Differences between SaaS and software

Some of the main and biggest differences between SaaS and traditional software are the paying method and installation. Buying traditional software you pay for a license that you get and install it on your hardware. But with SaaS, you pay a subscription (monthly, yearly, per consumption, etc…) and the software is ready to use it. 

The main differences between SaaS and traditional software: 

Differences in cost

With traditional software, you buy the license, and most of the time you have to pay for software upgrades and maintenance. But with SaaS, you don’t pay up-front implementation and maintenance. It’s already included in the price of SaaS which you pay monthly or annually like a subscription. Now the price of the subscription can be different depending on how many users you need, or what features you want. Because of subscription payment, in most cases it costs less than buying a new license every time you need a new user. Also, if needed, you can decrease your subscription plan once there is no need for a more expensive subscription which will result in lower costs. While traditional software is bought as final solution so you cannot return it back.

Maintenance and support

With traditional or on-premise software all the burden of upgrading and maintaining software is on the buyer, and if you don’t have an IT department it can be troublesome. While with SaaS maintenance, support and upgrading of the software come in with the price you are paying, and that can be a big relief to your business.

Customization

Another reason to choose SaaS is customization. Most SaaS products give you the ability to develop new custom features that you need, or to remove some of the redundant features. This way you have the option to further customize your SaaS product based on your specific needs. This seems like a more expensive option but if it is going to help you more on a daily basis, it’s certainly not more expensive than buying another on-premise software just because you need one more feature. You can try this uncertain way but at the end, SaaS will always be the better investment.

Internet effect

SaaS being on the internet can help you in many things. First, you don’t have the hassle of installing the software on your hardware because it’s ready for use on the internet, the only disadvantage is that without the internet you can’t use it. Anyhow this is a reliable solutions, because these days all internet providers can guarantee 99% of up-time. Also, expanding on the foreign market is much easier so you don’t need resellers or middlemen, the only thing you need is global access to the internet.

Security

Security is one of the main concerns of most companies. Having a vast amount of private data and company information stored safely is of big importance. That’s why SaaS providers put in a lot of time and efforts in providing the best possible security to their customers, and that’s why it can be far more secure than on-premise software security. Also, for many SaaS products, backups of all data are regular, so if something happens your data are safely backed up. While for on-premise software, in most cases you should not worry about backup as well, but that will increase expenses.