With around 30,000 SaaS companies currently in operation across the globe – a number that’s expected to more than double in the coming years – organizations now have an overwhelming amount of choice when it comes to deciding on which tools to add to their tech stacks. But with choice comes pressure. Pressure to ensure they’re purchasing the right tool, that these tools deliver ROI and that each one will be fully utilized by employees. While the best SaaS tools for your business will be dependent on a number of factors such as functionality, customer support, scalability and so on – cost still very much drives the decision. The problem is, with the majority of SaaS companies obscuring their costs, prospective buyers are often left without any frame of reference on pricing – something that has contributed to as many as 90% overpaying by an average of 26%. It is for this reason that we’ve chosen to shine a light on the software providers that are making the process easier for buyers by displaying best-in-class approaches to pricing. In other words, these are the top 100 SaaS companies that are democratizing pricing in the B2B software space, enabling buyer groups to make informed purchasing decisions, safe in the knowledge they’re getting a fair price
Looking at purchasing a new software application? You can view all 100 SaaS vendors segmented by software category in our recent report, along with exclusive pricing and discounting insights.
The Top 100 SaaS Companies
With around 30,000 SaaS companies currently in operation across the globe – a number that’s expected to more than double in the coming years – organizations now have an overwhelming amount of choice when it comes to deciding on which tools to add to their tech stacks.
But with choice comes pressure. Pressure to ensure they’re purchasing the right tool, that these tools deliver ROI and that each one will be fully utilized by employees.
While the best SaaS tools for your business will be dependent on a number of factors such as functionality, customer support, scalability and so on – cost still very much drives the decision.
The problem is, with the majority of SaaS companies obscuring their costs, prospective buyers are often left without any frame of reference on what is the right price to pay for a toolpricing – something that has contributed to as many as 90% overpaying by an average of 26%.
It is for this reason thatwhy we’ve chosen to shine a light on the software providers that are making the process easier for buyers by displaying best-in-class approaches to pricing transparency and clarity.
In other words, these are the top 100 companies ose that are democratizing pricing in the B2B software space, enabling buyer groupscompanies to make informed purchasing decisions, safe in the knowledge they’re getting a fair price. With this in mind, here’s our list of the top 100 B2B SaaS companies on the market right now.
The Full List
1. Factorial
2. Holded
3. Fracttal
4. Donut
5. Trello
6. Otta
7. Figma
8. GoCo
9. Kandji
10. Census
11. Grammarly
12. Tableau
13. GitHub
14. Sketch
15. LaunchDarkly
17. Calendly
18. Celtra
19. WP Engine
20. McAfee
21. Paddle
22. SaleCycle
23. Canva
24. AppDynamics
25. Pingboard
26. Proofpoint
27. Salsify
28. Seamless
29. Dataminr
30. SparkPost
31. Integrate. io
32. Coschedule
33. Dribbble
34. appcues
35. SAS
36. Digital River
37. Cognito Forms
38. Personio
39. ngrok
40. Tapatalk
41. Traction Guest
42. Virtana
43. Gem
44. Proposify
45. Contentful
46. OpenVPN
47. Boomi
48. Lusha
49. Dixa
50. Validity
51. Anvyl
52. Asana
53. accessiBe
54. Manager
55. HireRight
56. Customer. io
57. Smartsheet
58. Sendlane
59. Smartlook
60. Krisp
61. OneLogin
62. Signalfx
63. Logz
64. SendGrid
65. Flashtalking
66. Broadcom
67. Equifax
68. DealHub
69. LeadIQ
70. Qwilr
71. Spocket
72. Weaveworks
73. Marketo
74. FullStory
76. Aritic
77. AWeber
78. Podium
79. UserGuiding
80. ActiveCampaign
81. Softonic
82. Litmus
83. Sophos
84. Cheetah Digital
85. IronNet
86. Domestika
87. BambooHR
88. MURAL
89. Stamps. com
90. Robin
91. BlackBerry
92. Performio
93. Keeper Security
94. ProProfs
95. tray. io
96. Orca Security
97. Wistia
98. Blender
99. Diagrams. net
100. Paylocity
The full breakdown by category
Today, there are thousands of SaaS tools available designed to help your business succeed. Many of these services have become so essential to the workplace that they’re required for your business to function.
But with the average 1,000-employee company now maintaining 177 active software subscriptions, managing SaaS services is burdensome and expensive.
“How can we cut our software spending when so many vendors are secretive about pricing?”
It’s a question we hear from Finance leaders pretty much every day. And with good reason.
55% of software vendors hide their costs, making it difficult for companies to get a fair price at every step of the procurement process - from signature to renewals. It’s no surprise, then, that companies are overspending on SaaS by an average of 26%.
The good news for Finance and Procurement leaders is that we’re seeing a new breed of SaaS companies leading the way in being more open and transparent with customers on pricing.
In our inaugural guide, we’re shining a light on the software brands with best-in-class pricing practices. Read on to find out the companies that top our list.
Introduction to the ranking
When reviewing upcoming SaaS renewals or new purchases, the more insight you can gain about a vendor’s pricing habits, the better.
At Vertice, we use data from [thousands/millions of SaaS vendors] to evaluate a vendor’s approach to pricing and compare it to other SaaS companies. This helps us get the best deals for our customers.
To measure a vendor’s approach to pricing, we look at three things:
- Simplicity: How easy is the pricing model to understand?
- Transparency: Is pricing publicly available? For example, a vendor listing pricing structures on its website scores high for transparency.
- Consistency: How consistent is pricing from customer to customer? Are there big variations in pricing for a similar service?
We take these three metrics and wrap them into an overall ‘Pricing Clarity’ score, which shows you how a vendor’s pricing transparency compares with its peers.
To help you get ahead in negotiations, we pair the Pricing Clarity score with an Average Discount score. The Average Discount score indicates how rigid or flexible a vendor is when it comes to offering a discount on list prices.
Things to note
- The ranking is grouped by category
To meaningfully analyze a vendor’s approach to pricing, it’s vital to compare it to its peers. Pricing practices vary hugely between categories, so it wouldn’t be helpful to compare an HR vendor with a Sales vendor, for example. The categories you’ll find in our ranking are: HR,
- Pricing clarity is not about how expensive or inexpensive a vendor is
The ranking is about how a vendor compares with its peers on the transparency, availability, and consistency of its pricing structure. It is not determined by the actual price a vendor charges.
- A vendor with a low pricing clarity score might be more likely to raise prices
A recent analysis of annual SaaS pricing increases revealed that vendors with complicated pricing structures are the most likely to implement year-over-year price increases. In this ranking, finance, sales and productivity are the vendor categories with the lowest average Pricing Clarity scores, indicating that vendors in these groups may be more likely to up their costs on an annual basis. This is something to keep in mind for any customer that has upcoming contract renewals or new purchases with vendors in these categories.
The SaaS Pricing Champions
Business Ops
Category PC Score
• 55
Vendors in report
• 19
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 12
Standouts
• Fractal, 87, 3rd overall
• Tableau, 76, 13th overall
• Invisible Technologies, 75, 17th overall
• Calendly, 75, 18th overall
The average Pricing Clarity rating across the Business Operations software category is 55, putting it ahead of only Marketing and (49) and Sales (49) among the vendor groups in this report. The average discount possibility for the Business Ops category as a whole is 17%, indicating that vendors in this group tend to be more rigid in pricing negotiations.
Of the 19 vendors in this group that made our top 100 list, 11 of them have Pricing Clarity Scores above 70. The standout vendor in this group is Fracttal, a Spanish cloud-based maintenance and asset management software solution, with a Pricing Clarity Score of 87, putting it at #3 overall.
Customer Support
Category PC Score
• 56
Vendors in report
• 3
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 2
Standouts
• UserGuiding, 83, 5th overall
Of the three Customer Support software vendors that made our top 100 list, the standout is UserGuiding with a Pricing Clarity Score of 83, putting it at #3 overall. Customer Support software vendors do, however, have a slightly higher average discount possibility (19%) compared with Business Ops (17%), but this is still a few paces behind the leaders in this metric, Sales (25%) and IT & Security (22%).
Dev Ops
Category PC Score
• 59
Vendors in report
• 3
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 3
Standouts
• WP Engine, 75, 19th overall
• LaunchDarkly, 75, 20th overall
All four vendors listed within this group score well above their category average. Managed WordPress platform WP Engine and feature management platform LaunchDarkly both have a Pricing Clarity Score of 75, putting them in positions #19 and #20 overall. With an average discount possibility of 18%, Dev Ops vendors tend to be less flexible in pricing negotiations than the other software categories included in this list, with the exception of Business Ops vendors (17%).
Engineering
Category PC Score
• 63
Vendors in report
• 6
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 5
Standouts
• GitHub, 76, 14th overall
• ngrok, 73, 31st overall
With a Pricing Clarity rating of 63, the Engineering software category ranks ahead of most other vendor groups included in this report. Of the six Engineering software providers featured in this top 100 list, five have a score of 70 or higher. The two standout vendors are GitHub (76), a code hosting platform, and ngrok (73), a remote access solution. The overall Engineering software category has an average discount possibility of 20%, which is right at the average mark comparing all vendor categories featured in this report.
Finance
Category PC Score
• 66
Vendors in report
• 6
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 6
Standouts
• Holded, 94, 2nd overall
• Digital River, 73, 32nd overall
Of all the software categories featured in this report, Finance has the highest average Pricing Clarity rating (66), indicating that vendors in this sector often show best-in-class approaches when it comes to their pricing transparency, parity and simplicity. Finance software providers also tend to be reasonably flexible with their discounting, with an average discount possibility of 20%. All six Finance vendors listed in this report have a Pricing Clarity rating of 70 or higher. Holded, a business management software platform, ranks second overall with a Pricing Clarity Score of 94.
HR
Category PC Score
• 58
Vendors in report
• 12
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 8
Standouts
• Factorial, 95, 1st overall
• Donut, 85, 4th overall
• Otta, 81, 8th overall
• GoCo, 78, 10th overall
Despite having an industry-wide Pricing Clarity rating of 58, 12 HR software providers made it into our top 100 list, with four ranking in the top 10. Factorial, a Spanish HRIS platform, ranks first overall with a Pricing Clarity Score of 95. Breaking down the key metrics across this category, HR holds the highest average pricing transparency rating (67) among the vendor groups featured in this report. However, the average pricing parity rating for this group is at the lower end (44), indicating that there are high degrees of variance in the actual prices customers pay for HR tools.
IT & Security
Category PC Score
63
Vendors in report
16
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
10
Standouts
Kandji, 78, 11th overall
mcAfee, 74, 23rd overall
AppDynamics, 74, 24th overall
The average Pricing Clarity rating across the IT & Security software category is 63, putting it ahead of most other categories included in this report. Of the 16 vendors from this group that made our top 100 list, 10 of them have Pricing Clarity Scores above 70. Standouts include Kandji, an Apple device management and security platform, with a Pricing Clarity Score of 78 (#11 overall) and McAfee, a major security software provider, with a score of 74. The average discount possibility of the IT & Security category is 22%, putting it behind only Sales (25%).
Marketing
Category PC Score
• 49
Vendors in report
• 21
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 14
Standouts
• Grammarly, 76, 15th overall
• Celtra, 75, 21st overall
• SaleCycle, 74, 25th overall
• Canva, 74, 26th overall
With a Pricing Clarity rating of only 49, the Marketing software category is tied with Sales for the lowest among the vendor groups listed in this report. However, there are many high-end outliers in this category, with 19 Marketing vendors making our top 100 list and all but one of them having a Pricing Clarity Score of 70 or higher (Wistia, 69). Standout vendors include the AI-assisted writing tool, Grammarly (76) and Celtra, a creative automation platform (75).
Although the two groups have the same Pricing Clarity rating, Marketing is behind Sales in terms of average discount possibility (19% vs. 25%). Both groups rate similarly low in pricing parity, with Marketing at 43 and Sales at 40, indicating lower degrees of pricing consistency among vendors in these categories. Marketing also ranks lowest among all groups featured in pricing simplicity (45), which suggests that many marketing vendors have overly complex or confusing pricing models.
Product
Category PC Score
• 65
Vendors in report
• 8
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 7
Standouts
• Figma, 79, 9th overall
• Census, 78, 12th overall
• Sketch, 76, 16th overall
The Product software category has the second highest average Pricing Clarity rating (65) of all groups featured within this report. Of the eight Product vendors that made our top 100 list, seven had Pricing Clarity scores of 70 or higher. This includes Figma (79), a collaborative interface design tool that scored 79 (#9 overall) and data activation platform, Census, that scored 78, putting it in 12th place on our list. Compared to the Sales, Finance and IT & Security software categories, Product vendors tend to be less flexible with discounts, with an average industry discount possibility of 19%.
Sales
Category PC Score
• 49
Vendors in report
• 6
Vendors with a score of 70 or higher
• 3
Standouts
• Lusha, 72, 50th overall
• Proposify, 72, 51st overall
• Validity, 72, 52nd overall
With an average Pricing Clarity score of 49, the Sales software category has one of the lowest ratings of all vendor groups featured in this report. Seven vendors from this category have, however, made it into our top 100 list, with standouts including sales intelligence platform, Lusha, and proposal software solution, Proposify, both with a Pricing Clarity rating of 72. When it comes to average discounts, Sales vendors are the most generous of all groups featured in this report, with an average discount possibility of 25%.
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