SaaSCron: SaaS Basics

How to evaluate SaaS solutions: a buyer's checklist and scoring template

Ricardo Machado — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 11:00:00 GMT

You have three SaaS vendors on a shortlist, three polished demos behind you and a decision due before the budget closes. Every vendor said yes to every question. You need a way to compare them on evidence rather than on the best presentation. Evaluating SaaS solutions comes down to six questions, answered with documents, and a scoring table that weighs them in the order that matters to you.

The cost of a wrong choice is often not the subscription. It is the migration, the training and the year spent working around a gap nobody tested. This guide gives you the six areas, a checklist to tick and a scoring template with the arithmetic shown. If SaaS itself is new to you, start with What is SaaS?.

Evaluating a vendor in plain terms

Think of it like buying a used car. The seller’s description is the demo. You still check the service history, take it for a drive on your own route, look underneath and ask what it costs to insure. Then you compare two cars on the same list, not on how friendly the sellers were.

A SaaS evaluation does the same. The service history is the vendor’s security evidence. The test drive is a trial with your own data. The insurance quote is the full contract price over the term. And the list is a scoring table you write before the first demo, so the demos cannot rewrite it.

The six areas to check

Requirements fit. Write the 5 to 10 tasks the tool must do, in your words, before you see any demo. Ask each vendor to show those tasks, in that order, with your sample data.
Security evidence. Ask for documents, not answers. The common ones are a SOC 2 report, an ISO/IEC 27001 certificate and a completed security questionnaire. SOC 2 is an audit report, issued by a CPA firm, against criteria the AICPA lists as “Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, or Privacy” (AICPA SOC). The Cloud Security Alliance publishes a standard questionnaire, the CAIQ, a set of “Yes/No questions” mapped to its Cloud Controls Matrix (CSA CAIQ v4.1.0). How to read a certificate’s scope and dates is covered in ISO/IEC 27017 explained.
Pricing and contract. Get the total price for your expected seats or usage over the full term, including onboarding fees, add-ons and the renewal increase. Read the clauses on auto-renewal, seat reductions and price changes.
Integrations. Confirm which plan includes single sign-on (SSO), user provisioning and API access. Ask for the API documentation, and have your developer read it.
Data portability and exit. Ask how you export all your data, in which format, and how long the vendor keeps it after the contract ends. Then run an export during the trial.
References. Ask for two customers of your size and industry, and call them. Ask what broke in the first six months and how support handled it.

Checklist

Requirements list written and shared with every vendor before the demos.
Each vendor showed every required task with your sample data.
SOC 2 report received, its period and scope read, exceptions noted.
ISO/IEC 27001 certificate received, scope and expiry date checked.
Security questionnaire (the vendor’s own or the CSA CAIQ) completed and reviewed.
Three-year total price calculated for the seat count you expect in year three.
Auto-renewal notice period, renewal price cap and seat-reduction terms found in the contract.
SSO, provisioning and API access confirmed on the plan you will buy.
Full data export run during the trial and opened in another tool.
Two references called, and their answers written down.
Scoring table filled in by at least two people, separately, before discussing.

Worked example: a weighted scoring table

A weighted score turns six areas into one number you can defend. You choose the weights before the demos, score each vendor from 1 (poor) to 5 (strong) in each area, multiply, and add.

Example: a labeled hypothetical. A 50-person team compares two vendors. Vendor A costs $20 per user per month and Vendor B costs $28. Over a year, that is 50 x $20 x 12 = $12,000 for A and 50 x $28 x 12 = $16,800 for B, a difference of $4,800. The team set the weights below before the first demo.

Area (weight)	Vendor A score	A weighted	Vendor B score	B weighted
Requirements fit (30%)	4	0.30 x 4 = 1.20	4	0.30 x 4 = 1.20
Security evidence (25%)	3	0.25 x 3 = 0.75	5	0.25 x 5 = 1.25
Price and contract (20%)	5	0.20 x 5 = 1.00	3	0.20 x 3 = 0.60
Integrations (15%)	3	0.15 x 3 = 0.45	4	0.15 x 4 = 0.60
Data exit (10%)	2	0.10 x 2 = 0.20	4	0.10 x 4 = 0.40
Total (100%)		3.60		4.05

The weights add up to 100%: 30 + 25 + 20 + 15 + 10. References are not scored here; they confirm or correct the other scores.

Vendor A wins on price by $4,800 a year and still loses, 3.60 against 4.05. The gap comes from security evidence and data exit, the two areas that are hardest to fix after signing. Now the team can test the result. Is $4,800 a year worth a weaker security record and a harder exit? Writing the question that way is the point of the table.

Copy the template, keep the weights fixed once the demos start, and have two people score separately. If their scores differ by two points or more in one area, that area needs another look.

Common mistakes

Writing requirements after the demos. The best demo sets the list, and the list then favors that vendor. Why it happens: demos are booked before anyone has time to write. Instead: write the tasks first and send them to every vendor.
Accepting a questionnaire answer instead of evidence. A “yes” in a sales call is not an audit report. Why it happens: asking for documents feels confrontational. Instead: ask for the SOC 2 report or certificate, and read its scope and dates.
Comparing first-year prices only. Seat growth, add-ons and renewal increases change the total. Why it happens: quotes show year one. Instead: calculate the full term at the seat count you expect at the end, as the checklist says.
Never testing the exit. You find out how hard the export is on the day you leave. Why it happens: nobody plans to leave on day one. Instead: run a full export during the trial and give data exit a weight in the table.

For how per-seat and usage prices are built, see SaaS pricing models. For a worked comparison of one category, see CRM SaaS.

Sources

AICPA and CIMA, SOC suite of services, checked October 2026.
Cloud Security Alliance, STAR Level 1: Security Questionnaire (CAIQ v4.1.0), checked October 2026.

In three sentences

Evaluate a SaaS vendor on six areas, requirements fit, security evidence, price and contract, integrations, data exit and references, each backed by a document or a test. Set the weights before the demos and score each vendor from 1 to 5; in the example, Vendor B scores 4.05 against 3.60 despite costing $4,800 more a year. Ask for reports rather than answers, price the whole term and run a full export during the trial, so the decision rests on evidence you can show.

What is a SaaS platform? Platforms vs applications vs products

Ricardo Machado — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:00:00 GMT

You are comparing two tools for your team, and one vendor calls itself a “platform” on every page while the other says “app”. You want to know whether the word means anything or is just a bigger price tag. It does mean something. A SaaS application is software you use. A SaaS platform is software you use and that other companies build on: it has public APIs, lets outside developers add features inside it and usually runs a marketplace where they sell those additions.

The difference matters when you buy, because a platform can grow with you through add-ons, and it can also tie you in more tightly. This guide gives you a five-question test, applies it to familiar products and shows the money behind one platform’s marketplace. For the basic definition of SaaS, start with What is SaaS?.

Platform in plain terms

Think of a single shop and a shopping mall. The shop sells its own goods. The mall also sells some of its own, but most of what you find there comes from other shops that rent space, follow the mall’s rules and share its customers. The mall’s value grows with every shop that moves in.

Applied to software, the everyday words line up like this:

SaaS application (or app): a hosted product that does a job for you, used in a browser or a mobile app. A team chat tool is an application.
SaaS product: the commercial thing you buy, with its plans and prices. Vendors use it loosely for application or platform.
SaaS platform: an application that other companies extend. Outside developers build on its APIs, install features inside its interface and reach its customers through a marketplace.
SaaS system: not a technical term. People use it for any hosted business software.

Most large SaaS products start as applications. They become platforms when outside developers start building on them and the vendor gives those developers rules, tools and a store.

Checklist for the platform test

Answer yes or no for any product you are evaluating. Four or five yes answers describe a platform; one or two describe an application with an API.

Public, documented API: can any customer or developer read and write data through a documented interface, not only through the screen?
Extensions inside the product: can outside developers add screens, buttons or workflows that appear inside the product itself?
Marketplace: is there a store where customers find, install and pay for those extensions?
Developer terms: does the vendor publish rules for developers, such as review, security requirements and a revenue share?
Extensible data model: can you add your own fields, objects or record types without asking the vendor?

Classification of familiar products

The table applies the test to products whose marketplaces are public. It is a classification, not a ranking.

Product	API	In-product extensions	Marketplace	Reading
Shopify	Yes	Yes	Shopify App Store	Platform
Salesforce	Yes	Yes	AppExchange	Platform
Google Workspace	Yes	Yes (add-ons)	Google Workspace Marketplace	Platform for add-ons, application for most users
Slack	Yes	Yes (apps in channels)	Slack Marketplace	Platform
A single-purpose tool with an export API	Yes	No	No	Application with an API

Google Workspace shows why the line is fuzzy. Most users never install an add-on and see an email and documents application. For the admin who installs a dozen add-ons, it is a platform. For more on Workspace as a SaaS suite, see Google Workspace as SaaS.

Worked example: what a marketplace developer pays

A platform’s marketplace is also a business, and its terms tell you who carries the cost. Shopify publishes its developer revenue share (as of October 2026):

0% on the first $1,000,000 of lifetime gross app revenue, counting revenue earned on or after January 1, 2025;
15% on revenue above that threshold;
a 2.9% processing fee on all billing, plus applicable sales tax;
a one-time $19 registration fee per Partner account.

Developers who earned $20 million or more through the store in the prior calendar year, or whose company revenue reaches $100 million, pay 15% on all revenue instead.

Example: a small app developer has earned $1,500,000 of gross app revenue through the store since January 1, 2025. Sales tax is left out.

Item	Calculation	Amount
Revenue share on the first $1,000,000	0% x $1,000,000	$0
Revenue share on the next $500,000	15% x $500,000	$75,000
Processing fee on all billing	2.9% x $1,500,000	$43,500
Total paid to the platform	$75,000 + $43,500	$118,500
Kept by the developer	$1,500,000 - $118,500	$1,381,500 (92.1%)

Two lessons for you as a customer. First, the platform earns from products it did not build, so it has a reason to keep the marketplace healthy. Second, the extension you install is a separate company’s product, with its own pricing, support and security posture.

What the difference means when you buy

Fit: a platform can cover gaps with add-ons instead of forcing you to switch tools. Check the marketplace for the two or three features the core product lacks.
Cost: add-ons are billed on top. Ten extensions at $10 a month each add $100 a month to the headline price.
Security: every extension you install gets some access to your data. Review what each one asks for, the way you would review a new vendor.
Lock-in: the more extensions and custom fields you build up, the harder a move becomes. That is the platform working as designed.

For familiar products grouped by what they do, see SaaS examples.

Common mistakes

Taking “platform” in the vendor’s copy at face value. The word costs nothing to print. Why it happens: it sounds bigger than “app”. Instead: run the five-question test against the vendor’s developer documentation.
Treating a marketplace add-on as part of the core product. The add-on is usually built and supported by a different company. Why it happens: it appears inside the same screen. Instead: check who publishes it, what data it can reach and what happens if that developer stops maintaining it.
Counting the API as proof of a platform. Many applications offer an export or reporting API and nothing more. Why it happens: “has an API” is the first line on many feature pages. Instead: look for in-product extensions and a marketplace.
Ignoring the add-on bill. The plan price is only part of the cost on a platform. Why it happens: add-ons are priced one at a time. Instead: list the add-ons you need and add them to the per-user price before you compare vendors.

Sources

Shopify, Revenue share for Shopify App Store developers, checked October 2026.
Marketplaces linked in the table: Shopify App Store, Salesforce AppExchange, Google Workspace Marketplace, Slack Marketplace, each checked October 2026.

In three sentences

A SaaS application is software you use, while a SaaS platform is an application that other companies extend through public APIs, in-product extensions and a marketplace. Test any “platform” claim with five questions: API, in-product extensions, marketplace, developer terms and an extensible data model. On a platform, add-ons bring their own price, support and data access, so add them to the cost and the security review before you choose.

SaaS examples: 30 products you probably already use, by category

Ricardo Machado — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:00:00 GMT

You have to explain SaaS to your team next week, and a definition will not land. What lands is a list of things they already use: the inbox, the chat app, the tool that sends invoices. Here are 30 of them, grouped by job, with one line each on how the vendor charges. The pricing model is the fastest way to see that a product is rented, not owned.

If the term itself is still fuzzy, start with What is SaaS?, the root guide. This article assumes you know that SaaS means software that runs on the vendor’s servers, reached through a browser or an app, paid for on a recurring basis.

The office, before and after, in plain terms

Picture an office in 2005. A mail server hummed in a closet. Files lived in a cabinet, then on a shared drive that somebody backed up to tape on Fridays. Sales kept customer notes in a spreadsheet. The accountant installed a program from a CD every January.

Now picture the same office today. The mail server became Gmail or Outlook on the web. The cabinet became Drive or Dropbox. The spreadsheet became a CRM. The CD became a login. Every one of those replacements is SaaS, and every one is paid for monthly or yearly. That is the whole change: the office did not buy new software, it started renting access to somebody else’s.

How the 30 were chosen

Three criteria, all of them checkable:

Widely used. Products a business reader is likely to have seen, not the best in any category. SaaSCron does not rank products.
Publicly priced. The vendor publishes a pricing page, so the pricing model can be stated with a link. Products that only say “contact sales” were skipped.
Self-serve sign-up. You can create an account and start without a sales call, at least on the entry plan.

Every pricing model below was read on the vendor’s pricing page in October 2026. Prices change often; the link is the source, not this page.

The 30 products

The “How it charges” column uses four labels. Per seat: a price per user per month. Usage: a price per unit consumed. Tiered: fixed plans with growing limits, often per company rather than per user. Free plan: a permanent free tier, usually combined with one of the other three. The SaaS pricing models guide compares the four on one fictional product.

Productivity and documents

Product	What it does	How it charges (October 2026)
Google Workspace	Email, files, docs, video	Per seat, tiered editions: Business Starter $7, Standard $14, Plus $22 per user per month on an annual plan
Microsoft 365	Office apps, email, Teams	Per seat, tiered plans (Business Basic, Standard, Premium)
Notion	Docs, wikis, databases	Free plan; Plus $10 and Business $20 per member per month
Dropbox	File storage and sharing	Free Basic (2 GB); Standard $15 and Advanced $24 per user per month, minimum three users
Airtable	Spreadsheet-database hybrid	Free plan; Team $20 and Business $45 per seat per month billed annually; only editors are charged
Trello	Task boards	Free plan; Standard $5 and Premium $10 per user per month billed annually

Communication

Product	What it does	How it charges (October 2026)
Slack	Team messaging	Free plan (90 days of history); Pro shown at $4.35 per user per month billed yearly with $7.25 crossed out, $5.25 billed monthly; inactive users are credited under its Fair Billing Policy
Zoom	Video meetings	Free Basic (40-minute meetings); Pro $14.16 per user per month billed annually, $16.99 monthly
Loom	Recorded video messages	Free Starter; Business $18 per user per month
Miro	Online whiteboard	Free plan; Starter $8 and Business $20 per member per month billed yearly
Calendly	Meeting scheduling	Free plan; Standard $10 and Teams $16 per seat per month billed yearly

CRM, sales and support

Product	What it does	How it charges (October 2026)
Salesforce Sales Cloud	CRM	Per seat, tiered: Starter Suite $25, Pro Suite $100, Core $195, Advanced $395, Max $550 per user per month
HubSpot	CRM and marketing	Free CRM; paid plans by hub and tier
Zoho CRM	CRM	Free for up to three users; paid editions per user
Zendesk	Customer support	Per agent, tiered suites; AI “automated resolutions” priced separately, with a number included per agent
Intercom	Customer messaging and AI support	Per seat (Essential $29, Advanced $85, Expert $132 per seat per month) plus usage: Fin AI Agent from $0.99 per outcome

Finance and commerce

Product	What it does	How it charges (October 2026)
QuickBooks Online	Accounting	Tiered per company: Simple Start $38, Essentials $85, Plus $140, Advanced $340 per month, with user limits of 1, 3, 5 and 25
Xero	Accounting	Tiered per organization: Early $27, Growing $59, Established $97 per month, no per-user fees
Stripe	Online payments	Usage: a percentage plus a fixed fee per successful transaction, no monthly fee on the standard plan
Shopify	Online store	Tiered plans per store, billed monthly or yearly
DocuSign	Electronic signatures	Per seat, tiered, with envelope limits per user

Developer tools

Product	What it does	How it charges (October 2026)
GitHub	Code hosting	Free plan; Team $4 and Enterprise $21 per user per month; usage charges for Actions minutes and Codespaces beyond the included amounts
GitLab	DevOps platform	Free plan; Premium $29 per user per month billed annually
Linear	Issue tracking	Free plan; Basic $10 and Business $16 per user per month billed yearly
Vercel	Web hosting for developers	Free Hobby; Pro $20 per developer seat per month plus usage (for example $0.15 per GB of data transfer above 1 TB)
Datadog	Monitoring	Usage: Pro $15 per host per month billed annually ($18 on demand); logs at $0.10 per ingested GB
Twilio	SMS and voice APIs	Usage: $0.0083 per outbound US SMS segment, plus carrier fees

Security and infrastructure

Product	What it does	How it charges (October 2026)
Bitwarden	Password manager	Per seat: Teams $4, Enterprise $6 per user per month billed annually
Okta	Identity and single sign-on	Per seat, tiered suites: Starter $6, Essentials $17 per user per month, $1,500 minimum annual contract
Cloudflare	CDN, DNS, security	Tiered per domain: Free, Pro $20, Business $200 per month billed annually; developer services billed by usage

Thirty products, and only three ways to charge for them, in various mixes. That is useful when you look at any new tool: find which of the three it is, and you already know how the bill will behave when your team grows.

What a 10-person team pays

Example: a 10-person company picks one tool from five of the groups above and takes the entry paid plan of each, billed annually where the vendor offers it. List prices as shown on the pricing pages in October 2026; taxes excluded; no discounts negotiated.

Tool and plan	Price per user per month	Monthly bill for 10 users
Google Workspace Business Starter (annual plan)	$7.00	$70.00
Slack Pro (billed yearly, as shown)	$4.35	$43.50
Notion Plus	$10.00	$100.00
GitHub Team	$4.00	$40.00
Bitwarden Teams (billed annually)	$4.00	$40.00
Total	$29.35	$293.50

The arithmetic: $7.00 + $4.35 + $10.00 + $4.00 + $4.00 = $29.35 per person per month; times 10 people is $293.50 a month, or $3,522 a year. Two things change that number fast. Monthly billing costs more: Google’s Flexible Plan is $8.40 instead of $7 per user per month, per Google’s billing help page, and Slack charges $5.25 instead of $4.35. And the eleventh hire adds $29.35 a month to the bill on the day she starts.

Note what is not in the bill: no server, no installation, no upgrade project. That trade is the subject of the cost example in What is SaaS?.

Common mistakes

Calling every website SaaS. A news site, a bank’s online banking page and a government portal all run on servers and open in a browser. They are not SaaS, because nobody rents the application: there is no subscription, no admin console, no “add a user”. Why it happens: “runs in a browser” looks like the defining trait. Instead: ask whether a customer pays recurring money to use the software as a product.
Counting a self-hosted install as SaaS. GitLab and Bitwarden both sell a hosted service and also let you run the software on your own servers. The hosted version is SaaS. The copy on your server is not, even if the code is the same, because you manage the hosting, the updates and the backups. Why it happens: same product name. Instead: look at who runs the servers.
Mixing up the product and the company. Google is not SaaS; Google Workspace is. Microsoft sells Azure (infrastructure) next to Microsoft 365 (SaaS). Why it happens: vendor names stand in for products in conversation. Instead: name the product, then classify it.
Reading the entry price as the price. Many vendors show the annual-plan price per user in large type and the monthly-billing price in small type. Several also charge for usage above an included amount (GitHub Actions minutes, Vercel data transfer, Intercom outcomes). Why it happens: pricing pages are designed to show the smallest number. Instead: multiply by your headcount, pick the billing cycle you will actually use, and read the usage limits.

Sources

The 30 vendor pricing pages linked in the tables, each read in October 2026.
Google Admin Help, Compare Flexible and Annual/Fixed-Term payment plans, checked October 2026.

In three sentences

SaaS products are the rented replacements for the mail server, the file cabinet, the sales spreadsheet and the accounting CD, and the 30 above are the ones most business readers already use. Every one of them charges in one of three ways, per seat, per unit of usage or per plan tier, often with a free entry plan. A 10-person team on five entry plans pays about $294 a month at October 2026 list prices, and that bill grows with every hire.

What is SaaS? A plain-English guide with examples

Ricardo Machado — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Someone in a meeting said “the new tool is SaaS” and you nodded. Now you have to explain to your team why you are paying every month for software you do not own. Here is the short answer: SaaS is software that lives on the vendor’s servers, that you use through a browser or an app, and that you pay for as a subscription instead of buying once.

That one change, from owning a copy to renting access, explains most of what is different about SaaS: the price, who fixes problems, where your data sits and why the bill never stops. This guide covers each of those, with real products and real numbers, so you can explain it to someone else tomorrow.

SaaS in plain terms

Think of the difference between building a house and renting a furnished apartment. When you build, you buy the land, pay for the construction, and every repair afterward is yours. When you rent furnished, you move in today, the landlord fixes the boiler, and you pay rent for as long as you stay. You get less control over the walls, and you never stop paying.

Traditional software was the house. You bought a license, installed the program on your own computers or servers, and your IT team handled updates, backups and security. SaaS is the furnished apartment. The vendor installs and runs the software once, on its own infrastructure, for thousands of customers at the same time. You sign in, you use it, you pay monthly or yearly.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wrote the definition most of the industry uses, in Special Publication 800-145 (September 2011). It describes SaaS as the capability “to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure”, accessed “through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email), or a program interface.” The same document adds that the consumer “does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities.”

That last sentence is the whole deal. You get the application. The vendor keeps everything underneath it.

How SaaS works

Four things happen behind the screen when you use a SaaS product:

One copy serves everyone. The vendor runs the software on servers it owns or rents. Most SaaS products are multi-tenant: one running system serves many customers, and each customer sees only its own data. This is how a vendor can charge a few dollars a month and still make money.
You reach it over the internet. No installer, no license key on a server in a closet. A browser, a mobile app or an API call is the whole client.
Updates arrive for everyone at once. When the vendor ships a new feature or a security fix, every customer gets it, usually without doing anything. The upside is that you are never on an old version. The downside is that you cannot refuse a change you dislike.
You pay for access, not for a copy. The usual unit is a price per user per month, billed monthly or yearly. Some products charge by usage (messages sent, gigabytes stored) or by plan tier instead. Stop paying, and access ends.

The five characteristics NIST uses to define cloud services apply to all of this: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service. In practice that means you can sign up without talking to a salesperson, from any device, share the vendor’s infrastructure with other customers, add 20 users on Monday and remove them on Friday, and pay for what you used.

Who manages what

The question that causes the most trouble in a SaaS contract is not price. It is responsibility. This table is the split that applies to most business SaaS products. Check your own contract and admin settings, because the customer side is larger than most buyers expect.

Area	The vendor	You, the customer
Hosting, servers, network	Runs and pays for it	Nothing
Software updates	Ships them to everyone	Reads the release notes; adjusts training
Platform security	Patches, monitors, certifies (for example SOC 2 or ISO 27001)	Passwords, two-factor settings, who has admin rights
Backups of the platform	Keeps the service recoverable after its own failure	Exporting your own data; restoring a file your user deleted, within the vendor’s trash window
User accounts	Provides the login system	Creates, removes and reviews users; removes leavers
Your data	Stores it and protects it in transit and at rest	Owns it; decides who can see it; deletes it when leaving
Configuration	Provides the settings	Chooses them: sharing defaults, integrations, retention

The pattern: the vendor owns the building, you own what happens inside your apartment. Google, for example, keeps a deleted Workspace user’s data for 20 days and then deletes it permanently unless an admin transferred it first, according to Google’s Admin Help (checked October 2026). That is a customer-side job. More on that split in the guide to Google Workspace as SaaS.

What SaaS costs, with the arithmetic

Example: a 20-person company picks a project management tool priced at $12 per user per month. Compare it with a one-time license for similar software at $300 per user plus a $3,000 server, with the server replaced after three years and a yearly maintenance contract at 20% of the license price. Round numbers, fictional products; the structure is what matters.

Cost line	SaaS at $12 per user per month	One-time license plus server
Year 1	20 x $12 x 12 = $2,880	20 x $300 = $6,000 license; $3,000 server; $1,200 maintenance = $10,200
Year 2	$2,880	$1,200 maintenance
Year 3	$2,880	$1,200 maintenance
Three-year total	$8,640	$12,600
Year 4 onward, per year	$2,880, forever	$1,200, plus a new server when the old one dies

Three lessons sit in that table. First, SaaS wins on cash in the first year because there is no upfront purchase. Second, the lines cross eventually: with a server replaced every three years, the SaaS total passes the license total in year 9 ($25,920 against $25,800). Third, the SaaS column never ends, and the price per user tends to rise over time. Google raised Business Standard from $12 to $14 per user per month in 2025 when it bundled Gemini into the plan, as stated in Google’s announcement of January 15, 2025.

The license column also hides costs the table does not show: the time of the person who patches the server, the downtime when it fails, and the backup you forgot to test. That is the honest reason most small companies choose SaaS. They are not buying software; they are buying the absence of a server room. The SaaS pricing models guide shows how per-seat, usage-based, tiered and freemium prices behave as a company grows.

Ten SaaS products you probably use already

Each of these runs on the vendor’s servers, is used through a browser or an app, and is sold on a recurring basis. Pricing model as shown on each vendor’s pricing page in October 2026.

Product	What it does	How it charges
Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive, Docs)	Email, files, documents	Per user per month, three Business editions
Microsoft 365	Office apps, email, Teams	Per user per month, by plan
Slack	Team messaging	Free plan; paid plans per active user
Zoom	Video meetings	Free plan with a 40-minute limit; paid per license
Notion	Docs and wikis	Free plan; paid per member
Dropbox	File storage and sharing	Free Basic; team plans per user, minimum three users
Salesforce Sales Cloud	CRM	Per user per month, five editions from $25
QuickBooks Online	Accounting	Per company per month, four tiers with user limits
GitHub	Code hosting	Free plan; Team at $4 per user per month; usage charges for compute
Trello	Task boards	Free plan; Standard at $5 per user per month billed annually

Thirty more, grouped by what they do and with a sample monthly bill for a 10-person team, are in SaaS examples: 30 products by category.

Common mistakes

Using “cloud” and “SaaS” as synonyms. Cloud is the whole category of renting computing over the internet. NIST splits it into three service models. SaaS is only the finished-application layer; renting a virtual server from AWS is cloud, but it is not SaaS. Why it happens: vendors call everything “cloud”. What to do instead: ask “is this an application, a platform or raw infrastructure?” The guide to SaaS in cloud computing shows the three layers side by side.
Assuming the vendor backs up your data for you. The vendor backs up its platform so the service survives its own failures. It does not promise to recover the file your colleague deleted four months ago. Google’s Drive trash keeps files for 30 days, then deletes them forever, per Google Drive Help. Why it happens: “it’s in the cloud” sounds safe. Instead: read the retention settings, turn on the longest window your plan allows, and export what you cannot afford to lose.
Forgetting that the subscription never ends. A license is a cost you pay once and amortize. A subscription is a cost that grows with every new hire and every price increase. Why it happens: the first-year number is small. Instead: multiply by three years and by your expected headcount before you compare it with anything else.
Leaving the defaults on. The vendor chooses defaults that reduce support tickets, not defaults that protect your data: link sharing on, two-factor optional, one shared admin login. Why it happens: nobody was named as the admin. Instead: name one person, and have them review sharing, authentication and admin roles in the first week.

Go deeper

SaaS examples: 30 products you probably already use, by category: the products, grouped, with a sample monthly bill.
SaaS pricing models: per-seat, usage-based, tiered and freemium compared: the same product priced four ways.
SaaS in cloud computing: how software reaches you over the internet: multi-tenancy, uptime in minutes, and the three cloud models.
The SaaS business model: how subscription software makes money: why vendors can afford to charge $50 a month.
Google Workspace as SaaS: editions, admin controls and security explained: the customer side of the responsibility table, on one real product.

Sources

NIST, Special Publication 800-145, The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, September 2011.
Google, The best of Google AI, now included in Workspace Business and Enterprise plans, January 15, 2025.
Google Admin Help, Delete or remove a user from your organization, and Google Drive Help, Delete and restore files in Google Drive, both checked October 2026.
Vendor pricing pages linked in the table above, checked October 2026.

In three sentences

SaaS is software that the vendor runs on its own servers and that you use over the internet for a recurring fee instead of installing it. The vendor manages hosting, updates and platform security, while you still own your users, your settings and your data. It costs less up front and more over time, so compare it over at least three years and read the retention settings before you sign.