📖 Glossary · Technology

SaaS

Software as a Service

A software delivery model where the customer does not buy a licence or server but pays a periodic fee for access to a cloud service.

What is SaaS?

SaaS (Software as a Service) is a software delivery model in which the customer does not purchase a licence or manage their own server, but pays a periodic fee (usually monthly or annual) for access to a cloud service running in the provider’s infrastructure. Access is via a web browser or API, with no installation required.

Comparison of the three cloud models:

SaaS — ready-made software to use (Modulario, Gmail, Salesforce)
PaaS — platform for development (AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku)
IaaS — bare infrastructure (AWS EC2, Azure VM)

Advantages of SaaS for B2B companies over on-premise software:

Lower upfront costs — no investment in servers, licences, IT team
Automatic updates — always the latest version
Scalability — pay exactly for what you use (number of users, data volume)
Accessibility from anywhere — office, home office, client site
Vendor-managed security — the SaaS provider handles patches, backups, DDoS protection

Typical SaaS pricing models:

Per-user (per-seat) — e.g. 20 €/month/user
Per-usage — e.g. by volume of API calls, processed documents
Tier-based — packages (Starter / Pro / Enterprise) with different limits
Freemium — basic plan free, paid extensions

When it is used

SaaS is the dominant model today for most B2B software — ERP, CRM, accounting, HR, communications. The alternative (on-premise) makes sense only for very specific regulatory requirements.

See /en/modules and the Security page.

API — the standard interface of every SaaS. See /en/glossary/api.
Churn rate — the key metric of a SaaS business. See /en/glossary/churn-rate.
CLV — the financial value of a SaaS customer. See /en/glossary/clv.
Low-code — a modern trend of SaaS platforms. See /en/glossary/low-code.

In Modulario

Modulario is a native SaaS platform — hosted in the EU, per-user pricing, automatic updates without interruption. Details on pricing, SLA, and infrastructure are at /en/security.

Modulario is hosted in the EU (primary data centre in Dublin, backup in Frankfurt) — with 99.9% SLA, RPO of 15 minutes, and RTO of 4 hours. Customers always have access to their data via API and exports, minimising lock-in — upon service termination they receive a complete data export.

Related terms

API

An interface through which different software systems communicate — in B2B SaaS typically a REST API or GraphQL over HTTPS.

Webhook

The reverse direction of communication compared to a classic API — the system itself sends an HTTP POST to a target URL when an event occurs.

Low-code

An approach to building applications where most of the logic is configured visually (drag-and-drop) instead of writing code — faster development without a large developer team.

CLV

The total net revenue a company expects from an average customer over the entire period of their relationship with the company.

Churn rate

The percentage of customers who stopped using a service during a given period — a key metric for SaaS and subscription models.

Related Modulario modules

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