SaaS is changing the world of business, one tool at a time.
Users can effectively become jacks of all trades. Juggling design, publishing, and direct mail marketing are possible with an internet connection. You don’t need special skills or expensive teams to kickstart a business. SaaS has you covered.
These tools give companies and remote teams of all sizes the power to make informed business decisions, enhance efficiency, and skyrocket growth.
Which ones should you select? Which will give you the best ROI? How much money you’ll save or make?
As a full-service SEO and link-building agency, we have been working with hundreds of SaaS companies, and these are 25 SaaS tools that almost feel like cheating.
What we’ll cover:
What are SaaS Tools?
SaaS (Software as a Service) provides cloud-based software applications over the internet.
These applications are commonly called SaaS tools. The most famous examples are Canva, Google Docs, and Netflix.
These are usually sold on a subscription basis, where you pay for what you use and how much you use, with plans ranging from one month to one year.
Unlike traditional software, you don’t have to experience the headache of configuring software and managing your own hardware. One click, and you can start using the SaaS tool with your internet.
Pick any department in your organization, and you’ll find at least 10 SaaS tools catering to that field. For example, there are CRM tools, marketing automation, sales accelerator, sales analytics, and sales enablement tools all targeted at your sales teams.
While many companies use a hundred SaaS tools, you can get the results by strategically deciding on just a few.
Let’s explore all the different niches in SaaS tools and the best tools in each niche.
Project Management tools
Every business, big or small, revolves around projects. For example, even if you’re devising a marketing campaign, that becomes a project. How do you handle such projects? How do you make sure your team has access to everything they need? A project management tool helps you take care of all this and more.
1. Trello
Trello’s Kanban board makes it one of the most popular SaaS tools for project management.
This board lets you break any kind of project into several columns, each showing a different stage in the project. For example, a content writing board may have columns like ideation, to-be-written articles, in-progress content, and published content.
You can also add multiple cards to projects, assign labels, set due dates, attach assets, create checklists, color code, and assign individual tasks to team members.
Key features: Easy drag-and-drop editing, different dashboards for all projects, individual/group task management, deadline alerts & notifications, data backup, and advanced visual checklists.
2. Asana
Even if you have never used Asana, you must have heard of it. It’s that popular in the project management space.
With Asana, you can get access to readymade templates for almost all projects so your team can get a headstart. Apart from that, the tool helps you manage tasks and projects and even has a number of different views like Timeline, Workload, and Calendar, where you can see how your projects are progressing and if anyone on your team is overburdened or underutilized.
Key features: Gantt chart, app integrations, automation, task management, reporting, Kanban boards, multiple views, milestones, custom fields, dependencies, and readymade templates.
3. Teamwork
Trusted and used by leading brands such as Spotify, Disney, and Netflix, Teamwork is a project management tool that equally focuses on collaboration and communication.
It helps you plan projects, manage resources, and collaborate remotely.
Teamwork also provides you with time tracking and budget functionality, where you can get deeper insights into how your team spends time and on what tasks. The time budget calculates the remaining time on a project so you can finish your projects on time.
Key features: Task management, time tracking, workload management, reporting & dashboards, free client access, readymade templates, timeline view, project milestones, and communication functionality.
4. SmartTask
SmartTask combines multiple tools in one to help you handle projects, tasks, and collaboration. It even offers an in-built CRM for your sales team.
It also has different use cases for teams like sales, product, marketing, HR, IT, and customer success.
In their project management functionality, the tool helps you set milestones, view projects differently in Timeline, Board, and Calendar view, set tasks and assign priorities and deadlines, and auto schedule tasks.
Key features: Portfolio view, milestones, reporting, timeline comparison, task management, marketing tools like CRM, time & budget tracking, invite guest users, automation, collaboration, communication, notifications & alerts.
5. Basecamp
Basecamp is a powerful project management SaaS tool that also offers rich collaboration features. It empowers teams to stay coordinated across all stages of the project life cycle.
It’s a great tool if you aren’t looking for advanced features and want something simple for your team. Over 75000 organizations are already making use of the tool, and this list includes different niches like design, IT, consultancy, construction, and so on.
You can track work with to-dos, create a simple project schedule, and set automated check-ins.
Key features: Dashboard, internal messages, storage & organization of important files, Kanban, reporting, notifications & alerts, in-built tools, and integrations.
Human Resources tools
Posting jobs, screening, recruiting, and managing an employee base is no easy task. Whether you have a dedicated HR team or a one-person army, you may want HR SaaS tools to do the heavy lifting.
Here are our five favorite human resource management tools.
1. BambooHR
BambooHR is a trending HR SaaS tool that helps on five fronts: hiring, onboarding, compensation, culture, and people data & analytics.
You can house all your employee data in one place, optimize common HR workflows, create reports like employee turnover to guide decisions, and manage employee onboarding and offboarding.
It also provides an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) so that you can store all the applicant information in an organized way. This helps your HR manager focus on other high-value activities, such as finding the right talent for the job and creating an effective candidate experience.
Key features: Onboarding tool, gathering electronic signatures, gaining insights during offboarding, time & attendance tracking, managing paid time off, payroll, performance appraisal, and eNPS survey.
2. Zoho People
A cloud-based HR tool, Zoho People, focuses on making HR management agile and effective.
It has everything you need like managing recruiting, onboarding, time-off management, employee management, expense management, payroll, employee development, laser-focused HR analytics, and much more.
You can create a structured onboarding process with customizable workflows, checklists, a new hire portal, and status-view reports. You can even handle day-to-day HR responsibilities like keeping track of time employees spend at work and taking attendance.
Key features: Handle shift schedules, evaluation models like KRA & goals for appraisals, a learning management system, manage leaves, engage employees with feeds & collaboration, automation, and document management.
3. Workday HCM
Workday HCM is your one-stop SaaS tool for controlling and managing the internal working of your company. It is also a simple-to-use tool so that even the non-tech-savvy people in your team can understand every feature and make use of it.
You can make use of this tool majorly for three key HR areas: talent management, payroll, and learning management.
You can even quickly adjust policies and processes to redefine your operational models.
Key features: skills-based talent management, which includes onboarding and career development, automation, insights & analytics, time & attendance, payroll, LMS, workforce planning, and employee experience.
4. Gusto
Gusto is an online payroll solution that provides plenty of powerful features like benefits management, automatic deductions, and hiring & onboarding functionalities.
It’s one of the best software out there. Gusto takes care of everything payroll-related, like automatically filing your payroll taxes and taking care of compliance like state tax registration and e-signatures. They also have an in-built calculator that performs auto calculations so there are fewer mistakes.
The best part about Gusto is that you can handle contractor payments in over 80 countries, giving you legal access to the global pool of talent.
Key features: Automated filing, time tracking, compliance management, setting up pay-as-you-go, in-built financial tools, onboarding checklist, job listing & applicant tracking, document management, and setting employee benefits.
5. Time Doctor
If you have employees working in different time zones, you might want to make use of Time Doctor to see how teams are spending their time and what measures you can take to increase productivity.
You can even keep track of work hours on different devices, see who has been active or absent, and quickly spot performance issues.
Not only HR managers but even employees can make use of this SaaS tool to manage distractions, prevent overwork & burnout, and be accountable for their personal productivity.
Key features: Get insights to build positive time management habits, identify guidance & training needs, session monitoring, time tracking, screen recording, project reporting, timesheets, attendance tracking, and accurate invoicing.
Data & Analytics tools
Running a business means handling a lot of data. From the way your website visitors behave to the way the audience reacts to your marketing campaigns, you need to regularly look for hidden insights to make your business decisions even better. Here are 5 data & analytics tools to help you with the same.
1. Tableau
Tableau is a visual analytics platform that focuses on empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data. It allows you to work on a live data set, and you can even add automated and easy-to-understand narratives to your Tableau dashboard.
The in-built AI-driven insights help you delve deep into your data. Some of the great organizations in the world, like Deloitte, Skype, Citibank, and Audi, use Tableau to work on their business intelligence, visualize their data and gather insights.
Key features: Embedded analytics, data visualization, advanced management, CRM analytics, automation, defining data security policies, setting data flows, and integrations.
2. Datapine
Datapine is a modern business intelligence platform that empowers companies to make decisions backed by data and key performance metrics.
The best thing about this tool is that it serves many different industries like construction, financial services, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, media, and retail. It also has use cases for various departments in your organization, like HR, marketing, sales, finance, and so on.
The tool also provides a dashboard where you can see all your essential data in one place.
Key features: Data connectors, self-service analytics tools, professional charts & dashboards, conditional formatting to discover hidden trends & insights, data alerts, reporting, and embedded analytics.
3. SAS Business Intelligence
SAS Business Intelligence provides you with a set of tools that draws and visualizes data from multiple sources and provides analytics for the same.
It also provides you with 360 customer intelligence that consists of adaptive planning, journey activation, and a real-time decision engine to help create moments-based customer experiences.
One unique part about the tool is that it also consists of visual forecasting that helps you plan for the future with the help of effective modeling techniques.
Key features: Machine learning, dynamic visuals, dashboards, interactive reporting, collaboration insights, marketing automation, smart algorithms, predictive analysis, location analysis, self-service data, chat-enabled insights, and integrations.
4. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a must-have SaaS tool for any business, big or small. It provides you with all the key metrics you need to analyze website performance, such as behavioral engagement metrics and acquisition metrics.
You can even check how the visitors are reacting to your content, product, and marketing pages and the strategies you can build to improvise on the same.
The best part is that you don’t need to transfer a lot of data. You just need to set up your account and copy a piece of code on your website. Google Analytics then takes over to start collecting data from your website automatically.
Key features: Conversion tracking, engagement & acquisition metrics, custom reporting, dashboards, audience reports, measuring internal site search, knowing demographics of the audience, and integrations.
5. MixPanel
MixPanel provides you with powerful product analytics that helps you convert, engage, and retain users. This is most beneficial for SaaS businesses.
This SaaS tool’s main focus is to provide your business with hidden insights and trends that you otherwise might miss out on. You can also gain data on how conversion rates vary by segment, key user actions to conversion, and active usage.
Key features: Interactive reports, dashboards & alerts, tracking users at different engagement stages, re-engaging using in-product data, uncovering retention strategies, analyzing paths to customer loyalty, and group analytics.
Website Tools
In today’s digital world, your website can be the first impression a visitor has about your business. A reason why you should focus on creating not just an aesthetically pleasing website but a website that is responsive and easy to navigate. Here are five tools that will help you with web designing, development, and more.
1. WordPress
WordPress is one of the most popular web builders that is used by prominent organizations like Spotify, CNN, IBM, and The New York Times.
Even if you’re just starting out and don’t want to hire a professional designer or developer, WordPress provides you with a lot of readymade website templates, hundreds of themes, and some easy tools to upload various kinds of media.
You can even make use of its mobile app to upload your site from anywhere, and they also make sure to provide mobile-responsive website themes so you can cater to mobile web visitors too.
Key features: Build & customize websites, built-in sitemap & SEO tools, in-depth website stats, mobile-friendly layouts, custom domain, drag-and-drop functionality for adding media, and availability of plugins.
2. Webflow
Webflow is an all-in-one design platform that helps you design, build, and launch responsive websites without the need to spend a large amount of money on learning or hiring a developer.
What makes Webflow different is that the things you create in the visual editor get powered by HTML, CSS, and Javascript. You can also get access to various readymade templates that save you a lot of time and money.
The tool also allows you to manage online stores and create immersive experiences.
Key features: Add page elements, create reusable symbols, keep elements organized, design with real content, reusable CSS classes, responsive designing, fine-tune typography, edits & publishing, and exporting.
3. Figma
Yet another all-in-one design platform, Figma, allows you to do many things, from brainstorming for your website design to designing websites with modern tools.
You can design responsively with auto layout. This has features like a stretch to fill and automated resizing. You can also build custom workflows with plugins, widgets, and private extensions.
Figma also provides an online whiteboard (FigJam) to sketch ideas and connect the dots while brainstorming for website design. You can even map user flows and processes with your team.
Key features: Pen tool, instant arc designs, flexible styles, accessible libraries, unlimited viewers, inspect design files, easy export, online whiteboard, visual meetings, and mood boards.
4. Bubble
Want to build a web app? Bubble helps you do that without needing to know a lot about coding.
It claims to help you build products like Facebook or Airbnb. With this SaaS tool, you can build logic and determine what happens as users navigate your application. You can even build news feeds and chats with Bubble’s comprehensive library of visual elements.
They also have drag-and-drop functionality to insert icons, images, videos, maps, and more.
Key features: Customize UX, manage accounts & data, use dynamic content, version control & backups, scale application, dashboards & reporting, integrate with payment portals, and team collaboration.
5. Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is a website optimization tool that integrates with your Google Analytics account and demonstrates how visitors interact with your pages.
These visual reports are in the form of
- Heatmaps (shows you the highest areas of click activity on your web pages)
- Scroll maps (shows the most popular scroll depth of your webpage to help you strategically place your CTA button)
- Confetti (displays color-coded dots that represent individual clicks)
- Overlay (see which CTA elements on the page receive the most clicks)
Key features: Visual reports, recordings, traffic analysis, A/B testing, surveys, and error tracking.
Customer Support Tools
According to Microsoft, 97% of customers say customer service is a key differentiator in their decision to continue with or abandon a company. A reason why investing in good customer support tools is so important.
Here are five tools to improve your customer relationship management.
1. Drift
Drift offers many tools and features that help you build great relationships with your customers without spending a lot of time and money.
Their conversational service platform automatically deflects simple support questions from your support team so that they can focus on high-priority customers. You can also automate the creation of support tickets and loop in high-service reps to tackle doubts from important customers.
The tool also helps you get a deeper understanding of your customer and their relationship with you so your team can personalize responses accordingly.
Key features: AI-powered customer service chatbots, self-service deflection through knowledge base integrations, custom routing rules, templates, response timers, and in-built metrics calculators like CSAT and deflection rate.
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is a customer service help desk SaaS tool that allows you to have conversations with your customers across different channels like email, voice, SMS blasts, and social media apps like Facebook and WhatsApp.
You can even build an integrated help center and community forum with Zendesk where customers can resolve issues by responding to each other’s queries. This also frees up your support team’s time.
The tool also has options to enable AI and bots to give instant answers to basic questions.
Key features: Built-in routing and intelligence, self-service content, unified agent workspace, unified view of customers, actionable analytics, reporting, and integrations.
3. LiveChat
LiveChat is an all-in-one customer service platform that allows you to chat with your customers.
With the tool, you can easily share updates, ask questions, and get more interactions. It also provides you with the ability to automate and personalize greetings based on location, visited pages, and more.
You can also guide customers to the right person on your team through automatic chat routing and make teamwork easy with chat transfers.
Key features: Personalize interactions based on user profile & behavior, create message templates, automation & chatbots, reporting, streamline workflows, predict staffing needs, and real-time collaboration.
4. SurveyMonkey
Great customer support means knowing how customers like to interact, what problems they are facing with the support you’re providing, how you can improve your customer support process, and more.
SurveyMonkey helps you craft such surveys.
You can then send these surveys via multiple channels, easily analyze data, and share actionable insights with your team. Measuring customer satisfaction is also possible by monitoring metrics such as NPS over time and benchmarking against your competitors.
Key features: Pre-built survey templates, advanced logic & 15 other question types, connect survey feedback to CRM, automate feedback and follow-up questions, and integrations.
5. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a help desk software that aims to engage and retain customers by having meaningful conversations with them.
You can streamline your entire ticketing process to make it easy for your team to prioritize and respond to them. They have various features to help with ticketing, like team inbox, agent collision detection to ensure multiple agents don’t respond to the same ticket, and ticket field suggestions to categorize, prioritize, and route incoming tickets.
They also provide collaboration features so that your support team can effectively work together.
Key features: Custom ticket status, SLA management, canned responses, scenario automation, linked tickets, team huddle, unification of tickets from multiple channels, intelligent ticket assignment, and auto-assigns based on bandwidth.
Final thoughts
You’re all set to improve your business processes and aim for growth with these SaaS tools.
Before you go on to make that final choice between these 25 tools, make sure you’re clear with your requirements like budget, main goal, availability of free trial, and the features that are must-haves for your team. When you’re clear on these parameters, you’ll be in a better position to make an informed choice.
That’s all for now! If you’re all set with your SaaS tools and want to know how to leverage SEO and link building to take your business a step ahead of the competition, get in touch with us!
