SaaS: Software as a Service

This is alpha nerd soup – where I have 30 seconds to explain a seemingly random jumble of letters!

Today: SaaS

Software as a Service

The last of our basic “aaS” jumbles, and probably the one you hear the most, SaaS generally refers to any piece of software, fully hosted, which is meant for end-users. Subscriptions are typically central to the business model for SaaS applications. Things like Gmail or Hubspot are examples of SaaS applications. Subscriptions to software, like Adobe Creative Cloud or Microsoft 365 can include SaaS components, but is really just subscription-based licensing. There’s some gray area for products like Stripe, Twilio, or Slack. These provide so much capability to build on top of, they’re frequently lumped into the PaaS category.