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Ask HN: SaaS Covers Too Much?

10 points by james-revisoai ↗ HN
I see and think traditionally of SaaS as business services delivered as software; recurring, sometimes yearly, and part of processes, or process automation; focused on QoL for higher ups, or solving direct on the line problems.

However since about 2019 and especially 2022, I notice more times than not SaaS is actually being used in reference to a Subscription model B2C startup - GPT wrappers, for example.

What gives? Did the term change meaning? Should there be an encompassing of both these ... rather different... models under the same name? Don't business/seat pricing models have much greater compliance/finance issues?

6 comments

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ad404b8a372f2b9
The SaaS term has included B2C companies since the very beginning. There are talks on Youtube as early as 2013 about B2C SaaS companies.
james-revisoai
But why did people go from introducing their startups as "subscription" "freemium" or "B2C" to mostly all saying "SaaS"? I definitely feel this was not the case before 2013... there was a period when SaaS became terminology before it swept up these other terms... I feel it might be like machine learning/AI - ML may be a better phrase for the situation, but people just say AI now as it is trending...
ajeet_dhaliwal
These are all different things.

Subscription vs one-time payment (+ maintenance/updates payments) are two ways off offering to pay.

Freemium just means offering a free tier to let users try the software and offering a way to upgrade to unlock features on paid plans.

B2C vs B2B is business to customer vs business to business.

SaaS is software as a service, as opposed to say installing an application on premise in a data center.

A startup could be offering a fremium B2C SaaS for example, or a freemium B2B SaaS.

james-revisoai
Thanks for clarifying. I think I am just misremembering how terms were used because of the cohort of people I was amongst and our focus on business models, perhaps.
joshxyz
i think it qualifies.

as long as it's a software and a service, regardless if it's b2c b2b b2e, regardless if it's intended for end-users or developers, regardless if it's intended for individuals, teams, smbs, and enterprises.

codingdave
"Software as a service".

That is all it has ever meant. No more, no less. If you provide software via a model where they access it online (as a service), it is a SaaS.

You seem to be thinking of it the opposite way: "Services as Software". That simply isn't what the term means.