SaaS tools enable companies of all sizes to get to market quickly, enhance their service delivery, and improve efficiency. By leveraging “ready-to-go” and “proven” platforms, SaaS companies can also avoid building systems from scratch, which is time-consuming and costly.
Yet, 61% of companies have over 100 SaaS applications, which can be overwhelming to manage. Orphaned subscriptions are also common. Most companies regularly use only about half of their SaaS stack.
In an increasingly competitive SaaS market, you cannot afford to kill time scrolling through hundreds of SaaS products. That is time you could use to develop better customer experiences, new releases, or security patches.
So in this post, we’ve compiled the best SaaS tools by category, so you don’t have to. Just pick the right ones for your needs to enhance your efficiency, make informed business decisions, and amplify your growth.
Cloud Cost Management Tools For SaaS Companies
There are many cloud cost optimization solutions available today, from AWS to hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. Check out these tools if you’re looking to optimize costs on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
1. CloudZero – Cloud cost intelligence platform
CloudZero is a modern cloud cost intelligence platform designed to help SaaS teams maximize their return on investment in AWS, Kubernetes, and Snowflake.
CloudZero automatically aligns AWS usage and cost data to the products, processes, and people behind them. This lets you know where your cloud dollars are going. Cost anomaly alerts also notify your team about cost spikes in your AWS environment, which can help you prevent overspending.
The platform’s cloud cost cntelligence approach presents cost information in a granular form, so you can measure:
- Cost per customer
- Cost per product
- Cost per feature
- Cost per deployment
- Cost per environment
Additionally, your finance team can use this data for recommending cost-effective SaaS pricing that will protect your margins.
Furthermore, your executive team and board can see the overall and departmental cost of goods sold (COGS), gross margin performance, and which customer segments are most profitable. This is vital information for SaaS businesses seeking to grow.
Schedule a demo here to see CloudZero in action.
2. Xosphere – AWS Spot Instances orchestrator
Xosphere switches your AWS compute instances from On-Demand instances to Spot instances when the latter are more affordable. By automating the transition back to On-Demand instances, Xosphere minimizes downtime and maximizes performance when spot instance prices become unreasonable.
3. ProsperOps – AWS Reserved Instances and Savings Plans optimization
ProsperOps’ financial management platform enables you to optimize AWS Reserved Instances and Savings Plans without manual intervention from your FinOps or DevOps teams. It then dynamically re-allocates the savings benefits to match the changing needs of your cloud environment.
Financial Services and Accounting Tools for SaaS Businesses
Using accounting, bookkeeping, and financial services for SaaS simplifies, tracks, and completes your numbers. By choosing the right financial tools and services, you can save time, minimize errors, and improve your business’s financial health.
4. QuickBooks – Accounting software
Quickbooks is a cloud-based accounting program for businesses of all sizes, from single freelancers to companies with complex accounting requirements. The software also accepts payments online, provides project time tracking for billing, and supports advanced bookkeeping practices.
QuickBooks alternatives: FreshBooks, 2Checkout, Zoho, and Xero.
5. Boast.ai – R&D tax credits
Boast helps you capture, qualify, and claim eligible tax credits for your research and development. It does this automatically, so you won’t have to wait for tax season or claim approval times to fund your product development.
6. Carta – Cap Table, valuation, and equity management
Carta aims to be everything you need to simplify and manage 409A valuations, cap tables, and investments. The goal is to streamline equity management from founding to IPO for investors and companies.
7. Stripe – Payments processing
Stripe provides a robust payment gateway and PayPal alternative for SaaS companies of all sizes. The service enables you to securely and conveniently accept payments online. In addition, it helps manage financial records and send payouts online.
Stripe competitors: 2Checkout, Braintree, PayPal, WePay, and Fusebill.
8. Chargebee – Recurring billing and subscription management tool
Chargebee lets you manage different aspects of SaaS subscriptions. You can use the tool to manage your product catalog, free trials, plan addons, contract terms, invoicing, and chargebacks. The tool also supports online payments through your chosen payment gateway.
Chargebee alternatives: Chargify, Stripe, Outseta, ChartMogul, and Recurly.
Engineering Tools For SaaS Teams
Developing software requires various technical tools, especially if you follow DevOps best practices. We recently shared 55 top DevOps tools, ranging from configuration management to CI/CD and security tools. Let’s take a look at a few that stand out.
9. GitHub – Code repository, version control, and collaboration platform
GitHub is a cloud-only software development platform for distributed teams that want to build, ship, and maintain code efficiently. GitHub is remarkably resourceful for developers who wish to collaborate on open-source projects, thanks to its vast developer community.
GitHub alternatives: GitLab (on-premise and cloud-based), Bitbucket, SourceForge, and AWS CodeCommit.
10. Jenkins – Open-source automation tool for software development
Jenkins allows developers to automate many steps in the software development lifecycle, from building to deployment. Any machine can use this self-contained automation server provided it has Java Runtime Environment installed, in native system packages, or through Docker.
11. CircleCI – Continuous Integration platform
Engineering teams can build, test, and deploy code changes quickly and efficiently with CircleCI. It is FedRAMP approved and compliant with SOC 2 Type II. You can use it to orchestrate custom jobs on Linux, Windows, and macOS infrastructure or in the cloud.
Other crucial tools to consider are Terraform, Jira, Aha!, and Deploybot.
Product Management Solutions For SaaS
Product management software helps product managers and their teams with prototyping, roadmapping, development tracking, and product analytics. While some platforms are specialists, others aim to be a single source of truth for all things product management. Here are a few to consider.
12. ProductBoard – Product design and building platform
Product Board provides a platform for designing and building products that resonate with customers’ needs. Product managers can use it to align their teams with roadmaps, prioritize tasks, and provide timely feedback. It supports multiple integrations designed to help develop profitable products.
13. StoriesOnBoard – User story mapping
With StoriesOnBoard, remote teams can collaborate on product development using the story mapping technique. This tool enables you to collaborate with customers on design, create user personas, prioritize tasks, and send story maps to your agile development team with each release.
14. Dragonboat – Product portfolio management
With Dragonboat, you can connect OKRs, customer insights, and product strategy to your Agile development process. You can also integrate Dragonboat with team tools like JIRA, Clubhouse, and GitHub for progress tracking, collaboration, and prioritizing your product development lifecycle.
Other product management tools include Productific, ProductPlan, and Craft.io.
User Onboarding, Customer Engagement, And Activity Monitoring
A challenge SaaS businesses face is that they seldom have a direct line of communication with customers. The smoother the customer experience, the more likely they will renew their subscriptions and refer you to others. This applies whether you are selling to B2B or B2C customers.
With these solutions, you can find out what your customers want from your product or feature to meet their expectations.
15. UserGuiding – User onboarding software
You can use UserGuiding to create product walkthroughs and provide personalized customer training without coding. Besides better in-app experiences, UserGuiding can also help reduce support calls and increase feature activation upon customer onboarding. You can also collect information about how users interact with your product features and improve them accordingly.
SaaS products similar to UserGuiding: UserPilot, HotJar, Piwik, Qualaroo, Pendo, Simpo, Heap, and Chameleon.
16. MixPanel – User interaction analytics platform for web and mobile devices
Using MixPanel, you can monitor and analyze how users interact with your internet-connected product in real-time. As a result, you can better understand your users’ behavior, so you can continuously improve how you deliver your most in-demand features.
17. Navattic – Product demos software
Navattic helps you create interactive and shareable product demos that encourage customer engagement, product adoption, and user activation. You can enable potential customers to take product tours by including the tours in your sales and marketing materials, helping you leverage product-driven growth. Furthermore, Navattic analyzes your conversions across all of your marketing channels.
18. SolarWinds – Real-time hybrid end-user monitoring for engineers
SolarWinds’ end-user monitoring provides DevOps teams with insights into problems users could encounter when navigating your application or website.
Sematext, Splunk, and DataDog are other tools that provide real user monitoring (RUM) for engineers.
Email And Marketing Automation For SaaS
You can use these tools to launch outreach and inbound campaigns with customized templates, personalized messaging, and maximum deliverability. For example, you can send welcome emails with fully automated follow-ups to nurture leads to repeat customers.
19. Mailshake – Automated email prospecting tool
Mailshake offers email, phone, and social conversion tools to convert cold emails into warm lead generation tools while you focus on improving your product features. It also provides lead segmentation, A/B testing, and fully automated follow-ups to increase conversions.
20. Unbounce – Landing page builder
The Unbounce marketing platform helps you build relevant landing pages for your offerings, target audiences, or product features. This makes Unbounce a powerful conversion optimization feature for demos and trials, making it an invaluable addition to your lead generation stack.
Unbounce competitors: LeadPages and Instapage.
21. GetResponse – All-in-one marketing automation solution
GetResponse offers a landing page builder, email marketing platform, marketing automation, website builder, conversion funnels, and more if you want to consolidate your online marketing campaigns into a single platform.
Other powerful marketing automation platforms like GetResponse include Act-On, Marketo, and ActiveCampaign.
22. OptinMonster – Exit-intent platform and email list building solution
The company’s exit-intent technology, including popups, in-line bars, and coupon wheels, encourages website visitors to take a specific action right when they’re about to leave a page. OptinMonster can offer timely discounts, content upgrades, and other promotions to encourage conversions or email sign-ups for future follow-ups.
OptinMonster alternatives: Sleeknote, Sumo, and OptimizePress.
Sales Software For SaaS Businesses
Choosing the right SaaS sales tool for your company can help you nurture quality leads through your sales funnel, manage customer relationships, and retain customers. The tools offer a variety of capabilities, including sales funnels automation, customer relationship management, and superior sales analytics.
The following SaaS products can help your sales heroes boost revenue.
23. ClickFunnels – Online sales funnel builder
ClickFunnels helps nurture your leads throughout your sales funnel, converting them into repeat customers. It offers email list building, one-click upsells, cart abandonment sequences, landing pages, and sales page tools, among its many tools.
24. SalesMate – Customer journey platform with sales CRM
Understanding your customers will help you tailor your messaging, offers, and follow-ups. Cloud-based CRM provider SalesMate offers sales teams a way to automate targeted email campaigns, phone calls, text messages, and other communications with new and existing customers.
25. Pipedrive – Sales pipeline builder and manager with analytics
You can use Pipedrive to create sales pipelines with custom fields and stages. It also includes a sales-optimized CRM to help you personalize your offers at just the right point in your lead’s journey.
Pipedrive competitors: Freshsales, FunnelFly, Custify, and SalesHandy.
Content Management Platforms For SaaS
Content Management Systems (CMS) help design, develop, and publish digital content like videos, images, text, documents, and audio files. The best SaaS CMS empowers you to offer consistent brand experiences across channels and devices without knowing how to code.
26. Content Studio – Content discovery and scheduling
With its content discovery, planning, publication, and analytics tools, Content Studio gives your content creators a solid foundation for social media posting and content marketing. It also offers a media library so you can organize all your engagement content in one place.
Content Studio alternatives: BuzzSumo (content ideas generator), Feedly (RSS feed), and ShareIt (content curation).
27. CrafterCMS – Open-source DevContentOps platform
CrafterCMS’ open-source, DevContentOps platform allows you to create content with code and deliver memorable digital experiences. This solution is particularly suitable for enterprises.
28. Wistia – Video hosting platform
Wistia offers marketers a recording, hosting, and management solution for videos and podcasts. You can then collect engagement data from the videos and share it with your CRM, ads, and marketing stacks to get further insight for follow-up campaigns.
Social Media Management Tools
Social media’s role in your SaaS business goes beyond engaging customers online. It is also a great way to showcase your culture and attract talent to your organization. Here are a few tools you can use to consistently build your social media presence.
29. Buffer – Social media scheduling and management tool
Buffer is an affordable social media management tool for companies of all sizes. Use it to schedule social posts and automate LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest postings. You can also respond to comments directly in Buffer and analyze engagement over time.
Buffer alternatives: Hootsuite, SproutSocial, Agorapulse, SocialPilot, Later, and MeetEdgar.
30. CoSchedule – Content calendar and headline analyzer
CoSchedule started as a content calendar and headline optimization tool but has grown into a comprehensive content marketing platform. It now features content ideation, scheduling, sharing, project management, and training tools.
Top CoSchedule alternatives: StoryChief, Percolate, and Kapost.
31. SocialFlow – Audience engagement optimization
SocialFlow outperforms contemporary social schedulers by analyzing engagement indicators like comments, likes, and shares, to help you predict when you should post to your audience for optimal engagement. Additionally, you can track engagement in real-time on paid and owned social media posts.
SocialFlow alternatives: Tailwind (Pinterest and Instagram) and SocialBee (scheduling and recycling).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
SEO is a powerful, proven, and long-term digital strategy for increasing your online visibility. The following SEO tools can help you position your SaaS business where your customers are online to maximize exposure and increase adoption.
32. Ahrefs – Comprehensive SEO toolset
Ahrefs offers a keyword generator, backlink checker, SEO analytics, and numerous plugins for major browsers. With Ahrefs, you can conduct SEO audits on your website(s), measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, and identify link-building opportunities.
Ahrefs competitors: Moz, SurferSEO, SE Ranking, UberSuggest, Mangools, Keywords Everywhere, etc.
33. MarketMuse – Content optimization platform
MarketMuse combines what Ahrefs, CoSchedule, and BuzzSumo do into one tool. The tool provides a keyword planner, content ideas generator, and identifies content gaps that your team can fill to deliver unique content to your audiences.
SaaS tools similar to MarketMuse: ClickFlow, Frase, Clearscope, and Dashword.
34. Postaga – Outreach tool
Connecting with high-authority website owners doesn’t have to be a pain. Postaga helps outreach teams design engaging messages that elicit positive responses and link-building opportunities.
Postaga can also help you promote your content, track your results, and improve your backlinking efforts based on data, not guesses.
Video Solutions For SaaS Companies
SaaS companies rely heavily on video, particularly when creating explainer videos, demos, training material, and sharing their culture on social media. Here are some tools to help you achieve all three, and more.
35. Loom – Screen recording software
The screen-casting tool empowers your hybrid workplace to use asynchronous video to educate, collaborate, and communicate with ease. With Loom, you can simultaneously record and share your desktop and mobile screens, enabling you to share feedback and other video demonstrations.
Loom competitors: Vidyard and Snagit.
36. Virool – Targeted video marketing platform
Virool takes a unique approach by enabling you to create high-quality videos that target your ideal customer persona, engage them with native placements, and measure the effectiveness of your videos in real-time.
37. PowToon – DIY animation platform
Manage, create, and distribute high-quality animated videos that grab your audience’s attention, engage, and keep them coming back for more. With PowToon, you can create explainer videos and product demos for marketing or internal use.
Project Management Platforms For SaaS
No matter your company size, a project management tool can help you manage your teams, workload, and projects more efficiently. The following solutions can do the job for and with you.
38. Asana – Team project management software
Easily organize work projects and workflow for teams – from ideation to prioritization and collaboration to progress tracking (colored). Asana works online so that you can collaborate with anyone from anywhere.
Asana alternatives: Flow, Todoist, Wrike, Basecamp, Monday.com, and Trello.
39. ProofHub – All-in-one project management for small and medium businesses
ProofHub features Gantt charts, Kanban boards, custom roles, and workflows to help manage work projects and provide leadership. It also includes task management, in-app chat, and table view tools to stay organized and beat overwhelm.
ProofHub alternatives: ClickUp, Jira, and ProdPad.
40. Process Street – Business process management
Process Street is a no-code process management solution for teams, great for small and medium businesses looking to manage procedures, checklists, and workflows.
Process Street alternative: Airtable and Bitrix24.
SaaS Communication Solutions
Whether you work with distributed teams or in an office setting, these tools can enhance your communication, collaboration, and ability to get things done quickly and accurately.
41. Zoom – Video conferencing software
Zoom is a videotelephony solution that offers everything from video conferencing and cloud phone tools to webinars and online chat solutions across various web-connected devices.
Zoom alternatives: GoTo, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and MeetGeek.
42. Google Workspace – cloud-based business applications with collaboration
Google Workspace (formerly G-Suite) lets you collaborate on everything from presentations to documents in real-time. Send and receive emails with Gmail, upload, share, and manage files with Drive, schedule appointments and work projects with Calendar, and video meet on Meet.
Customer Service And Live Chat Services
Since you rarely meet your customers face-to-face, your customer service representatives do a lot to ensure that thousands of existing or potential customers enjoy your products. The following tools can help ease the burden on your reps and provide consistently excellent customer service.
43. ZenDesk – Customer communications platform
ZenDesk’s customer service suite features a ticketing system, messaging and live chat tools, and community forums. You can also use it to build knowledge bases, help centers, and answering bots. It also includes a sales CRM and analytics tool to help improve your conversion rate.
ZenDesk alternatives: FreshDesk, Drift, HelpDesk, Crisp, GrooveHQ, and Salesforce.
44. Intercom – Transactional messaging and live chat software for SaaS companies
Intercom provides business messaging, live chat, automated answers, product tours, and surveys to help you connect and engage customers to boost sales.
45. MobileMonkey – Sales text messaging automation
This multi-channel tool enables you to utilize direct messaging to improve customer engagement, boost conversions, and retain customers. MobileMonkey offers tools to enhance your website chat, Instagram direct messaging, SMS texting, and Facebook Messenger interactions.
MobileMonkey alternative: Social Intents (Chat with customers directly from Teams, Webex, and Slack)
Remote Team Collaboration Tools
Getting work done in your hybrid workplace shouldn’t be a hassle. At least not when you can use the following remote-friendly tools.
46. Confluence – Knowledge management and collaboration service
Customers expect consistent experiences throughout your organization. That is why you’ll want to provide your employees with a centralized knowledge base to help them better serve your customers. Confluence helps your team collaborate on projects, share project plans, and find answers to customer questions in one place.
Confluence alternative: Bit.ai, Notion, Zoho Wiki, and Nuclino.
47. Slack – Messaging app for business teams
Whether you’re working with marketers or DevOps teams, Slack is perfect for collaboration. In fact, CloudZero uses Slack for alerting the responsible person or team to cloud cost spikes in their AWS environment so they can take action to prevent overspending.
48. Mockplus – Free wireframe tool for product design
Mockplus helps a distributed team of designers, developers, and managers to collaborate in a single product design workflow to produce everything, from wireframes with code snippets in Sketch, AdobeXD, and PhotoShop to interactive prototypes for developers.
CRM Software For SaaS Companies
Customer relationship management tools help you learn more about your customers, so you can tailor your services to meet their needs. Here are some CRM solutions to consider.
49. Salesforce – All-in-one CRM
Salesforce initially gained traction as a sales-oriented CRM platform but has since become a universal platform to integrate CRM technology across an organization.
Salesforce alternatives: HubSpot CRM, ZenDesk, Zoho CRM, and SugarCRM.
50. Bitrix24 – Complete CRM, collaboration, and communication platform
For small or medium-sized SaaS, Bitrix24 offers a suite that includes CRM, chat, project management, calendar, and more tools in one platform, so you don’t have to juggle multiple tools.
Human Resource Management Software
HR platforms enable you to organize, automate, and optimize most aspects of working with your most valuable asset, your people. The following tools can help you build a great workplace at every stage of your SaaS journey.
51. Grove HR – All-one HR software
Get everything from job applications to onboarding to payroll, e-signatures, and onboarding solutions in one place. Grove HR empowers users to set goals for their teams, track their career paths, and review their performance in one place.
Alternatives to Grove HR: BambooHR, Gusto (Payroll and benefits solution), PandaDoc (Contract signing management), as well as ProProfs, and Apty (User onboarding and employee training tools).
52. Time Doctor – Time-tracking software
Time Doctor provides real-time monitoring and productivity analytics for SaaS teams working in remote and hybrid environments. With Time Doctor, work gets done when it should.
Design Software For SaaS Companies
Every niche has dozens of SaaS players competing for users’ attention. Branding is one way you can stand out from the crowd, so you don’t want to disregard it. A strong design tool can help you market your brand’s strengths, ensure brand cohesion across all channels, and help make you instantly recognizable in a crowded market.
The following tools can help.
53. EdrawMax – Diagramming tool for SaaS
EdrawMax offers more than 280 diagram types for presenting information in context, in the visual language of the audience, and in a way that does not overwhelm them. With 1,500 in-built templates and 20,000+ symbols, you won’t have any trouble expressing your brand in fewer words and more visuals.
54. Canva – One-stop graphic design tool
Designers, branding professionals, and in-house teams can use Canva to create, share, and print everything from social media graphics and business card logos to website templates, graphs, and charts.
Canva alternatives: Venngage and Figma.
Surveys, Forms, And Polling Software
You do not have to wait until your churn rate and monthly recurring revenue (MRR) signal that your subscribers are canceling. By listening to their own words, you can learn how to improve your relationship with them before they leave.
You can quickly collect, analyze, and respond to user feedback with the following tools.
55. Feedier – Feedback management solution
Gather, analyze, and act on feedback from all touchpoints in your business, from HR to marketing. Feedier enables you to import feedback from your CRM, text, forms, tickets, and reviews, among others, so you can work on improving customer experiences.
Feedier competitors: Refiner, Promoter.io, Ask Nicely, Birdeye, Lattice, and Fond.
56. Typeform – Forms and surveys builder
Instead of sending tedious forms your audience will pass, why not create quizzes, tests, and polls that they will enjoy answering? Typeform has a treasure trove of templates you can use to get started.
Alternatives to Typeform: SurveyMonkey (online surveys), Google Forms (online forms), and Reform (hosted forms).
57. Zapier – Applications and Workflow Automation Platform
Ultimately, you’ll want a robust automation platform to link all your SaaS tools, enable them to share information automatically, and reduce overwhelm across your stack.
This is what Zapier does by providing workflows that let multiple tools talk to each other and deliver desired results. One action in one app can trigger one or more activities in the rest of your toolset, for example.
Wrapping Up
These SaaS tools can help you enhance your primary service, free up your people to concentrate on their core duties, and worry less about everyone else getting ahead of you.
By finding the tools that best suit your needs, you won’t waste time switching between apps, paying for subscriptions you barely use, or creating new systems with money you can’t afford to burn.
If you’re tired of juggling multiple cloud cost tools without getting the visibility and ROI you need, CloudZero can help.
CloudZero lets you see precisely who, what, and why your cloud costs are changing. Think: cost per customer, cost per product feature, cost per environment, cost per development team, and more – all without endless tagging in AWS. That means you can tell where to pull strings to cut costs without hurting your system’s performance, blocking innovation, or harming customer experiences.
Besides reducing your AWS bill, that can also help you discover new revenue streams, like what features you can charge more for without losing customers. 
to see how CloudZero makes this happen.
The Cloud Cost Playbook
The step-by-step guide to cost maturity
