaS application which has several subsctiption plans (think "Basic" for 2 users and this much of storage space, "Starter" for 5 users... you know the drill)
What will be the the ...
0
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2answers
377 views
SaaS vs local distribution and GPL implications
Let's say our theoretical company has a SaaS product for which we charge $xx per month. The product is entirely web based and the backend includes GPL code.
As I understand it, since our product is ...
1
vote
1answer
299 views
Can I offer hosted service of an AGPL licensed app?
We've been thinking of offering hosted/managed service of SugarCRM to our client.
The community edition is licensed under Affero GPL.
My questions, with this license in place, can we:
Offer the ...
0
votes
1answer
90 views
Marketing Education ERP with partners
We have an ERP product that is targeted at schools, colleges, small & large institutes.
We are looking to sell this product online with SaaS model.
The product is ready and we are now looking ...
2
votes
3answers
95 views
Adding LITE version to current product
I have a web-based service that requires a paid subscription. In fact I have the following subscription levels:
3-day trial
1 month
1 year
In my personal opinion, the main value of the service ...
0
votes
4answers
293 views
Are there any benchmarks for hosting/infrastructure/licensing costs for a SaaS provider?
Does anyone know of benchmarks or comparisons for hosting/software/infrastucture costs for a SaaS startup?
We are running at about 3.2% of Gross Revenue and 11% of net revenue. We feel like we are ...
1
vote
1answer
180 views
Writing a contract for SaaS sales - what to expect?
My side project startup company is close to starting to sell our product. We are offering it using a Software as a Service pricing model. The price is well defined and will range from $1,000 to $4,000 ...
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votes
1answer
196 views
Any online performance review sites? [closed]
Are there any web based performance management sites for a small business? We need to be able to have our employees take a self review at the end of the year and have a reviewer rate their ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
Avoiding complicated EU VAT rules for SaaS company
I am in the UK and am in the process of setting up a SaaS product which people will be able to purchase online by monthly subscription.
I have been researching the VAT rules for supply of electronic ...
3
votes
6answers
629 views
Is there an affordable way to host an ASP.Net SaaS application when you're a nascent startup without much capital?
My very small company is building a hosted product and looking for options for hosting. Having done RoR for a little while, I love the fact that I can choose between options like Heroku, Linode, or a ...
1
vote
3answers
143 views
Should I alter my pricing structure so that I can offer discounts?
I am in the process of developing a SaaS website and am going through the process of determining subscription levels and pricing structures.
On top of the monthly subscription for the on-going ...
3
votes
1answer
201 views
Launching Competing SaaS (how blatant can you mention your competitor)
I am launching some SaaS later next week that will be directly competing with someone who has a monopoly in the space. We will (hopefully) be cheaper, more features, better support and more ...
1
vote
1answer
187 views
As head of an internal software development project being spun off, what level of equity should I negotiate for?
I am in negotiations to spin off a new company that will develop and sell our in-house software project as a SaaS product.
As a founding member (the Development Manager) of the new company, I have ...
2
votes
3answers
347 views
What is standard marketing practice for a niche SAAS product?
My product solves a known problem for a specific industry and I am wondering how best to sell this. Eventhough it is a SAAS based product, our leads won't come online to search for this type of ...
1
vote
2answers
127 views
Switch straight to paid saas?
I have a successful tool that has received lots of buzz for the past week or two. The tool is currently free and I hope to adopt a freemium model. I have the following options and I can't decide ...
2
votes
3answers
2k views
How should you value a SaaS company?
Given the following assumptions:
Assume total investment (founders + seed) to a SaaS company is 100K
After one year, the monthly net profit is 5K, and it is growing at around 10% monthly.
What ...
1
vote
1answer
255 views
Android Market and SaaS. Is there problem?
I'm working on industry specific software. Basic idea is that I have big fat server somewhere, some web app. and mobile clients.
Now I started to think about legal parts of this model.
Reading ...
0
votes
2answers
114 views
I launched a DIY website software company. How/where would you market it?
Currently the software is in alpha and we're looking for some more users and are not sure where the best place is to drop an invite code or whatever other strategy will help us gather up some business ...
5
votes
1answer
346 views
UK based subscription web app - best payment provider for $5 per month payments
I am currently developing a SaaS product and am at an impasse in terms of how to charge.
The subscription is only going to be $5 per month. Although I'm in the UK, my main market is going to be the ...
6
votes
4answers
2k views
Sales commission for SAAS startups
We are a SAAS startup with an average MRR of $300. We are planning to have both in-house and outside sales agents (without salary but 20-30% commission). What is the sales commission model you ...
3
votes
5answers
365 views
Strategy for sending email reminders for a SaaS
I'm building a free-to-use SaaS to help people understand the energy efficiency of their homes and I'm planning to send email reminders to help promote activity in the site e.g. users who registered ...
0
votes
1answer
276 views
Promoting the application (SAAS)
I created a flash app. A service or a game - it does not matter. Advertising takes a lot of money and not always effective, it is desirable that my app promote itself.
Task - to create in the app (or ...
3
votes
3answers
150 views
Unique Visitors to Customer Base corelation
I am researching my competitors before getting into SAAS based software market. For one of the competitors total monthly unique visitors to be 3000. I am calculating roughly 50% of them are ...
4
votes
2answers
138 views
Startup giving away product early or hold out?
So we are a SaaS model new recruitng tool and weve been trying to acquire our first couple of major deals. I read alot of books on starting up and have advised start ups my whole career. At first we ...
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2answers
587 views
Burned out. Should we sell our SaaS business or find second round investment?
Hey my name is Chris and my wife and I started a web application in Brazil over 3 years ago.
As most of the individuals in this community understand the difficulties of starting a business(These ...
1
vote
1answer
269 views
Security-as-a-Service API business model
We're a small startup company in the web security space. In a nutshell, we have developed a unique approach to scan and detect web threats. After much consideration, we have decided to welcome the ...
0
votes
1answer
226 views
Valuation for SaaS product
My company has an online software as a service product that is subscription based (yearly) and when first launched, 3-years ago, has been more than doubling in revenue each year (in 2009, $2K, and in ...
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vote
1answer
543 views
How much does a SaaS customer support cost on average?
For subscription-based B2C SaaS businesses where the business is not charge for the support, but for the subscription. How much does on average customer/visitor support account to?
In other words, ...
2
votes
5answers
240 views
What are you doing about the Amazon EC2 issues?
Amazon has been having a lot of issues on EC2 through this weekend and I am sure many other startups got burned by them. What are you guys doing about it? Do you consider Amazon equally reliable now ...
4
votes
4answers
171 views
Should I offer a site tour on my home page?
In the not so distant future, I will be launching a site that is mostly for businesses and is largely Software as a Service. I am wondering what you think about the pros and cons of having a pretty ...
1
vote
1answer
222 views
Moving from one cloud-based CRM to another?
We're a small healthcare-related services company with one sales rep, whom I manage. We are trying out the Salesforce.com contact manager and it seems to do the job for what we need. We use Google ...
3
votes
3answers
2k views
PCI compliance and Visa Third Party Agent requirements
I own a web hosting company and maintain my own servers in a colocation facility. I do not resell the hosting services of another company. My new startup company is a SaaS provider that I'm hosting on ...
2
votes
2answers
453 views
How to narrow a specific target market from a larger overall market? (B2B SaaS)
We're in the final stages of building an online quoting system that automates quoting and lead generation for B2B companies, via their own website. The overall market for our software is large - ...
3
votes
2answers
286 views
Acceptable margin for starting SaaS Business
We're just trying to startup a SaaS business, where the model is based around a subscription radio station. We've done the hard numbers and the licencing costs of just providing the music is 50% of ...
3
votes
2answers
97 views
Should we target large customers with our software localization platform?
For the last 15 months we've been working hard to build a cloud-based platform that helps companies localize the software they build (named Amanuens). It all started from our own needs and we decided ...
5
votes
3answers
213 views
Survey / Ballot / e-sign tool
I've noticed a trade-off in survey and e-sign tools.
Survey tool:
Low cost for large volumes
Manage Survey Workflow well
Excellent data collection / reporting
Does not offer signature
Does not ...
0
votes
1answer
147 views
Taking and making payments between users
I am in the nascent stages of developing a service that will allows some users to request a certain task and others to perform those tasks. Money in from the user requesting, company takes a small ...
5
votes
2answers
619 views
Cloud-based accounting software [closed]
I am in the process of starting a business. The nature of the business is Photography (weddings, etc.). What would be a good accounting software solution (preferably cloud-based or SaaS)?
6
votes
3answers
2k views
What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for a SaaS Company
I was asked by a potential investor for Key Performance Metrics for our company. What do you think the KPIs are for a typical SaaS company? Here are the ones that I think we should give him:
CAC - ...
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2answers
258 views
Intenet Marketing Book for SAAS based product
Many thanks to onstartup community for recommending good books on internet marketing but I was wondering if anybody recommend a book for internet marketing for a SAAS product targeting medium siZed ...
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vote
6answers
1k views
SaaS Solution and Hosted Solution… is there a difference? (Enterprise)
When it comes to enterprise software, would you say there is a difference between a hosted solution and an SaaS solution? Or are they the same thing?
If there are differences and you offered a ...
3
votes
3answers
1k views
How to charge taxes for online services?
We are a Canadian-based incorporated business that is about to sell subscriptions to a SaaS, both yearly and monthly.
How do we handle adding taxes to the service? Since we are a Quebec-based ...
0
votes
1answer
230 views
Comparing enterprise, self hosted pricing to SaaS pricing for a smaller client? Changing industry pricing models?
We're trying to figure out the pricing for a service we've been asked to provide (a couple times, in passing, actually in reference to something we've pitched that hasn't hit the mark "well that's ...
6
votes
5answers
425 views
Is telemarketing an effective sales technique for SaaS?
Has anyone here had success driving sales for their SaaS startup using telemarketing, or is it usually just a waste of money and a way to annoy potential customers?
3
votes
2answers
312 views
What is the quickest way to offer your SaaS customers credit card billing?
I have a SaaS product and want to offer my customers the ability to accept credit cards themselves. What's the quickest way to set this up?
EDIT: I'm starting to think that giving the SaaS user a ...
2
votes
3answers
438 views
Hosting advice for B2B SaaS Startup - just sign-up page, and a blog
Ours is a B2B SaaS startup (LAMP stack). We are at a very early stage of the Startup. So, we don't need any dedicated hosting at this time. We have planned to use Amazon (not finalized though). In ...
2
votes
6answers
186 views
Buying Expensive Commercial Licenses for Startup?
This is regarding a SAAS based software product I am about to launch. One of the key innovation of this product is automation of a human process, this automation is built on top of an expensive ...
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vote
2answers
144 views
What information to gather when registering users
We all know that it's really important for an impatient SaaS user to not make them spend too much time filling forms. Having said that there maybe some important fields that needs to be gathered ...
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vote
4answers
193 views
Which page flow will have better conversion rate?
Which flow will have a better conversion rate?
I am designing the page flow for a website that is a of a monthly subscription type. Here's the page flow options I have:
Home Page (Try now button) ...
3
votes
4answers
161 views
Address SAAS Data Theft/ Privacy concerns
We have a SAAS product for a specific industry where we host this application for multiple companies. Since they belong to the same industry one of the key concerns of my potential customers is the ...
