*Updated November 2022
As the trend towards digitalization continues and society progresses into an ever-more Star Trek-like future, a plethora of new products and services are becoming available to consumers and businesses alike, all fueled by innovations in technology.
Applying software tools to improve the processes, functions, or workflows of any industry is powerful.
Solutions in every niche are popping up their usage is becoming far more commonplace. We can all think of tools we're using regularly today that we didn't know about just a few years ago.
What is SaaS?
Software as a Service, more commonly known by the acronym SaaS, is a popular delivery model for software programs. The software is licensed to customers, allowing them access based on a subscription service pricing strategy.
SaaS: the next step in the convenience economy?
SaaS products are commonly productivity improvement applications sold on the B2B market, however, the industry also covers a wide range of applications for the B2C and B2G markets. The SaaS model has applications in messaging, computer-aided design, virtualization, customer relationship management, human resource management, enterprise resource planning, and geographic information systems, to name but a few.
The large variety of applications for SaaS is making it increasingly commonplace, with predictions that the percentage of companies relying solely on SaaS will hit 80% in 2022.
The SaaS revolution
SaaS is becoming an increasingly attractive delivery model for both the service provider and the customer. This is perhaps best exemplified by one of the most well-known SaaS applications: Photoshop.
Photoshop, as part of Abode’s Creative Cloud, is a SaaS product used by pretty much anyone within the field of design. In 2012, Abode altered its licensing and pricing strategy drastically. For those who don’t remember a time prior to 2012, customers would make a one-time purchase of a particular version of the application (Photoshop 5, for example), and hold a license for that version in perpetuity.
As stated, in 2012 Adobe switched to a SaaS delivery model, allowing customers to pay a monthly subscription fee for access to Photoshop. Customers are sent updates to the latest version of the application in real-time, and as such have access to the complementary support services associated with the latest version.
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Facilitated by advancements in internet bandwidth, the SaaS delivery model has been viewed as preferable by customers for its ease of use and the reduction in overall cost, and as such an increasing number of companies are making the switch.
Best SaaS startups in Europe
Vienna, Austria
Adverity
Adverity helps marketing agencies, brands, and e-commerce retailers to maximize conversions through the use of data in order to make smarter marketing decisions. They also facilitate communication between companies and their customers, allowing them a better understanding of each other.
Founded: 2015
Mogilev, Belarus
Recommerce
Recommerce acts as a platform for e-commerce retailers, helping businesses create their online stores. The platform integrates with social media and includes a secure, built-in payment system, essentially simplifying the digitalization process for those looking to sell online.
Founded: 2013
Ghent, Belgium
Proceedix
Proceedix provides a platform to manage workflows, making instruction and documentation both paperless and mobile-friendly. Its platform allows its clients to improve communication within their organization when working remotely, increasing overall productivity.
Founded: 2014
Sofia, Bulgaria
Enhancv
Enhancv offers job seekers a program to create attractive and outstanding CVs with minimal effort. With a broad spectrum of resume templates to choose from, the program includes an easy-to-use resume builder providing personal, yet professional features that simplify the process for its users.
Founded: 2014
Zagreb, Croatia
TalentLyft
TalentLyft is a candidate sourcing system for recruiters. They help recruiters find 'passive candidates' quickly and effectively by using an automated tool to search for candidates with specific profiles across a range of online platforms.
Founded: 2016
Limassol, Cyprus
Omilia
Omilia offers conversational artificial intelligence self-services intended to offer an integrated human-like conversational experience across all channels. The company develops a suite of proprietary technologies that enable businesses to digitally transform customer care and provide self-service via voice or text.
Founded: 2002
Brno, Czech Republic
SmartLook
Smartlook provides a plug-in that allows users to better understand their customer's behavior. Video recordings of website-users interaction with a page can be accessed, and this data is aggregated in order to produce analytic data in a simple, digestible form.
Founded: 2016
Copenhagen, Denmark
Templafy
Templafy is an enterprise-wide SaaS platform that allows organizations to seamlessly share business templates department-wide. It works across all devices and 'integrates across all IT infrastructure'.
Founded: 2014
Tallinn, Estonia
Dashbird
Dashbird makes software and app development cheaper, easier and faster by offering actionable insights and debugging features. They also help clients optimize their apps by processing analytic data.
Founded: 2017
Espoo, Finland
MeetingPackage
MeetingPackage provides cloud-based venue management software. The software acts as a platform for venues to their event spaces, and customers to book from anywhere in the world seamlessly.
Founded: 2014
Paris, France
Welcome to the Jungle
Welcome to the Jungle facilitates the recruitment process for hiring companies with a unique tracking system for applicants. They also create visual and written content for companies to highlight corporate culture and increase employer brand awareness.
Founded: 2014
Berlin, Germany
FinCompare
FinCompare offers small- and medium-sized companies the ability to compare corporate finance options. It is an independently-owned aggregator of financing options helping SMEs find the best options for their individual business models.
Founded: 2016
Athens, Greece
Hosthub
Hosthub (formerly SyncBnB) makes the BnB property listing process easier by offering a calendar synchronization tool that works across more than 200 booking channels. The software guarantees 100% success in preventing double booking across channels, maximizing profit, and reducing customer complaints.
Founded: 2017
Budapest, Hungary
Talentuno
Talentuno provides an end-to-end solution for the recruitment industry. With an integrated, cloud-based software system, they help to pre-select candidates more effectively whilst at the same time reducing cost.
Founded: 2016
Reykjavík, Iceland
50Skills
50Skills is an all-in-one recruiting platform that includes in-platform messaging, job boards, and job sharing via social media. It makes the creation of job listings simple, allowing the employer's brand to appear more attractive to potential prospects.
Founded: 2017
Dublin, Ireland
TAMI
TAMI (formerly SalesOptimize) software uses artificial intelligence to mine data from across the internet in order to generate highly qualified sales leads, tailored to the specifics of the business. TAMI allows its clients to skip the prospecting step and focus on generating sales.
Founded: 2013
Milan, Italy
ELSE Corp
Else Corp manages an innovative cloud-based platform for retailers, manufacturers, brands, and independent designers in the fashion industry. They provide the back-end support processes for front-end functions such as product personalization and virtual.
Founded: 2014
Riga, Latvia
Nordigen
Nordigen uses data analytics to help banks verify the credit ratings of potential customers using a variety of financial and behavioral parameters to expedite the process. The service helps both banks and their customers by simplifying the process of validating creditworthiness.
Founded: 2016
Vilnius, Lithuania
UniQue Software
UniQue Software aims to pioneer innovation within the telecom industry by operating its virtual phone system. The company focuses on optimizing the user interface to provide premium quality telecom services.
Founded: 2017
Skopje, Macedonia
Embed Social
Embed Social helps to build better relationships between marketers and their potential customers by syncing their social media activity with their web presence, simply, automatically, and in real-time.
Founded: 2016
Valetta, Malta
bluefort
Bluefort is a Microsoft Gold Partner providing enterprise-grade solutions for SaaS, retail and customer-centric businesses.
Founded: 2014
Podgorica, Montenegro
Codingo
Codingo provides startups all over the world with web applications, mobile apps, and comprehensive SaaS solutions. They continue to offer support functions to their customers, allowing them to scale more efficiently.
Founded: 2015
Naarden, the Netherlands
AirBeamTV
AirBeamTV provides software that enables screen mirroring for iOS and macOS systems without the need for expensive hardware such as an Apple TV. This saves its customers money whilst allowing them to seamlessly screen-mirror from their iPhone to a Smart TV.
Founded: 2016
Oslo, Norway
Sanity
Sanity has developed a content management system construction kit that helps other developers to create data-centric, personalized applications. This allows its users to choose a content infrastructure that provides immediate value, changing as the client's business needs evolve.
Founded: 2016
Krakow, Poland
CallPage
CallPage uses a SaaS solution to increase sales leads for its clients by analyzing the behavior of potential customers who visited their website. This enables clients to move their customers through the sales funnel quicker and ultimately creates more conversions.
Founded: 2015
Lisbon, Portugal
Valispace
Valispace operates a smart collaboration platform for engineers, allowing engineers to develop complex hardware through data-driven collaboration via browser-based software.
Founded: 2016
Bucharest, Romania
Omniconvert
Omniconvert has developed a software platform that allows users to run experiments, distribute surveys and personalize mobile and desktop websites by generating insights from Google Analytics.
Founded: 2013
Moscow, Russia
Tickets Cloud
Tickets Cloud connects event organizers with their target audience through an aggregated network of sellers. The company also provides analytic data such as information about tickets sold with the goal of boosting sales.
Founded: 2014
Belgrade, Serbia
Active Collab
This startup provides project management software for companies within the creative field. They operate a platform that allows management to organize and plan projects, ensuring that all team members are aware of their individual responsibilities and deadlines are met. The platform also allows workers to communicate directly, facilitating collaboration, as well as invoicing for freelancers involved in projects.
Founded: 2016
Bratislava, Slovakia
Datamolino
Datamolino automates the bookkeeping process in real time. By providing an application to convert customers' invoices into electronic files that can be imported into an accounting system, the manual data entry step can be skipped, significantly increasing efficiency.
Founded: 2013
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Modelur
Provider of SaaS-based solutions to create 3D architectural designs. This platform helps in urban planning that includes features like data-driven designs, real-time calculations, data export, integration & SketchUp, parametric design creation, and much more.
Founded: 2017
Barcelona, Spain
TravelPerk
TravelPerk simplifies the process of booking business trips by way of an all-in-one platform for booking, managing, and reporting details using the world's largest inventory and disruptive technology.
Founded: 2015
Stockholm, Sweden
Funnel
Funnel facilitates a marketer's understanding of their customers by bringing together all data from their social and advertising platforms automatically. This data is then visualized simply for better analysis.
Founded: 2014
Zurich, Switzerland
DeepCode
DeepCode helps software developers to be more efficient using Ai code review suggestions learned from BigCode. This allows users to write better code by highlighting flaws in a user's code before security bugs go into production.
Founded: 2016
Istanbul, Turkey
Segmentify
Segmentify is an e-commerce personalization platform for companies that aim to optimize their conversion rates by analyzing data on customers' individual interests to create a unique shopping experience.
Founded: 2015
Lviv, Ukraine
Plerdy
Plerdy is an IT company that provides conversion rate optimization tools for CRO, SEO, and website UX audit services. Its SaaS data collection product helps companies increase their conversion rate and increase the profits of their online stores or websites.
Founded: 2017
London, United Kingdom
Drover
Drover is a mobility-as-a-service and all-in-car subscription service platform, simplifying the process of getting a car by providing everything a customer needs whilst billing them in one transparent monthly payment.
Founded: 2015
Europe is closing the gap
In 2017, the US held the largest share of SaaS companies with 63% of the world's companies headquartered in the country and 89% of the global funding. Nevertheless, the SaaS landscape is changing and Accel's 2021 Eruoscape report showcases that Europe and Israel produced 81 unicorns in 2021, including three SaaS decacorns.
[Related Article - How Resourceful Startups are Changing the World]While Europe's number of successful SaaS companies is advancing, so are the funding numbers. Compared to €1 million raised at seed in 2020, the average European SaaS startup raised €2.2 million in 2021. The following early-stage rounds followed a similar path with the average Series A and Series B growing from €6 million to €7.2 million and from €12 million to €16 million respectively.
The European SaaS trends highlight the rising confidence of VCs to invest in European tech. This is evidenced by the numbers: In 2021, the European SaaS market received $29-30 billion.
The European SaaS market
SaaS is growing in market share within the software industry year on year, in part due to the changing digital landscape. The SaaS industry has grown to an estimated $172 billion in 2022, a five-fold increase from 2015.
The SaaS market in Europe is extremely robust, and growing fast. Revenue in the SaaS segment is expected to reach $49.05% in 2022. In the upcoming years, the projected growth rate stands at 12.12%, culminating in an expected market volume of $86.9 billion by 2027. A high CAGR is indicative of rapid expansion, and the increasing popularity of SaaS follows the trend towards automation within businesses. Digitalization of greater numbers of business functions is being enabled year on year, facilitated by advances in technology.
As such, the applications available for SaaS increase accordingly, but the simple ability to use a SaaS delivery model is not solely responsible for this trend. Ultimately, this trend is driven by customer preferences. Customers understand the benefits of a monthly subscription fee over a one-time payment and the inevitability of technological obsolescence, an understanding that is now making traditional delivery methods seem antiquated.
This rapid expansion implies that the market is yet to mature, and as an immature market, revenues and profits are expected to increase for the industry collectively. The aforementioned automation trend means the market is likely to continue growing for the foreseeable future. As the market continues to develop, this also indicates that it has not yet reached saturation.
The high CAGR connotes that the market is in the growth phase, and this is hugely positive for aspiring entrepreneurs hoping to break into the SaaS market. For startups, an immature market presents an opportunity to capture greater market share, something which would potentially be much more difficult in a mature, established market.
European use of SaaS products
The EU average for adoption of cloud computing services in 2021 across all enterprises is at 42%, a six percentage point increase since 2020(36%), and more than double the share in 2016 (19%).
The use of cloud services is most prevalent in Sweden and Finland; both countries had a 75% use rate in 2021. These two countries were followed by the Netherlands and Denmark with 65%.
It should be noted however that whilst the increase in adoption is slower in some markets, the adoption rate has ultimately increased in every market within the EU. No countries posted a zero percent increase in the adoption of SaaS in business terms. It is in this sense that the future of SaaS in Europe looks bright.
Conclusion
The SaaS delivery model looks set to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Riding on the wave of disruptive business models facilitated by advancements in technology, SaaS appears to be another extension of the convenience economy.
What consumers recognized in the advent of revolutionary technologies such as Spotify and Uber was just the beginning of a greater societal shift towards being able to have what you want, when you want. The SaaS model builds on this trend by providing users with the ability to access the most up-to-date technology when and for as long as it is needed, and then simply deactivate their subscription when it is not.
As digitalization and the Internet of Things trend picks up speed, the use cases for SaaS will continue to increase, making a SaaS startup seem more and more attractive with the passing of time. With the European SaaS market in its relative infancy, and technology ready to disrupt a greater number of industries, there is no better time to enter the SaaS market.
