The Real Cost of Switching SaaS Products
Here’s why we say that. Whenever you decide to switch to a new platform—whether that be Salesforce or Slack or Basecamp or whatever—there are two costs involved. There’s the cost of signup and paying for all the users on your team, and then there’s the cost of teaching all of your users how to use the new software.
We made Ledger so simple to use that no special training is involved. In our experience, Ledger is so easy to pick up that most users just poking around can get a handle on it within minutes.
So we compared our no-onboarding-required approach with the approach to most other SaaS offerings out there. And we figured out how much of a difference in cost that might mean for your team.
Ledger vs. “The Other SaaS App”
In one corner, we have Ledger: a single tool to link your team. In the other ring, we have “The Other SaaS Product,” a comparable tool that requires some onboarding and training tutorials to really pick up.
(Remember: We’re not comparing price per user or any other sign-up costs. And we’re not comparing costs of add-ons, because let’s be honest—with Ledger’s built-in features, that just wouldn’t be fair).
Onboarding Costs
Large Team
Let’s say your team is on the larger size. Maybe you have 100 people who need to pick up the new tool and get to work. Of course, companies certainly come a lot larger than that, but for our purposes, 100 is a nice, round, easy-to-picture number.
100 users averaging $25 per hour. Well, that new software requires 2 hours of official onboarding training, on top of an expected acclimation period.
Let’s drop the acclimation period altogether, because it’s a little hard to calculate and will differ between each user. Even still, you’ve just spent 2 hours of 100 users’ time at an average of $25 per hour. That’s $5,000 on top of whatever you spent on your contract.
Medium Teams
Maybe your team is a bit smaller. Let’s say you’ll need to get 20 users up and running with a new SaaS product. Maybe you have fewer and maybe you have more. But for our purposes, 20 works just fine.
20 users averaging $25 per hour. 2 hours of onboarding. Obviously some user acclimation, but none we’ll take into account in this calculation.
That’s $1,000 on top of all your other costs. Certainly a far cry from $5,000, but for a business with 20 employees? A significant chunk of change.
Solo Users
When you’re a freelance worker, every minute of your day counts. Fortunately, this is the easiest math we’ll have to do.
1 user with 2 hours of onboarding. At your hourly rate, how much does that represent? Did we lowball any of the above estimates compared to your team? Does paying your team just to learn the ins and outs of a complicated product make a ton of sense to you?
To us, it sure doesn’t.
Kick the Cost of SaaS Onboarding
Your money—and your team’s time—should be spent on your business. They certainly shouldn’t be spent trying to learn a complicated new tool that they won’t completely understand from onboarding anyway.
Instead, we think it’s smarter and much more cost-effective to give them a tool that is simple, intuitive, powerful, and doesn’t require a college semester to figure out. It will save them some headaches, it will save everyone time, and it will save you money.
That’s what we call a win-win-win.
