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Cool SaaS Companies : Blog Reader Opinion Poll

This is an open call for nominations of seriously Internet-cool SaaS companies. I’ll be giving a keynote presentation on Future Opportunities in SaaS at the upcoming SaaS & Slam event in Boston at the end of April, and I plan to highlight some case studies. (read: free PR for cool SaaS startups)

In previous posts I’ve claimed that the path to differentiation in SaaS is to be a true Internet-play, not just a low TCO client-server application shoved through a browser. So, I’m putting together a list of software-as-a-service companies that think like Internet businesses and leverage the Web for all its worth.

Suggestions welcome…leave a blog comment or send me a note.

Cheers,
JY

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27 Comments

  • Hi, Very useful information to everyone. We are also a SaaS application development company and we have a certain track in saas development….it is really helpful.

  • Runaware, the global leader in software marketing, announced that the company is positioning itself to become a player in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market using its recently-announced updated TestDrive® platform. After years of planning and development, and with the launch of the company’s updated online demo service, http://www.runaware.com is planning for future growth by enabling other software companies to meet their customers’ need for cloud computing.

  • I would like to nominate our company RateVoice http://www.RateVoice.com, We are a social review platform giving customers the ability to speak back and forth via threads on a given product page. We have taken product reviews to a new level using the review as a CRM tool a marketing tool and a profit center. Our app gets installed in to a clients site and is managed via our admin tools. RateVoice was built by eCommerce merchants for eCommerce merchants.

  • I would definately nominate Webroot as one of the TOP global SaaS companies out there. Their EMail Security SaaS and Web Security SaaS applications are second to none. And it’s not just their apps – they are a great company to do business with. They support their Channel Partners extremely well and provide fantastic end-user support. They also have 100% up time so they come through on high availability. Check ’em out at http://www.webroot.com

    Lawrence Taylor-Duncan, Sr. VP/CTO
    Techni-Core Network Services
    Huntsville, Alabama
    Webroot Premium Channel Partner

  • Hi Nicolas!

    I want to thank you for announce Feng Office. After see your post I went to http://www.fengoffice.com because I’ve looking for a solution to cover my business management. Let me tell you that Feng Office is the best solution for my company focused in Professional Services. Nowadays I use it all the day and all my employments do their work in a splendid way, more productive and spending less time.

    Thank you again and extend my congratulations to all the Feng Office staff!

    Joseph Wail

  • This is a plug for a website http://www.saassmart.com. What SaasSmart does that few others do is give you a place to search, find and review SaaS provider offerings by categories as well as articles and white papers that are helpful to users considering SaaS but looking for solid information. There is also a forum on SaaS-related topics. It is a one-stop resource for those learning about or shopping for SaaS offerings for their market segment. Users can cut through som of the confusion about SaaS by spending some time at SaasSmart rather than web surfing for bits and pieces with which to paste a picture together.

  • I’d like to nominate Catalyst Resources (http://www.catalystresources.com). Catalyst is not a SaaS application developer – rather they design the UI for SaaS apps.
    Catalyst has developed an approach to SaaS application design that focuses specifically on addressing the entire customer life cycle – from evaluation, to purchasing, to provisioning to use, to referral – everything the customer will experience. It is very much in line with your own view on the need for automation, community, and assiduous use of the Web.
    Catalyst’s target is specifically enterprise apps, (having designed over 300 applications for leading global and VC-funded companies).

  • Joel –
    I’d like to nominate our online database, TrackVia (http://www.trackvia.com), for your seriously cool SaaS company search.

    Our database is revolutionizing the way businesses across the globe collect, organize and share data. Our database is easily customizable and powerful and does not require programming knowledge to get up and running. I’d be more than willing to schedule a demo to show you the power of our online database.

    We definitely leverage the web for all its worth from the speed of our application to our marketing initiatives.

    Ed

  • Hi Joel,

    FengOffice is a newly developed Web-based collaboration software (web office) built on open source. It features a combination of project management, web document management and CRM functionalities, that enable communication tracking between internal and external work groups (employees, co-workers, customers, suppliers, vendors).

    In a simple all-in-one SaaS solution, FengOffice offers an integrated approach to manage e-mail, group calendar, events, notes, contacts, documents, tasks, projects, etc., helping offices organize their workplace activity without expensive infrastructure.

    FengOffice was developed by the same team that created the open source project known as OpenGoo (maybe you’ve heard of it)…It is available worldwide in 11 languages. Since the company launched in late 2008, FengOffice has had more than 40,000 downloads and continues to grow exponentially.

    Thank for the opportunity to spread the word!!

    Regards,
    Nicolas

  • Erado – we ahve been delivering SaaS based archiving, compliance, security, and encryption services since 1994.

    Erado is a leading SaaS based archiving, compliance, security, and encryption service provider in North America. Our totally web based solutions provide the most comprehensive, easy to use and manage applications available in the market today. Erado’s experience, technology, and multi-location facilities leverage the power and redundancy of the internet to make it the premier choice for businesses that need enterprise-class service and performance without the cost.

    To learn more about Erado’s archiving, security, and compliance products and solutions please contact us at 866-67ERADO (866-673-7236)

  • Our company is finding a niche in customizing and hosting Zimbra Collaboration suite as a SaaS solution. The solution is very robust, replacing Exchange and SharePoint as a premier company network e-mail solution for far less money. With more than 40 million users already, the client owning the data, assistance with migration and scalability up to millions of users and companies like BandyGreen customizing and hosting the solution, it is a viable SaaS solution on its own.
    Interfaced with a SugarCRM (our next move) through mashups, the possibilities are unlimited.

  • I highly recommend Wistia — http://www.wistia.com.

    After searching for a professional quality, secure business video sharing service, I found this company to be the best out there for our needs. Not only can we share our videos, but the system also allows for all kinds of other supporting media (PDF files, Word documents, drawings, JPGs, etc.) to be uploaded as well.

    You can create separate “projects” and upload the media specific to your needs. You can also “copy” a project and add other items to it if you have a different purpose (sales or marketing campaigns) — no need to re-upload existing media. The projects can be made up of audio, video, PDF, Word files, etc. And you control who can share/view or collaborate on these projects.

    We’re using it for sales/marketing purposes, but will probably use it for training videos as well down the road.

    The system also provides fantastic viewer stats to boot. You can easily track the engagement process with easy to read graphs, charts, etc.

    The best part? You can learn how to use it in an hour or less. No “training” needed.

  • Hi Joel, thanks for this opportunity.
    I’d like to suggest you out new todo list service called ToBeeDo (http://www.tobeedo.com/). It’s really new service with new modern ajax interface. It’s not new “basecamp clone”, just check it out. We are still in deep development, so it’s beta and free for everyone, but I think we are so cool to bee reviewed :).

    Thanks.

  • Hi Joel,

    Great idea. Check out Nasstar based in the UK, http://www.nasstar.com. Nasstar Hosted Desktop recently won the CNET Networks “Business Application of the Year” award, which was a tremendous achievement for a SaaS service.

    Nasstar Hosted Desktop is a transformation of desktop computing from a costly, local system into a brilliant and simple SaaS service. All company data, applications and emails are hosted by Nasstar so that the customer can fully focus on what drives their business and not worry about IT.

    Amongst our clients Stelios’s easyGroup.

    Good luck with your presentation.

    Regards,
    Darren Roberts

  • Hello Joel,
    I would like to recommend ExpenseAnywhere.com.

    This cool site offers the most comprehensive SaaS for corporate expense management automation. The system is accessed by over 40,000 users (& growing) everday to enter and manage their travel related business reimbursable expenses.

    ExpenseAnywhere is a market’s leading solution for mid size to global multinationals, and helps businesses manage transparency, employee accountability and spend control, besides recognize substantial savings with increased operational efficiency.

    The following are a few salient features built-in to ExpenseAnywhere.

    1. Multi-level Pre-travel Approval
    2. Expense Report entry and submission-
    3. Automates Corporate Card allocation & reconciliation
    4. Out-of-pocket expenses. Company pre-paid expenses
    5. Helps reconcile Cash Advances
    6. Receipt Imaging: Expense receipts can be scanned or faxed in to a fax Server for
    auto-linking to appropriate Expense Reports – Eliminating need to manage and store
    paper receipts.
    7. Integrates with your ERP systems- eliminating need to rekey in the data, and keeps the
    system in-sync with your HRMS
    8. Supports Proxy & Delegate functions.
    9. Lots of Reports and audit capability +…….

    The company has recently announced ” Ready-to-Use” ExpenseAnywhere-Lite integrtaed with QuickBooks for Small businesses or companies with fewer travelers. $5 a report. Can’t beat that one!!

    I strongly recommend ExpenseAnywhere and encourage businesses to take advantage of the phenomenal savings and operational efficiencies gained by automating their processes. Helps go green and reduce your processing costs. Market research shows taht it costs between $45 to $80 to process a single report.

    DO YOU ExpenseAnywhere?

  • To echo Michel’s previous endorsement, here are a few more facts about Service-now.com:
    – After four years in business, our run rate will be about $25 million in recurring annual revenue.
    – We are cash flow positive now and expect to be profitable this year.
    – The majority of Service-now.com customers are former HP and BMC customers.
    – We have about 240 enterprise customers and 100 employees.
    – We’ve succeeded by selling directly to enterprise IT. Only last year many people thought big business or IT would never buy SaaS.

    We compete against legacy vendors like HP who are confusing the market by “shoving client/server through a browser” and calling it SaaS. I like to call it “fake SaaS” or just simply “ASP”, but your description is almost poetic. Keep up the quality content.

    Rhett
    Service-now.com

  • Webiplex (http://www.Webiplex.com) – SaaS document management/BPM platform. Our heritage is in “traditional” document imaging – and thus we support things like high speed remote scanning into a custom SaaS BPM solution. We’ve recently moved off dedicated servers into a true cloud facility. We support true multi-tenancy with completely customized (and packagable) applications. No coding required. We have customer applications with heavy “scan store and retrieve” as well as customers with no scanning and pure forms BPM. We believe everything should be automated, and we provide the platform for like minded business analysts.

  • Joel,

    Service-now.com is an IT Service Management solution (ITIL based) that was born on the web in 2004. It’s a pure SaaS tool and competing against the big 4 (HP, BMC, CA, IBM) with an incredible success.

    Service-now.com clearly position itself for the medium and large organizations, and it’s very interesting to see that SaaS has a very echo at large companies. Gartner has identified Service-now.com as the most visionary solution in their latest Quadrant for Service Desks.

  • Joel,

    Checkout InsideView. A SaaS Sales 2.0 application provider delivering fresh and complete intelligence within CRMs and to mobile devices to maximize sales productivity and accelerate sales cycles – ultimately driving higher volume sales, higher value sales and higher velocity sales.

  • Joel,

    Thank you for the opportunity to write in. We are IQity Solutions, a business performance optimization & management consulting firm that offers optimization consulting, SaaS born & delivered business performance management app/service and, a never before seen manned, remote management service to ensure that our clients optimized state is maintained and continuous improvement is embedded and transformational. The SaaS application is called IQ-Fusion 2.0 and offers, deeper levels of data point collection than previously available in the market. We harness human and business data intelligence and Fuse them into “Collective Intelligence”.

    No big iron implementation, BI/CI/BPM in 3 weeks……. done.

  • We, at activeMedia, are in the purest form of SaaS since 2001. Our main product, activeSaaS, is a 645+ modules SaaS solutions, with radically different technology, used by more than 234,000 users in 21 different verticals, and includes a complete and integrated ERP, CRM, CMS, POS, SFA, business social network, business-driven Cloud Computing and dashboards. This is actually considered by world’s analysts as the world’s most advanced SaaS suite.

    Take a look !

    http://www.activesaas.com

  • Clickability is a great online CMS. I’ll go with Demandbase as well (I do work here so I’m a little bias). Verticals OnDemand is doing some cool stuff in the Pharma CRM space.

  • Hey Joe. Cool idea.

    Our company nomination is TeamSupport.com. This is a customer service/bug tracking tool designed to help technical teams provide the best product support for their clients. 100% SaaS.

    Give the site a peek and give our blog a read at http://blog.teamsupport.com. I just posted a note while I was at South by Southwest in Austin this week.

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