SaaSletter - March 2024 SaaS Demand Index
SaaSletter - March 2024 SaaS Demand Index
Plus Our Employment Index + Cloud Cost Optimization Data
PRIMARY RESEARCH: G2 + RepVue Data
We recently published a new research study in partnership with G2 (for product data) and RepVue (for seller data, like quota attainment) to examine the relationship between software product satisfaction and seller satisfaction:
A downloadable copy of the study slides is here:
March Demand Index
We’re excited to update the SaaS Demand Index with data through March 2024.
For our new readers: the Demand Index is derived from high-intent (aka “okta pricing”) Google Search volume data for 339 companies, covering 350,000+ searches each month.
Reminder: this is a directional, free, and ever-evolving* analysis → always do your own due diligence.
Moreover, the data captured here is best characterized as top-of-funnel or dark funnel → factoring in sales cycle length, do NOT use this Demand Index as a predictor of near-term financial results and/or financial guidance.
Industry-Wide Data
High-intent search volumes were up +4% month-over-month and +5% year-over-year.
Trends By Product Category
Zooming out to recap almost three years of data on our cumulative growth since January 2021 slide:
This slide presents growth for the last month and last three months, respectively:
Callouts from recent trends:
Communications: March remains elevated after a February interest spike was driven by MessageBird’s pricing announcement. A 90% pricing cut serves as a reminder that not all search trends captured here are favorable.
Above Average Performers: Consistent with prior months, the strong performers were Communications, Finance + ERP, HR + HCM, Industry Specific / Vertical, and Security.
Top Performing Companies - Past 3 Months: Paylocity, Jobber, FloQast, HighRadius, Wiz, TripleSeat, RevenueCat, ShopMonkey, Microsoft Dynamics, Gorgias, Yardi, VMware, Workable, Celonis, Dayforce, Intapp, Rainforest QA, Vlocity, QuickBooks Online, Homebase, Xero, Absorb LMS, OneTrust, AppFolio, CrowdStrike, BrightWheel, MyCase, Vanta
All of the category drill-downs - like this Development + IT Management example - are available in this slide PDF:
Other Trends
By customer mix, Enterprise outperformed SMB in March, reversing a recent trend of SMB > Enterprise:
The gap between private companies and publicly traded SaaS has narrowed of late:
March SaaS Employment Index
As a reminder, our SaaS Employment Index covers employment trends for 3,500+ private US HQ’ed software companies. Slides for this month are available here:
The key points:
Strong hiring below 200 FTEs; 200+ = weak but improving
Engineering weakening - an AI CoPilot impact?
Marketing and Sales equally strong
Cloud Cost Optimization Trend Update
The general trend toward cloud cost optimization abating (see recent Amazon, Microsoft, and Google earnings call commentary) continued in March: cost containment searches were down 12% year over year (from a local maximum in March 2023) and flat at 0% month over month.
The high growth in cost containment searches for Databricks and Snowflake *might* be linked to AI-driven spend increases needing to be mitigated.
*To publish closest to month end, we are accessing the underlying API data “early” (relative to the typical SEO and PPC users that do not require such immediacy). Therefore data should be considered “provisional” (i.e. subject to revision by our data provider) and create volatility in the data presented in the 2 most recent months.
This report was first published on cloudratings.com.