A guide to choosing SaaS (and how it affects your choice of email sending platform): Part 1 of the Considering Kit series

The rap-guide for choosing tech tools

🎧 Cue beat, cue strobe light 

When choosin’ a SaaS
You gotta ask

Not ‘bouts the set of features
But ‘bouts the guidin’ ethos

Sounds fluffy?
Don’t get huffy.

The reason and rhyme:
They’ll serve ya better over time 

Ok, so clearly I have no future as a rapper.

But I do have a present as a copywriter, and the #1 rule when writing for tech that sits in a saturated industry is this: Find a differentiator

At first I thought this was just a marketing stunt – a matter of semantics if you will. But as time goes on, I see (over and over again) that it’s not. 

(And this rule hasn’t just served my clients well – by them being able to attract better fit customers, it’s served me well too – by helping me find the right SaaS vendors that’ll do the best job for my needs.) 

See, features are always changing – every SaaS has a feature log that plays catch up with the other guys. 

So unless a feature is make it or break it, a feature shouldn’t be the reason you choose to go with one vendor over another. 

(And even if said feature is make it or break it, it’s worth asking if it’s in the works and when it’ll be implemented.) 

So. If you shouldn’t look at features, what should you look at? 

Behold, my Tech Choosing Checklist: 

#1: Customer base 

Who do they serve? Who’s their primary set of customers? Do you fit into that profile? Will the features they prioritize – to serve that primary set of customers you defined – benefit you? 

#2: Customer Centricity 

Do they listen to customers’ feature requests? Do they add features that best support that primary audience? What’s their support like? Cuz it doesn’t matter who they serve if they’re not  actually serving them.  

#3: Agility 

Check out their change log. Are they adding new features quickly? Are they adding new features too quickly and sacrificing their overall vision (or product quality)?

#4: Overall UX

Big UX overhauls are rare. If you can’t stand the overall feel and navigation, find someone else. 

Bonus: Creativity

Are any new features stand-out? Do they tackle problems with curiosity? Is there a unique angle they apply to even the “standard” feature set that everyone else has? 

The disruptors obviously have creativity down, but consider that the ones who come after have a leg up. 

(A quick example: I was introduced to Paperform at the time when every other new SaaS was a survey builder. Yet their approach showed me that while they’d stay on par with Typeform, they wouldn’t just be Typeform wannabes. And I’m still seeing this hold true with each feature release.) 

Sure, things can change, even after you’ve checked off these 4-5 boxes.
One of my favorite products has a completely different team than when I first joined. 

And one of the main reasons I switched from ActiveCampaign to Kit is that ActiveCampaign shifted from serving SMBs to serving ecomm brands. 

But still, this checklist will typically stand you in good stead.

So, next up: How Kit checked off those 5 boxes of my Tech Choosing Checklist.

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