After talking about the The Next Generation Competitor to Every Public SaaS Company, it’s clear a better name for it is SaaS 2.0 companies. SaaS 2.0 companies are API-first, have rich, responsive UIs that are more conversational in tone, have approachable pricing models that are more flexible than the incumbents, and have a modularized platform so that customers can purchase only the features they need. With this definition in place, several people have asked for examples of SaaS 2.0 companies:
- Intercom – Customer communications platform that’s one of the fastest SaaS companies to go from $0 to $50 million in revenue (see notes on Intercom’s growth)
- Groove – Simple help desk software with a passionate following (read their blog)
- Calendly – Schedule meetings without the back-and-forth emails (an amazing product!)
- CallRail – Call tracking for data-driven marketers
- MailChimp – Beautiful email marketing
Look for more SaaS 2.0 companies to emerge that reimagine the entire experience in a new, more personal approach.
What else? What are some more examples of SaaS 2.0 companies?
David Cummings on Startups 
Drift.com of course.
Drift (www.drift.com)
Here in Atlanta I think both CailRail and MailChimp fall into the camp of what you would call a SaaS 2.0 company. Both are self serve, have very approachable pricing, and have public company competitors.
Good call. I just added both to the list.
Great post here you may be interested in that documents how the next generation of SaaS companies are thinking – at least in terms of user engagement: https://www.plainflow.com/blog/next-generation-saas-user-engagement/
Love the fact you’ve called out how SaaS companies need to be innovating in this way and will have a section dedicated to this in my new eBook: https://successteam.co/2017/07/22/customer-experience-the-subscription-economy-and-10-ways-success-teams-will-make-you-win/#innovate
Any more thoughts to share on this feel free to blog about them as I follow your blog and would love more fodder for my work 🙂