71+ SaaS statistics & trends

All reports show that 2020 has been a great year for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies.

But how great has it really been, especially in the face of growing SaaS waste? Where does the SaaS industry stand and where is it heading to?

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the most important statistics from our very own trend report, where we analyzed 10 years of SaaS spend from 1000+ companies, and other reputable sources.

43+ statistics on company SaaS expenditure and use

Here is a general overview of how much companies spend on SaaS and how they use SaaS apps:

• The overall spend per company on software-as-a-service products is up by 50%, compared to two years ago.
• The overall growth rate of SaaS adoption is decreasing as companies are solidifying how they use SaaS in their daily operations.
• The average company uses 137 unique SaaS apps on average. That’s a 30% increase from 2018.
• There are, on average, 4,406 app-to-person connections for an average company.
• Companies use free apps three times more than paid apps.
• SaaS spending is increasing faster than the use of unique apps. Customers are churning through more than 30% of their SaaS apps every year. As existing SaaS companies add more features and upgrade their functionalities, customers abandon other apps with similar functions.

These statistics give a general overview of current SaaS trends. However, as companies grow, their overall use of SaaS changes.

To compare, we’ve grouped the most relevant statistics in company SaaS expenditure and use by company size.

10+ statistics on how small companies use SaaS

Here are the main statistics on how they use SaaS within their organization.

Small company SaaS spend statistics:

• A small company has, on average, a $202.2k total SaaS spend in 2020.
• A small company spends $5,736 on SaaS per employee in 2020.

Small company SaaS use statistics:

• A small company has 624 app to person connections.
• On average, 35 employees and 102 apps.

• A small company has a 63% 2-year SaaS app turnover. This means that 63% of SaaS stacked changed since 2018.
• 31% SaaS apps added
• 35% SaaS apps dropped

Small company SaaS ownership statistics:

• A small company has, on average, 10 unique billing owners.
• A small company has, on average, 1.4 abandoned subscriptions.
• A small company has, on average, 2.3 duplicate subscriptions.

10+ statistics on how medium-sized companies use SaaS

Here are the main statistics on how they use SaaS within their organization.

Medium company SaaS spend statistics:

• A medium company has, on average, a $2.47M total SaaS spend in 2020.
• A medium company spends $8,580 on SaaS per employee in 2020.

Medium company SaaS use statistics:

• A medium company has 4,046 app to person connections.
• On average 288 employees and 185 apps.
  
  
• A medium company has a 58% 2-year SaaS app turnover. This means that 58% of SaaS stacked changed since 2018.
• 29% SaaS apps added
• 29% SaaS apps dropped

Medium company SaaS ownership statistics:

• A medium company has, on average, 32 unique billing owners.
• A medium company has, on average, 4.3 abandoned subscriptions.
• A medium company has, on average, 5.8 duplicate subscriptions.

10+ statistics on how enterprise companies Use SaaS

Here are the main statistics on how they use SaaS within their organization.

Enterprise company SaaS spend statistics:

• An enterprise company has, on average, a $4,16M total SaaS spend in 2020.
• An enterprise company spends $2,047 on SaaS per employee in 2020.

💡 Insight corner

Enterprise companies have the lowest SaaS spend per employee.

The spend per employee for an enterprise level company is lower than both small and medium companies.

The intuition is that as companies grow, they get an internal IT department and remove the need for some SaaS apps.

Large companies also establish procedures for SaaS billing ownerships and have clearly defined SaaS apps for each department and a large number of employees, thus lowering the cost per employee.

Enterprise company SaaS use statistics:

• An enterprise has 21,580 app to person connections.
• On average 2,031 employees and 288 apps.
  
  
• An enterprise has a 60% 2-year SaaS app turnover. This means that 60% of SaaS stacked changed since 2018.
• 26% SaaS apps added
• 46% SaaS apps dropped

Enterprise company SaaS ownership statistics:

• An enterprise has, on average, 98 unique billing owners.
• An enterprise has, on average, 7.1 abandoned subscriptions.
• An enterprise has, on average, 7.6 duplicate subscriptions

📣 Trend alert: The rise of SaaS “waste”

Companies are increasingly paying for apps that they aren’t using or optimizing.

This could be due to employees creating new accounts and resubscribing, or companies forgetting to unsubscribe from apps they are no longer using.

This phenomenon is so predominant it deserves its own name: SaaS waste.

Not only is SaaS waste a literal financial waste for the company, but it can also come with security concerns.

Here’s what the general statistics for 2020 say:

• A company subscribes to 3.6 duplicate apps on average. This is an 80% increase from last year.
• The average company has 3.6 abandoned app subscriptions. This is an increase of 100% compared to last year.
• 5.4% of apps are not being used to their full extent.
• The average amount wasted is $135,000 annually per company.

📣 Trend alert: Decentralized SaaS

Long gone are the days when IT departments selected technology for the entire organization.

In 2020:

• The number of billing owners per mid-sized company has increased from 12 (in 2019) to 21 (in 2020).

This shows that each department chooses SaaS platforms that are most convenient for them. This is intuitive, as what works for the marketing department of a company, won’t work for the Engineering department, or R&D.

On that note, the use of SaaS is widespread across all departments:

• There is a 27.6% 2-year growth rate in all app categories.
• The SaaS apps with the most growth are in IT & Security, Customer Support and HR.

On the flip side, trying to control and track how technology is used in the company can create a headache for IT departments.

BONUS: Summary statistics on company SaaS expenditure and use for 2020

SaaS Statistic (per company)OverallEnterprisesMedium-level companiesSmall-level companiesSpendUp by 50%$4.16M$2.47M$202.KUnique SaaS apps137288185102App to person connections-21,5804,406624SaaS app churn30%46%29%35%# of duplicate apps3.67.65.82.3# abandoned app subscriptions2.6 (Up by 100%)7.14.31.4# of billing owners per company983210

28+ statistics on the top 100 SaaS apps for 2020

Top SaaS Apps by Location (2020)

It’s not a shocker that the U.S. takes the lead in the location of the top SaaS apps for 2020. However, the concentration is much higher than you might think.

Here’s what the statistics say:

• 80% of the top 100 SaaS companies are located in the United States.
• Two-thirds of the top 100 SaaS companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley.
• The locations of the top 100 SaaS companies in order of # apps per location are:

1. California, U.S.
2. Washington, U.S.
3. New York, U.S.
4. Massachusetts, U.S.
5. Utah, U.S.
6. Tennessee, U.S.
7. Illinois, U.S.
8. Colorado, U.S.
9. Texas, U.S.
10. Georgia, U.S.
11. Pennsylvania. U.S.
12. Ontario, Canada
13. Other

Top SaaS apps by market capitalization (2020)

The leading SaaS providers by market capitalization as of June 2019 are:

1. Salesforce
2. Servicenow
3. Workday
4. Shopify
5. Atlassian
6. Square
7. Zoom
8. Veeva
9. Slack
10. Splunk
11. Twilio
12. Okta
13. Paycom
14. Dropbox
15. Zendesk

Source: Statista

Top SaaS apps by category

As previously discussed, the decentralization of SaaS has led to the same company using different apps for different departments and purposes.

Here are the top 10 SaaS apps for each category.

Top 10 business operations SaaS apps

By market share:

1. G Suite
2. Slack
3. Zoom
4. Office 365
5. Calendly
6. Confluence
7. 1Password
8. Asana
9. Lucidchart
10. Adobe Acrobat

By spend share:

1. G Suite
2. Slack
3. Looker
4. Zoom
5. RingCentral
6. Flexport
7. Asana
8. DOMO
9. Talkdesk
10. Office 365

Top 10 Sales SaaS apps

By market share:

1. Salesforce
2. Hubspot
3. Pipedrive
4. Yesware
5. Outreach
6. Gong
7. SalesLoft
8. Chorus
9. DocSend
10. InsightSquared

By spend share:

1. Salesforce
2. Hubspot
3. Outreach
4. Gong
5. Chorus
6. SalesLoft
7. PureB2B
8. DiscoverOrg
9. InsightSquared
10. Yesware

Top 10 Customer Support SaaS apps

By market share:

1. Atlassian
2. Zendesk
3. Intercom
4. HelpScout
5. Front
6. Teamwork
7. Hiver
8. Five9
9. Gainsight
10. UserVoice

By spend share:

1. Zendesk
2. Five 9
3. Atlassian
4. Intercom
5. Gainsight
6. HelpScout
7. Fuze
8. Kustomer
9. Front
10. Hiver

Top 10 Engineering SaaS apps

By market share:

1. GitHub
2. IntelliJ IDEA
3. SendGrid
4. CircleCi
5. Pingdom
6. New Relic
7. BrowserStack
8. Ngrok
9. NPM
10. Docker

By spend share:

1. Twilio
2. New Relic
3. SendGrid
4. GitHub
5. CircleCi
6. Gitlab
7. IntelliJ IDEA
8. Code Climate
9. Papertrail
10. Replicated

Top 10 Marketing SaaS apps

By market share:

1. Mailchimp
2. Semrush
3. Canva
4. Mixmax
5. Clearbit
6. WISTIA
7. Marketo
8. ScreamingFrog
9. MOZ
10. SproutSocial

By spend share:

1. Marketo
2. Capterra
3. Clearbit
4. HipLead
5. Meltwater
6. Hubspot
7. Sendoso
8. Vantiv
9. Intent Media
10. Cloudinary

Top 10 DevOps SaaS apps

By market share:

1. PagerDuty
2. Sentry
3. NameCheap
4. WPengine
5. DataDog
6. DigitalOcean
7. Cloudflare
8. BugSnag
9. Statuspage
10. Linode

By spend share:

1. DataDog
2. CloudFlare
3. Sumologic
4. PagerDuty
5. Fastly
6. MongoDB
7. WPEngine
8. Aprible
9. RedisLabs
10. Snowflake

Top 10 Product SaaS apps

By market share:

1. Typeform
2. Adobe Creative Cloud
3. Sketch
4. Zeplin
5. FullStory
6. Webflow
7. Dribble
8. Figma
9. Abstract
10. Noun Project

By spend share:

1. Adobe Creative Cloud
2. Authenticom
3. FullStory
4. Appcues
5. Alfresco
6. Sketch
7. Typeform
8. Algolia
9. Onshape
10. Zaplin

Top 10 IT & Security SaaS apps

By market share:

1. Parallels
2. Solarwinds
3. KnowBe4
4. Fleetsmith
5. LogMeIn
6. Keeper
7. Mover
8. Jamf
9. Code42
10. Rapid1

By sales share:

1. KnowBe4
2. Fleetsmith
3. Code42
4. Databricks
5. CloudHealth
6. Jamf
7. LogMeIn
8. Synopsys
9. ThreatMetrix
10. Parallels

Top 10 HR SaaS apps

By market share:

1. LinkedIn
2. Gusto
3. BambooHR
4. Lever
5. Upwork
6. CoderPad
7. Greenhouse
8. Lattice
9. Checkr
10. Pingboard

By spend share:

1. ADP
2. Namely
3. LinkedIn
4. Checkr
5. Justworks
6. Upwork
7. Greenhouse
8. Gusto
9. BambooHR
10. Lattice

Top 10 Finance SaaS apps

By market share:

1. Bill.com
2. Avalara
3. Expensify
4. Intuit Quickbooks
5. Recurly
6. Intuit
7. Xero
8. PayPal
9. Baremetrics
10. ProfitWell

By spend share:

1. Bill.com
2. Avalara
3. SAP Concur
4. Braintree
5. Recurly
6. Zuora
7. Paypal
8. FinancialForce
9. Prophix
10. Expensify

Security & SaaS spending by department

• Only 18% of the top 1000 SaaS apps are SOC2 compliant.
• The biggest expenditure for SaaS companies is General & Administrative expenses, followed by Research & Development and Sales & Marketing.
• The two biggest expenses for SaaS companies are Product and Engineering R&D and Marketing.
• SaaS companies are spending the least amount of money on Sales and Development Operations.

Key takeaways

Now, let’s take a quick step back, and recap some of our top findings…

• The overall SaaS market is growing rapidly and gaining traction. Even though there are tons of apps out there, there’s still areas for growth, especially in IT, Security, Compliance, and HR.
• However, there are outliers. Some SaaS categories are maturing. These are early categories, like public cloud providers and CRM.
• On the other hand, SaaS waste continues to grow as companies forget to cancel subscriptions or double-down on subscriptions for the same app or SaaS category.

Looking for a tool to help you reduce SaaS waste? Schedule a demo of our SaaS management platform.