Painkillers and vitamins. This is how TK Kader, an entrepreneur, business strategist, and Youtube blogger, categorizes software as a service (SaaS) ideas. Vitamins refer to valuable ideas that would be nice to implement, but end-users don’t crave for them. By contrast, painkillers are solutions people need badly to solve their problems, so they are willing to pay a lot for them and get them as fast as possible.
Obviously, when developing your product, you want it to be a painkiller. However, from our experience in the SaaS industry, we recommend you not to ignore vitamins completely. In fact, products that are vitamins for certain people can be effective painkillers for others.
In this article, the JatApp team is going to walk you through ten amazing SaaS product ideas that are both painkillers and vitamins and are worth your attention. But before we get started, let’s discuss why the SaaS model is definitely worth trying.
Why are SaaS products always a good idea for startups?
The SaaS market is piping hot right now but Statista predicts it will grow even further. From a modest $31.4 billion in 2015, the market will reach the mark of $195 billion by 2023.
The SaaS market size
The SaaS business model has become increasingly popular among startup owners, and not without a reason. Let’s go through major benefits that SaaS solutions bring to the business leaders.
Lower cost
In the past, software developers needed to make sure their solution runs flawlessly on multiple operating systems and devices. Users expected ongoing maintenance and support, which translated into significant costs for a vendor. With the SaaS approach, developers are now able to build a solution that works on different operating systems. Moreover, SaaS providers offer users automatic updates and patch management, which takes a heavy burden off the team’s shoulders.
Recurring revenue
Perhaps, every startupper, especially at the beginning of their journey, dreams about financial stability in this disruptive business world. SaaS products give business owners a source of recurring revenue, allowing them to be more confident about their future. Simply put, companies are more able to predict their profits thanks to the subscription model, as they know more or less how many clients are going to buy from them in the next months.
Easy to market
When promoting traditional software, the team had to conduct lots of marketing campaigns, trying to pursue a large number of potential customers. With the SaaS business model, you no longer need to give sweat and tears, as long as having even a small client base paying for subscriptions monthly is far more beneficial than a constant rush for new users. Instead of running expensive ads, you may simply offer free trials to let users enjoy the benefits of your product, without requesting their credit card details. Once clients see how awesome the solution is, they are more likely to stay with you and recommend the product to their friends.
10 SaaS app ideas that you’d want to steal from us
If by this moment you fell in love with the SaaS model as much as we did, it’s time to examine ten profitable SaaS ideas for your upcoming project.
A kind reminder: This is a list with raw startup ideas only, so you can always come up with additional features to make your product more unique and competitive.
Property management software
Why: Real estate is full of struggles for both landlords and tenants. One of the constant pains is the lack of transparent communication, which results in the unpaid rent, breakdowns left unfixed, and similar problems.
What you can create: A platform, which focuses on connecting tenants, landlords, service providers, and property managers via virtual pinboard and messaging service. One of our clients from Germany, Cunio, contacted us to build such a “vitamin”. The final product we created allows users not only to communicate with each other, but also check the status of maintenance requests, announcements, and upcoming events. What’s more, the property management software enables landlords to control all aspects of property management, including appointment bookings, tenant screening, responding to tenants’ requests, and such.
Cunio app functionality
Test preparation platform
Why: During the Covid-19 pandemics the edtech industry was on the rise. As of late, we can see no clear signs of the sector slowing down, as teachers and students are getting used to online studies, new solutions are being developed atop of Zoom, tools for delivering educational content and assessing learners, and so on.
What you can create: An online test preparation platform, like one of our edtech cases, Pre-Quest. The app helps students master the skills in different subjects and enter the top schools. To make an app engaging for young learners we added gamification features, like cute illustrations of animals, bandages, and trophies. On top of that, we offered parents the opportunity to register on the platform, monitor their kids’ progress, and pay for the subscription.
Pre-Quest app functionality
Payroll application
Why: Business owners are always challenged to find new ways to keep their employees satisfied. Allowing workers to see all important information about their salaries helps increase trust and loyalty within teams.
What you can create: A payroll system that lets employees access annual statements, payslips, and net pay data. With the fintech solution we developed for our German client, workers benefit from full transparency, when it comes to their financial records with tax deductions. Moreover, they can easily download all docs, when necessary.
A payroll app functionality
Building energy management system
Why: Much to the chagrin of the real estate industry, buildings are one of the major sources of pollution in the world. Modern technologies can minimize the buildings’ negative impact on the environment by improving their performance.
What you can create: A building energy management system (BEMS) to control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) energy use. With such solution, our client managed to reduce carbon emissions by up to 40% in the commercial buildings. The mechanics behind this technology is as follows: the artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solution scans the environment and automatically adapts HVAC to changes in the indoor and outdoor conditions every five minutes, thereby creating sustainable and safe space for buildings occupants. Investors showered this startup idea with love, helping it close a $4.4 million pre-Series A funding round.
BEMS functionality
Employee engagement app
Why: Employee engagement tools assist business owners in checking whether their staff members are happy with their jobs. Such apps are a godsend for most businesses, as they not only increase workers’ productivity but also reduce turnover rates.
What you can create: An application that lets leaders monitor employees’ mood and therefore make sure everyone feels safe at their workplace. JatApp helped the startup from Denmark to develop an app that lets companies conduct engagement surveys to better keep in touch with team members. Workers receive daily notifications to rate their mood on a scale from 1 to 5 as well as choose factors that affect their emotional state.
Employee engagement app functionality
Power-bank rental platform
Why: Today, companies operate with the dog-eat-dog mentality, fiercely competing for top talent. To win this battle, most businesses strive to deliver superior working conditions to their employees. Technologies act as a helping hand in this regard.
What you can create: An IoT-driven power-bank rental platform that enables employees to take their laptops and work anywhere their heart and soul desire, without being glued to office desks. The Cannes-based startup reached out to us to build the software that would make the base and power banks communicate with each other. A user needs to register in the system via the app, and if they were validated by the administrator, the base unlocks the power banks. When it’s time to return a power bank, a user can simply place it into the vacant space on the base.
Power-bank rental platform functionality
Today, the platform is a huge success in the corporate world, attracting more than 40,000 users. In fact, 24 registered companies chose the power-bank rental station for their offices.
A solution for monitoring electric vehicle (EV) charging stations
Why: The EV charging station market is predicted to increase from $17.59 billion in 2021 to an astounding $111.9 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 30.26%.
What you can create: Software that can help monitor EV stations performance and tackle specific problems remotely. Our company developed a web app that makes the maintenance of EV charging stations an absolute breeze. Customers get daily reports to track energy usage and stations’ performance. Meanwhile, managers can implement software reboots and contact administrators to report problems. Administrators, in their turn, are able to reboot the hardware and software remotely.
Functionality of the solution for monitoring EV stations
Project management application
Why: Managing projects can be a huge hill to climb, as more often than not it includes many stages with different deadlines, levels of risks, and processes.
What you can create: A solution that helps different types of users manage projects in the most efficient way. Our customer from the Netherlands, a board game manufacturer, reached out to us for technical assistance to build a tool for monitoring project statuses and communicating with stakeholders. The software has different types of users, ranging from a super administrator, who manages the entire system, to a project manager, who tracks the project progress.
Project management app functionality
VPN solution
Why: The statistics suggest that 29% of all Internet users use VPN for their personal purposes, while 24% of people rely on this tool to run their businesses.
What you can create: A secure and robust VPN solution that runs on all popular platforms. The VPN solution can be a vitamin for a mom on maternity leave, when she wants to binge-watch episodes of Criminal Minds. Even though Hulu may frown upon her for streaming the series somewhere in Poland, where they’re normally not available, the VPN usage is absolutely legal in most countries.
Also, there are cases when a VPN is nothing else but a painkiller. For example, businesses, whose health depends on data privacy, crave for such products.
VPN app functionality
Data automation system
Why: Nowadays, data has become a true gem, allowing companies to make more informed decisions and manage business processes more efficiently.
What you can create: A data automation solution that helps users extract raw data and present it in a comprehensive manner for business analysis. Robinson Lumber, an international wood wholesaler, was longing for a painkiller to automate data processing. Before turning to JatApp, the company manually collected data on the competitors’ types of wood products, prices for lumber, delivery time, and so on. The marketing team had to struggle with large volumes of data that had duplicates and were written in different languages. Our solution allowed the company to deal with overwhelming amounts of data without the need of human intervention.
Data automation system functionality
Flesh out your SaaS business idea with us
Hopefully, this article helped you not to feel lost in the weeds and choose the right niche for your SaaS product. All ideas have been already implemented by our clients and stood the test of time. If you are a little bit jealous of our customers, we’ve got great news for you. JatApp is open to cooperation and we’re glad to offer you our technical assistance in building SaaS.
We’ve been working with SaaS companies for seven years in a row now. Having completed more than 200 software projects, we know a thing or two about how to make a SaaS product both competitive and profitable in the long run.
Want to partner with JatApp? Don’t be shy and contact our team for more information.
