The use of technology has become essential in today’s business landscape. Digital tools, for that matter, help in scaling operations and growing companies. One perfect example is SaaS (Software as a Service), a cloud-based technology used to perform a variety of tasks. The proof is in the numbers:

According to the Business Research Company, the global SaaS market size could grow from $235.6 billion in 2022 to $253.6 billion in 2023 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7%. It might even reach $328.0 billion by 2027 with a 6.6% CAGR. Such market growth only shows how in-demand SaaS tools are in business.

That said, capitalize on SaaS technology to streamline your processes. But with various options at your disposal, picking tools that work for your business is quite overwhelming.

Fret not—we’ve rounded up a list of the best SaaS tools for businesses to help you choose and make informed decisions. These tools are categorized into

• Lead generation;
• Email marketing and automation
• Communication (for customer relationship management); and,
• Product management.

Read on to learn more about their key features, including ratings and pricing. Let’s dive right in!

What is a SaaS tool?

A SaaS tool is a software type delivered through the internet instead of installed locally on a computer. These tools are typically hosted on a remote server and accessed through web browsers. This means that they can be used from anywhere with an internet connection. 

SaaS tools are often subscription-based, with users paying a recurring fee to use the software. They allow users to access programs without installing them on their computers. They also include regular updates and new features without requiring additional effort from the user. 

As of 2022, the SaaS market has a value of $186.6 billion. The industry offers many business applications designed to improve business processes. Companies of all sizes use these apps for several reasons: generating leads, performing email marketing, communicating with customers, or managing products. Some examples include

• customer relationship management (CRM) software,
• Project management software, 
• Accounting software

 In the next section, find out why you should consider using SaaS tools for your business.

Why should you use SaaS tools?

You should use SaaS tools because they offer several benefits compared to traditional software applications. They help streamline business processes, increase efficiency, improve communication, reduce churn rate, and more.

As explained, these cloud-based software applications allow users to access and use them over the internet on a subscription basis. They have become increasingly popular among businesses of all sizes. Take a look at the facts and figures below:

• SaaS adoption has exploded in popularity, as companies used an average of 110 SaaS apps in 2021. Every organization will eventually become a SaaS-powered workplace. (BetterCloud)

• Big corporations (10,000 and more employees) used about 447 SaaS software, a 35% increase since 2020. (BetterCloud, 2021)

• SaaS funding has increased by almost seven times in the last ten years. It has outpaced the growth of total venture capital funding by six times. (Forbes, 2022)

Given the statistics above, you should jump onto the SaaS market bandwagon. Here’s why you should consider using SaaS tools:

• Easy to get started: Since SaaS tools are accessed through web browsers, you can immediately start using them. You need not go through any complicated setup or installation process in SaaS onboarding.

• Automatic updates: SaaS providers usually roll out regular updates and new features to the software. Thus, you don't have to worry about manually updating the software or paying for new versions.

• Customization: Some SaaS tools offer customizable features and settings. They allow you to custom-fit the software to your specific needs.

• Accessibility: You can access SaaS tools from anywhere as long as you connect to the internet. Such accessibility is best for remote teams working from home or in different locations.

• Integration: You can easily and quickly integrate SaaS tools with other software or applications, such as CRM systems and project management tools. This way, you can create streamlined workflows.

• Security: SaaS providers usually set security measures in place. The goal is to protect user data and ensure regulatory compliance.

• Scalability: You can seamlessly scale SaaS tools up or down. As these tools are flexible, they help you meet the changing needs of your business.

• Cost-effective: SaaS tools are more cost-effective than traditional software. They are ideal for small businesses that don’t have the resources to maintain and update their software.

• No upfront costs: You only pay monthly or annually with SaaS tools for the software. You don’t have to pay an upfront cost to purchase the software.

• No maintenance: SaaS providers are responsible for maintaining and updating SaaS tools. As such, you don't have to worry about keeping the software up-to-date or fixing any technical issues.

Best SaaS tools for lead generation

Businesses regard brand awareness and sales conversion as their ultimate marketing goals. But did you know that half of marketers consider lead generation their top priority in their campaigns? According to Hubspot, companies generate an average of 1,877 leads every month.

Businesses should set up an effective lead generation campaign in this digital age. Using SaaS tools is a great way to automate some processes and optimize your campaign. These tools help generate high-quality leads and ultimately drive sales for your business. 

So whether you're a small business owner or a digital marketer planning to add new tools to your arsenal, we’ve got something here for you. Before the user onboarding of SaaS technology, here are lead generation tools to first consider:

1. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a SaaS tool that helps you identify and target potential leads based on their website activities. First, it shows you what companies visit your website and how they behave on your site. It also identifies their business names and locations, even if they never contact you or fill out your form. Lastly, it reveals remote workers using its static and dynamic IPs database.

2. Overloop

As a SaaS tool, Overloop has all the features you need for a multi-channel outbound campaign, including cold email and LinkedIn outreach. It also allows you to build and manage your contact using email finder, chrome extension, and LinkedIn import. Lastly, it streamlines your sales productivity by measuring performance metrics and provides robust sales forecasting and reporting.

3. D&B Hoovers

D&B Hoovers is a SaaS tool designed to accelerate sales. It uses data and analytics to create a path for searching for prospects and converting sales. It’s also ideal for B2B companies looking to engage with clients and grow their businesses.

4. Optin Monster

Optin Monster is a SaaS tool for lead generation and sales conversion. It allows you to convert and monetize your website traffic. This works by generating subscribers, leads, and eventually sales from the traffic you already have.

5. Hunter.io

Hunter.io is a lead-generation tool for building an email list and connecting with people. It helps you find emails by typing in people’s names and their companies. It also allows you to browse all emails in a given business. Ultimately, it’s a robust email-finding tool due to its indexed emails, search filters, and deliverability checks.

6. Reply.io

Reply.io is an all-in-one engagement platform designed for lead generation. You can search for potential emails on LinkedIn through the Reply Chrome extension. This SaaS tool enables you to engage your leads via multiple channels, execute various tasks, and analyze outreach campaign results.

7. AeroLeads

AeroLeads is a lead generation tool that helps you find your prospects’ contact information. This includes business emails, personal emails, phone numbers, and more. The tool also includes features such as contact management and email tracking. It helps businesses and sales teams find and connect with potential customers more efficiently.

8. Datanyze

Datanyze is a lead-generation tool that helps sales teams connect with prospects. This SaaS tool is capable of providing contact information and company details. It also gives you "icebreakers" (data from social profiles, local news outlets, etc.) to help you warm up cold calls and email outreach. That way, you know how to start conversations and build relationships with your prospects.

9. Skrapp

Skrapp.io is an email-finding tool designed specifically for B2B sales and email marketing efforts. This SaaS software harnesses the power of public data to create an advanced prospecting tool to help professionals streamline their email marketing and outreach campaigns. With powerful features like email research, data enrichment, and automation, Skrapp.io is the perfect tool for lead generation.

10. Snov.io

Snov.io serves as a one-stop shop for all your email collection needs. It allows you to gather emails from a company website easily, obtain contact information based on personal and domain names, and even locate emails on platforms like Google and LinkedIn.

Additionally, this B2B lead generation platform doesn't just stop at email collection. It also helps with nurturing leads through automated outreach and research.

Best SaaS tools for email automation and email marketing

Over four million people are using emails not only for personal use but for business purposes as well. As such, email marketing is imperative in business. More than 75% of marketers saw an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months.

Per HubSpot Blog Research in 2021, the most effective strategies for email marketing campaigns are

• Subscriber segmentation (78%);
• Message personalization (72%), and, 
• Email automation campaigns (71%).

Speaking of email automation, SaaS tools help reduce manual work and accelerate some tasks. They allow you to reach out to your prospects more efficiently and effectively, which translates to lead generation and sales conversion. Here are email automation tools to consider for your marketing campaign:

1. Mailmunch

Mailmunch is a powerful and easy-to-use email marketing platform. It allows businesses to automate their email marketing campaigns and grow their email lists. 

With Mailmunch, you can easily create professional-looking email opt-in forms and landing pages, segment your email lists, and send targeted email campaigns to your subscribers.

2. AppFlows

AppFlows is a powerful SaaS tool for automating and optimizing email marketing campaigns. It's a user-friendly, low-code platform that allows for the creation of behavior-driven email flows using its automation builder and pre-built recipes. 

With advanced features like automation, user segmentation, and analytics, AppFlows is the perfect solution for busy marketers and business owners. Experience the benefits yourself and try AppFlows now to achieve your marketing goals!

3. Encharge.io

Encharge.io is a powerful SaaS tool that streamlines email automation and marketing for businesses. It enables the capture and nurturing of leads through customizable email workflows, advanced segmentation, and targeting options. 

With Encharge.io, you can effectively nurture leads, convert trial users, onboard customers, automate sales tasks, and reactivate users with targeted ads.

4. Omnisend

Omnisend is an email and SMS marketing software designed to help eCommerce stores increase customer loyalty and boost sales. With one-click integration with popular platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, setting up and syncing data is effortless. 

Omnisend covers the entire customer journey. It starts with subscriber collection through popups and landing pages and continues with engaging and activating them through email, SMS, and push notifications.

5. Mooseend

Moosend is a cost-effective yet powerful email marketing software well-suited for new eCommerce stores. It helps businesses familiarize themselves with email marketing through features such as eCommerce AI (providing valuable performance optimization suggestions). 

Additionally, Moosend offers advanced features for experienced email marketers. For instance, it lets you easily customize templates and choose from a vast library of templates. 

6. Hubspot

Hubspot is an all-in-one marketing suite that boasts a comprehensive set of tools and robust reporting capabilities. It’s an excellent choice for managing marketing campaigns across various channels such as websites, socials, and emails. 

Additionally, the platform's CRM system allows you to store all contact information and generate leads through lead forms, live chat, and online ads. Its feature-rich marketing automation capabilities make it an industry leader in CRM services, especially in email marketing. 

7. Intercom

Intercom is a powerful SaaS tool for email automation and email marketing. It has features for managing conversations, sending targeted messages, and publishing articles on your site. It is also notable for its live chat, which you can use on your site.

8. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a top choice for email marketing software due to its comprehensive features, ease of use, and flexible pricing. It offers scheduling for campaigns, A/B testing options, and detailed reporting on open and click-through rates, unsubscribes, and more. Additionally, its free plan is particularly generous, making it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

9. Drip

Drip is the ideal email marketing solution for eCommerce companies, thanks to its sophisticated workflows and advanced segmentation capabilities. By using subscribers' shopping behavior on your website, Drip allows highly personalized emails and timely follow-ups based on how they interact with your emails. This combination of features ensures that eCommerce businesses can effectively target and engage with their customers.

10. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a comprehensive SaaS tool for email automation and email marketing. With its focus on delivering results and providing a seamless user experience, Sendinblue is a popular choice for businesses of all sizes.

Best SaaS tools for communication

Effective communication is almost always the key to business success. Over 85% of leaders and employees cite the lack of communication as the primary cause of business failure. Meanwhile, teams who communicate effectively can boost their productivity by as much as 25%.

Enter SaaS technology, a viable solution for improving business communication. It's easier than ever to stay connected with your team and customers using SaaS tools. Not only will they help streamline your employee collaboration, but they also increase customer lifetime value. 

SaaS vendors offer various features and functionalities, from messaging and video conferencing to project management and file sharing. These employee or customer engagement platforms improve your communication and collaboration. Here are some of the best tools for communication:

1. Zoom

Zoom is a powerful SaaS communication tool that provides high-quality video conferencing, online meetings, and webinars. With its HD video and audio, users can share screens and annotate them in real time, use virtual backgrounds, and improve their appearance. 

Additionally, Zoom offers breakout rooms for smaller group discussions, making it a comprehensive solution for remote meetings and collaborations.

2. Confluence

Confluence is a SaaS communication and collaboration tool that allows teams to share information and manage tasks in real-time. It has features such as document editing, task lists, file sharing, search, calendar, discussion forum, page hierarchy, permission system, and integration with other tools. It is a powerful tool for organizations to improve communication and collaboration.

3. Slack

Slack is a popular SaaS tool for teams to communicate and collaborate. It allows users to message each other in groups or directly, as well as share and store files. Its integration options make it easy to connect with other tools and services for a seamless employee or customer experience.

4. ZenDesk

Zendesk is a powerful SaaS tool for small businesses, designed to provide a seamless help desk experience for companies. With its rich conversational capabilities across social media apps and websites, it makes it easy for customers to reach your support team and ensures an effective support experience.

5. Google Workspace

Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) is a collection of cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools offered by Google. It includes tools such as Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and more. These tools are designed to help teams communicate and collaborate more efficiently.

6. Calendly

Calendly is a user-friendly SaaS scheduling and communication platform. This tool is designed to help teams save time and never miss appointments or meetings. 

With features like automatic reminders and follow-ups, a shareable calendar, event templates, and user activity reports, it streamlines the scheduling process and ensures seamless coordination among team members.

7. Filestage

Filestage is a SaaS communication tool that streamlines creative projects' review and approval process. It allows users to share, collaborate and provide feedback on files, with features such as multi-file uploading, custom workflows, user management, email notifications, and integrations. 

Ultimately, it is a great project management tool for organizations that need to review and approve creative work efficiently.

8. Proofhub

ProofHub is a top-rated project management and team collaboration tool that allows teams to keep track of all their work in one central location. This powerful tool allows users to easily create and collaborate on project and task lists, track time, and prioritize tasks for optimal productivity and efficiency.

9. Bit.ai

Bit.ai is a powerful document collaboration and file-sharing tool that helps teams create, organize, and collaborate on documents in one central location. Its collaborative document feature also allows for more intelligent communication with media integrations. 

Overall, it boasts of its notable content management functionality, customizable lead capture forms, document feedback support, and workspace insights.

10. Microsoft teams

Microsoft Teams is a powerful SaaS communication and collaboration platform for teams. It enables real-time document sharing and editing, secure online meetings, instant messaging, and video conferencing. 

Additionally, it offers seamless integration with other Microsoft products and third-party apps for an enhanced customer experience.

Best SaaS tools for product management

In most cases, product management is integral to business operations. However, there’s a need for companies to transform into a product-centric delivery model. That’s why more than 60% of product managers have a more proactive approach in this practice.

As a product manager, your goal is to ensure your company delivers the best products possible to your customers on time. To achieve this operational objective, you need the right tools and technologies. That's where SaaS product management tools come in. 

These tools offer a wide range of features, from project management and collaboration to customer feedback and analytics. They help guarantee product quality, ensure safe delivery, and improve the customer lifecycle journey. Here are some of the best SaaS tools available for managing your products: 

1. Jira

Jira is a widely-used project management tool perfect for agile and scrum software development teams. It offers a comprehensive set of features and integrations, allowing teams to effectively plan, track, and release software. Jira's issue-and-bug-tracking capabilities benefit product managers, making it a powerful and versatile tool for managing software development projects.

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is a comprehensive project management tool that enables teams to collaborate and stay organized. It allows you to set up projects that include a message board, to-dos, schedule, group chat, and automatic check-ins. It is an invaluable tool for project managers with a wide range of features and integrations.

3. Trello

Trello is an intuitive project management tool that assists teams in organizing and tracking their work. Its visual, Kanban-style approach provides a clear and real-time view of project progress. Customizable project boards allow teams to easily assign tasks, manage deadlines and collaborate, particularly for remote teams. 

Trello's flexibility and ease of use make it a popular choice for teams of all sizes and industries.

4. Airtable

Airtable is a cloud-based project management tool that combines a spreadsheet's features with a database's flexibility. It offers a variety of features and integrations that make it a powerful tool for product managers.

5. Notion

Notion is a versatile, all-in-one productivity and project management tool that can be used for various tasks and projects. It combines the features of a to-do list, note-taking, and project management into one platform, allowing you to organize work visually and create detailed outlines. 

Overall, Notion is a powerful SaaS tool for anyone looking for a single platform to manage their work and collaborate with their team.

6. Evernote

Evernote is a popular note-taking and organization tool useful for product management. It allows users to create notes, organize them into notebooks, and add tags for easy searching. It also offers powerful collaboration features, allowing teams to share notes and work together on projects. 

Overall, Evernote helps project managers and their teams capture, organize, and share their ideas and work. 

7. Todoist

8. RescueTime

RescueTime is a time management and productivity tool. It helps teams track how they spend their time and identify areas for improvement. It also enables users to set goals and alerts and create detailed reports to analyze their time usage. Lastly, it provides analytics on how productive are the team members during their working hours.

9. Coda

Coda is a flexible and powerful productivity tool used for various tasks, including product management. It allows users to create custom documents, known as "codas", that includes a wide range of elements such as text, tables, forms, and charts. This feature makes it easy to create custom templates, track project progress, and manage product backlogs.

Conclusion

So, there you have it—the list of 40 best SaaS tools for businesses. We hope this list proves beneficial in helping you identify new and innovative technologies to run and grow your company. 

Before investing in SaaS tools, consider your business needs and overall budget. Check their features, pricing, and ratings outlined above, whether for lead generation, email marketing, communication, or product management.

Leveraging the right SaaS solutions will help you save time, improve efficiency, ensure quality, and increase productivity. With these in place, you’ll ultimately drive better results for business growth and success!

Boost your service efficiency and productivity with AppFlows! Our powerful SaaS tool will help you manage your tasks more efficiently and effectively. With features like automation, collaboration, and analytics, AppFlows is the ultimate solution for busy professionals. Sign up now and see for yourself how AppFlows can transform your workday!