While running Fresh van Root we want and need to explore lots of different apps, tools, and platforms that are offered as Software as a Service in the cloud.
There is a single SaaS company for every typical agency task or project you can think of. Small agencies (or boutique agencies, how they are nowadays called), have less financial investment to make to get things up and running and can upsize/downsize quickly (think of the old days buying software licenses for each user client and sending around license keys …).
On the other hand, there are way more specialty tools available and every SaaS company wants you to sign up for a paid plan.
The following services are in use at Fresh van Root:
- Social Media Publishing: Buffer, Hootsuite
- Graphics: Canva, Adobe Cloud
- Conferencing: Zoom and Google Meet
- Chat: Slack, Microsoft Teams
- Time Management: Toggl, Harvest
- Project Management: Trello, Asana
- …
That’s 12 SaaS tools. Let’s say the cost is about 10 USD per user per month.
For five users, this adds up: 600 USD per month (overstated example).
This is expensive if you use some of those tools just a few times a month.
What about having one SaaS subscription, let’s call it “SaaS Kick Start” which costs 100 USD/EUR a month and allows you to use 50 different tools with one user.
The difference to subscribing directly to the SaaS vendor is that “SaaS Kick Start” comes with limitations on usage.
For example:
- Send only 50 tweets per month with Buffer
- Host-only 10 conf calls a month with Google Meet
- Create only 30 cards in Trello
- …
If you hit the limitations, again and again, you will sign up for the full product directly. For agencies, this would a great way of trialing several services at once (besides discovering new ones) and at the same time lowering the monthly fixed costs.
How complex is this to build?
Building the tech and attracting users.
First, building the tech that allows integrating several SaaS services in one account or making it possible to sign up for several services at once.
Second, convincing SaaS companies that you are bringing in new customers and that they want to be listed on your platform.
Third, building momentum about “SaaS Kick Start” platform and reaching thousands of users that give you leverage in negotiations with SaaS companies (“100K users signed up for our pre-launch mailing list”).
There are hundreds of companies out there providing services for SaaS companies to run their business more efficiently. Who takes on the task in making things easier for SaaS customers?
Bonus Content:
Discovered these two services while researching for this post.