Business
SaaS without the jargon: what changes when software becomes a service
· 3 min read ·
SaaS stands for software as a service: software you access over the internet and pay for monthly or yearly, instead of buying once and installing on your own machines. The supplier keeps it running. The company opens a browser and uses it.
The definition is simple and doesn't explain much. What matters is what changes in the company once most of its tools start working this way — and there are three changes worth noticing.
The accounting changes
Before: one large upfront investment, licences that belonged to the company, and maintenance as and when it suited. It sat on the balance sheet as an asset.
Now: a monthly payment that never ends, sitting in running costs, next to the electricity bill.
It's easier on cash flow — there's no upfront jolt. But there's a detail a lot of people miss the first time round: the bill grows with the company. You pay per user, and sometimes per volume. Doubling the team doubles the cost of that tool, which didn't happen with a licence you'd bought outright. It's worth doing the sum over three years, not one.
It stops being your problem
Backups, updates, servers, certificates, patching security holes. All of that moves over to the supplier's side.
For a small company, this is probably the biggest gain of all, and it's a gain in risk before it's a gain in money. A server forgotten in a storeroom, three years without an update, with a backup nobody's tested since it was set up, is a problem waiting to happen — and it usually happens in the worst week of the year.
The trade-off is that you now depend on the supplier's uptime. When the platform goes down, there's nothing to do but wait. It's worth having that spelt out in the contract rather than left to hope.
It stops being in your hands
This is the part people talk about least, and the one that grates most over time.
The supplier decides what the tool will be next year. It might add what you need, might drop what you depend on, might change the price, might change owners, might shut down. None of these decisions go through you, and some of them arrive by email with thirty days' notice.
That's not a reason to avoid the model — it's a reason not to put everything in one place, and to know, before signing, how you get your data back out. We've written elsewhere about what to ask before choosing a platform.
The question that decides what goes on subscription
The practical rule that tends to work is a single one: whatever your company does the same way as everyone else goes on subscription; whatever it does differently stays yours.
Invoicing, accounting, email, document management — there's nothing about the way you invoice that sets you apart from the competition, and paying not to have to think about it is money well spent.
But the workflow that makes your work pay off better than the competition's doesn't fit inside a platform built for everyone. That's where it makes sense to build bespoke and connect it to everything else.
Most companies end up with both: half a dozen subscriptions for what's common, and one piece of their own for what's theirs.
How many subscriptions do you actually have?
Tell us what tools you pay for every month and what they're for. We'll help you see what overlaps, what needs connecting, and what should be yours.