About Cledara's SaaS Insights
Real rankings based on real data
Over the past 18 months, the tech industry has faced plenty of challenges. Despite these challenges, the industry's demand for software continues to surge. Although the growth rate has decelerated, spending is still anticipated to rise 18% in 2023. Moreover, businesses have increased the number of tools they use by 21% in the past year.
Here at Cledara we have a privileged view of the market with data from over 1,000 companies across the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union who trust Cledara to manage their software. As such, Cledara is uniquely positioned to assess the real picture of software purchasing across the tech industry; tracking renewals, usage and churn in real-time, across a significant segment of the market. Our sample consists of businesses, with between 30 and 1000+ employees.
The following rankings, the first in a series of monthly industry reports, can shed light on the market as a whole.
Note: Don't forget to check out the updated list for 2024 here.
The top 20 SaaS tools by spend
We ranked SaaS tools by how much Cledara customers spent on them. These were the top 20 by expenditure.
Cledara SaaS Rankings
Top Tools by Spend
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Insights
- Salesforce, Atlassian, and Hubspot, tech stack staples, seem inevitable winners of the top three tools by spend according to our data.
- Slack’s entry at #4 is interesting. Alongside a small price increase, the company has been focussing heavily on enterprise customers. This data reveals the tactic is paying off with ACV increasing significantly in the last year—Slack is now generating a similar price-per-customer to the industry’s biggest names.
- Zoom, at #9, seems to have successfully weathered its privacy dispute earlier this year. We can only assume that its quarantine-era reputation was strong enough to pull through.
Spotlights
Aircall
Business Phone Platform
What is it?
An integrated business phone system for sales and support teams.
Why spotlight it?
Aircall is a newcomer to the top 20 spend list, and has jumped 7 places in the last twelve months.
Interesting fact
The French unicorn has just announced a new feature which uses AI to transcribe help center calls. They say it’ll make it easier to spot trends in customer calls, and help small companies train support agents faster.
The top 20 SaaS most-used SaaS tools
We ranked our catalog of SaaS tools by the number of businesses paying for them. These were the top 20 with the most paying companies on their books.
Cledara SaaS Rankings
Top Tools by Usage
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- Atlassian and Github—essential tools for developers—are unsurprising silver and bronze winners of the ‘most-used’ charts.
- Microsoft’s suite of software tools has moved up six spots on the “most used” list since the same time a year ago, leapfrogging over smaller companies.
- Canva, at #20, launched a plugin for ChatGPT at the start of September, allowing users to create customized graphics by prompting ChatGPT. This may revolutionize formulaic design tasks.
Spotlight
ChatGPT
Conversational AI
What is it?
OpenAI’s ChatGPT – which needs no introduction – launched an enterprise package in August 2023.
Why spotlight it?
We’ve heard endless reports of ChatGPT’s rise in the consumer space, but less so about its business applications. Yet the uptake of ChatGPT by companies has been similarly sudden and sweeping. 16% of Cledara’s customers are paying for the tool, putting its adoption ahead of heavyweights like Zapier, Notion, Miro, and Hubspot.
It’s worth asking why so many companies pay for software whose free tier offers such broad functionality. ChatGPT’s enterprise offer includes API credits and an extra code analysis tool for developers. Yet, its headline benefit over the free tier is more mundane: enhanced security.
Keen to retain their SOC 2 certificates, it seems companies would rather pay for an extra level of security than risk employees using personal accounts — and accidentally training the next GPT model on company data.
Interesting fact
According to OpenAI, employees at 80% of FTSE 500 companies are using ChatGPT.
The top 20 SaaS fastest-growing tools
We ranked our catalog of SaaS tools by their growth in the last three months. These are the 20 fastest-growing tools.
Cledara SaaS Rankings
Fastest Growing Tools
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- Of the twenty fastest-growing software products, more than half are built on new artificial intelligence technologies.
- Supernormal, in the top spot, uses AI to write up notes from meetings held in Google’s video conferencing tool. Their clientele includes illustrious brands like Google, Github, and Forbes.
- Pinecone, coming in second, allows companies to develop AI systems from their own data, for the purpose of more efficient search functions, or creating dedicated chatbots.
Spotlights
Causal
Financial Modelling
What is it?
A platform which helps you build financial models effortlessly and share them as interactive, visual dashboards.
Why spotlight it?
Causal makes a strong entry at #11 in our ‘fastest growing tools’ charts, and was voted ProductHunt’s best Fintech product of 2022. If you’re in the world of number crunching, this app is one to watch.
Interesting fact
Just this month, Causal picked up 28 badges in G2's Fall 2023 Report across FP&A, Budgeting & Planning, and Corporate Performance Management.
Outreach
Sales Engagement
What is it?
A sales engagement tool—a platform that automates outreach processes for sales and marketing teams. In short, it helps SDRs get the right message to their prospects at the right time.
Why spotlight it?
Outreach.io is currently turning over $5bn a year and seems to have nailed their product-market fit. Over 5,500 customers rely on them to create more sales pipeline.
Interesting fact
Outreach was born as an internal tool. Its founders aimed to build an automation system that could help their tiny sales team do the work of a much larger one. The tool proved so effective that it outlived its parent company.
Reclaim
Scheduling
What is it?
A ‘smart scheduling app’—a calendar plugin that helps you identify blocks of focus time, choose meeting slots that work best for everyone’s schedule, and track your working hours.
Why spotlight it?
The average Reclaim user finds an extra 7.6 hours per week—a gift any of us would be grateful for. The app’s prestigious roster of customers, which includes the likes of Zendesk, Salesforce, and Airtasker, is a testament to its efficacy.
Interesting fact
Reclaim was born, at least in part, as a solution to a pandemic-era problem. When quarantines forced many companies to transition bumpily to remote work, the number of workplace meetings soared. According to Reclaim’s statistics, the average professional has had 70% more meetings since the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Key takeaways for 2023
Riding the AI wave
Many of the products topping Cledara’s usage and spend charts have been tech stack staples for over three years. Yet, the story of this year in software buying stars new tech, in the form of artificial intelligence.
- AI adoption by the biggest tools - We analyzed the homepages of each tool on the rankings lists and found a staggering 75% of the ‘Top tools by spend’ mention AI on their homepage, including leading tools like Salesforce, Notion, Hubspot, and Intercom. This pivot en masse to new technology is unprecedented.
- AI in the fastest-growing tools - Similarly, 55% of the fastest-growing tools were focused on applications of AI across a range of industries. This use of new technology in early-stage, high-growth businesses is expected but it also goes to show just how remarkable the pivot to AI has been from the big players.
According to data from our platform, AI is entering the workplace in unexpected ways, becoming ubiquitous with the velocity we were warned about. In the coming months, it will be fascinating to watch this trend mature and see which of its new applications prove enduring.
Note: Check out the top SaaS tools of 2024 here.
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