Introduction
Think about how many SaaS tools your business uses on a daily basis. The number is probably in the dozens, right? Unless you’re a large organization, that is. In that case, it might even go up to the hundreds. That means you’re spending thousands and thousands of dollars on SaaS subscriptions every month.
So, how do you ensure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck out of your SaaS workflows? Enter SaaS management platforms – tools that centralize your SaaS portfolio, help save on SaaS and, oversee your SaaS budget.
Because SaaS management platforms have become an absolute necessity, the market has become flooded with them. One of the latest booms in the SaaS management market is Zylo. What’s its USP? Unlike its competitors, Zylo has been specifically built for enterprise customers.
Zylo wants to distinguish itself from its peers by being the most comprehensive SaaS management tool on the market. But does it live up to the hype? And is reducing SaaS costs among its qualities? Let’s find out.
Key points
- Zylo claims to be the most comprehensive SaaS management platform on the market – but is it really?
- There’s no doubt that Zylo covers a lot of ground. However, it relies too much on optional add-ons.
- Because Zylo doesn’t offer fixed plans, your Zylo pricing plan will depend on the add-ons you choose.
- The main add-ons that Zylo offers are Benchmarks, App Catalog, Purchase Order Management, Okta Actions, and Managed Services – but will any of them save you money?
Zylo in a nutshell
It goes without saying that the rise of SaaS software has been a big positive for businesses all around the world. But let’s face it – it’s also brought some new challenges. From learning how to manage your SaaS license spend to staying on top of SaaS renewals, the learning curve of SaaS management is as steep as it gets.
As one of the fastest-growing companies in the SaaS management world, Zylo wants to tackle this learning curve. How? By offering an impressive range of different solutions. Let’s see what they are.
The main pros of Zylo
These are the reasons why Zylo has become one of the biggest SaaS management companies in only six years:
- It is extremely effective at detecting SaaS apps.
- It includes a lot of different integrations.
- It makes catalogs of company-approved SaaS applications to minimize security risks.
- It has been designed by SaaS experts who know the ins and outs of the industry.
- It tailors your SaaS management platform to your specific industry.
- It provides you with insightful data on your SaaS usage.
- It sends you reminder emails to let you know that your SaaS software is up for renewal.
- It can help you coordinate security reviews for your SaaS portfolio.
There’s no question that Zylo is great at app detection and integration. But is it perfect? Far from it.
The main cons of Zylo
The most common objections to Zylo revolve around one thing – it tries to cover too much ground, too fast. And what happens when you do that? That some features are left sorely overlooked. Plainly speaking, Zylo seems to have a finger in every pie.
These are some of the biggest negatives of Zylo:
- Zylo only does SaaS procurement on an ad-hoc basis.
- Zylo has very limited expertise when it comes to SaaS procurement – meaning it’s not really as comprehensive as it says it is.
- Because of this lack of experience, it is unlikely that Zylo will get you good deals on your SaaS tools.
- Regarding performance and SaaS workflows, Zylo relies too heavily on Okta integrations – which can slow it down.
- Zylo doesn’t take a hands-on approach to contracts – you’ll have to learn how to stop automatic renewals.
- It doesn’t offer full context for spend data – meaning finance teams are often left in the dark.
- There is a glaring lack of automated reports and workflows. They are only offered as an add-on, which means that smaller businesses that can’t afford them will still spend hours on manual processes every week.
- Usage data is not always completely accurate.
- There are security concerns regarding Zylo’s user data protection.
- Following up on the above, Zylo’s transparency around policy updates leaves much to be desired.
- Similarly, Zylo doesn’t always notify users when there is a data breach.
- Zylo’s commitment to not using user data for commercial purposes is not completely guaranteed.
- With Zylo, there is only custom pricing available – no benchmarks to compare your quote to.
- Zylo doesn’t guarantee that you’ll save money with it.
It’s clear that Zylo still needs to smooth out some rough edges. It has potential, but it’s not quite the comprehensive all-in-one tool it claims to be.
And what about pricing? Does Zylo offset its cons with an affordable price tag? Let’s find out.
The ins and outs of Zylo pricing
Unlike other SaaS management apps, Zylo doesn’t offer fixed plans. Instead, you need to ask for a personalized quote. Suffice it to say that this process has been criticized for not being transparent enough. On the flip side, it means that Zylo is all about creating a tailor-made SaaS management tool that addresses your specific business needs. So, if you need a heavily personalized tool, Zylo might be worth your time – and money.
Regardless of your personalized quote, Zylo comes with a baseline of features:
- Core discovery data sources to drive visibility and allow you to have valuable insights on your SaaS workflows and portfolio.
- Security and compliance integrations to ensure that you’re up to speed with current regulations.
- SaaS license and usage integrations to help you centralize your SaaS portfolio.
- Implementation services to integrate your new SaaS tools into your existing business workflows.
- Customer success managers to ensure that your Zylo experience is as good as possible.
- SaaS consulting to advise you on potential SaaS procurement opportunities.
It’s time to address the elephant in the room. Sure, all the features above are great. But they certainly don’t constitute the ultimate, comprehensive SaaS management tool that Zylo is supposed to be. Are we missing anything?
Oh, yes – the add-ons. As you notice that Zylo doesn’t quite cover all the bases, you start paying for more and more add-ons. Now, as you can imagine, these handy extra features don’t come for free. And at the end of the day, your Zylo pricing plan can end up being very different from your initial quote.
Looking at the bright side, maybe some of these add-ons will help you to reduce SaaS costs. Let’s see what they can do for you.
Benchmarks
The Benchmarks add-on was only introduced at the beginning of January 2022. It takes anonymized usage data from Zylo’s massive library of cloud applications to create app-specific benchmarks. These benchmarks allow you to see how you stack up against other companies in terms of usage, spend, and adoption. This add-on also allows you to filter your SaaS portfolio. In some cases, you can even get insights into certain features of your SaaS apps.
So, what is the issue with the Benchmarks add-on? To start with, not all applications offer the same wealth of data. Sure, you’ll be able to compare your usage and spend on apps like Zoom or Teams. But what about more recent SaaS apps? When it comes to those, this add-on can’t really do much for you.
On top of that, Zylo doesn’t really specify how it sources its Benchmarks data. This has led to some suspicions about their accuracy. Because inaccurate data can drastically alter the benchmarks that you’re comparing your company against, this can have disastrous effects.
App Catalog
Shadow IT is the nightmare of thousands of IT managers all over the world. For the uninitiated, we use this term to refer to applications used by employees that haven’t been previously approved by a senior member of staff. Because they’ve not been approved, these apps don’t always follow a company’s security protocols.
Basically, using shadow IT is an open invitation for cybercriminals to access and steal your data. How is Zylo addressing this? With their App Catalog add-on, which allows you to create your own catalog of approved SaaS apps to ensure that your employees don’t use shadow IT.
The downside to this add-on? That there are many SaaS management tools that offer the same service as a baseline feature.
Purchase Order Management for Coupa
Only added at the end of summer 2022, this add-on allows you to unify all your SaaS spend in a single dashboard. In a nutshell, it aims at helping you to take control of your SaaS spend. It gives you the necessary tools to monitor your purchase order and spend in real-time – meaning you know how much you’re going to spend months in advance.
The issue? That this isn’t a native add-on. Coupa is a third-party company that works alongside Zylo to provide all the aforementioned finance-related services. And as you probably know, SaaS integrations are rarely flawless. There’s always something that doesn’t quite work as it should, some piece of data that doesn’t quite make sense.
On top of that, Coupa is infamously expensive. So you might find yourself paying a fortune every month for a service that doesn’t work as it should.
And when it comes to something as sensitive as a company’s SaaS spend, you can’t help but wonder whether you’d be better off with a different management tool.
Okta Actions with Deprovisioning
As we mentioned before, Zylo only allows you to automate time-consuming manual processes with an add-on. Enter Okta Actions, which lets you deprovision licenses for any SaaS tool linked to Okta. As a result, you’ll have the chance to optimize some of your SaaS processes and save a few hours every week.
The cons? First of all, there are SaaS management tools out there that offer this service as a native solution included in every pricing plan. Which leads to the next major inconvenience – like the purchase order management add-on, this feature is built with integrations from a third-party software.
To make things worse, there are a lot of SaaS tools that don’t support Okta integration. And unfortunately, the ones that support it only do it at a high price – this is what happens with Slack, where you’ve got to sign up for Slack Enterprise in order to integrate it with Okta.
Managed services
Last but not least, we’ve got the managed services add-on. As its name implies, this feature lets you liaise directly with Zylo’s SaaS experts. This means that they can give you a hand when it comes to managing your SaaS portfolio. For example, they can review whether a certain SaaS subscription is worth your money. They can also take care of your contract renewals to ensure you get a good deal.
This is the one Zylo add-on that has the potential to save you money. The problem with it? Again, that there are SaaS management tools that are already doing this as a priority feature – not as an add-on that you can take or leave.
At Quolum, we know that companies all over the world are being bled dry by SaaS vendors. No wonder more and more people come to us asking, “how to save on SaaS?”. And that’s why we take money-saving seriously. When it comes to SaaS procurement and contract negotiations, we follow a hands-on, results-first approach. And so far, it’s working – when it comes to reducing SaaS costs, our success is unparalleled.
The verdict on Zylo pricing – are there any better options?
As we’ve seen, there are good reasons why Zylo is one of the most popular SaaS management tools out there. Zylo is known to be extremely effective at eliminating shadow IT. On top of that, it provides comprehensive insights into your SaaS portfolio, allowing you to manage your company more effectively.
But does Zylo help you save money? Not really. The problem with Zylo is the following. If you really want it to tick all the boxes, you need a pricing plan that includes most (if not all) of the add-ons we’ve shown above. And as you can imagine, that can be very expensive.
But even if you can afford all those add-ons, Zylo doesn’t offer you a savings guarantee. Whether it’ll save you money or not is still up in the air. And for companies struggling to reduce their SaaS spend, that’s not good enough.
So, if you’re looking for an alternative that helps you reduce SaaS costs, look no further than Quolum. Unlike Zylo, Quolum does offer a savings guarantee. If it doesn’t help you save money, you won’t pay a single penny for it.
And there’s more…
With Quolum, your SaaS portfolio is in safe hands
At Quolum, money-saving is our calling card. So much so that we save our customers around 30% on their SaaS spend every year. And that’s on top of a savings guarantee that is simply unparalleled in the SaaS management market.
But it’s not just about the money. Remember when we said that Zylo defines itself as a comprehensive SaaS management tool? And then it turned out that it only lives up to that title if you pay for a bunch of add-ons.
Well, Quolum is the complete opposite – a comprehensive SaaS management platform that tackles every issue with your SaaS portfolio from the get-go. This is all we can do for you:
- We offer hands-on SaaS procurement and contract negotiations to save you money.
- We help you automate your manual SaaS processes.
- We can renew and cancel your SaaS subscriptions for you – and reclaim any unused seats so you can get your money back.
- The data we use is always on point and updated in real time – meaning you won’t have the accuracy issues that some reviewers have found with Zylo.
- We can shave off 10 hours of SaaS management a week.
- We can help you detect your shadow IT and actively remove your shelfware.
SaaS costs are rising – it’s time to take the matter into your own hands
The key to managing your SaaS portfolio effectively? Not paying more than what you should for your SaaS subscriptions. And at Quolum, we can help you with that. As both procurement and money-saving experts, we will make your business more efficient and your cloud apps portfolio cheaper before you can say SaaS.
If any of this sounds appealing to you, don’t waste any more time and get in touch with one of our sales experts today.
FAQs
What does Zylo do?
Zylo offers you insights into your SaaS usage in order to manage your SaaS portfolio more effectively.
What is a SaaS management platform?
A SaaS management platform is a tool that helps you take control of your SaaS applications. It allows you to centralize your business processes, automate SaaS workflows and review your SaaS contracts.
Who are the founders of Zylo?
The co-founders of Zylo are Eric Christopher (who is also the CEO), Ben Pippenger, and Cory Wheeler.
Who is Quolum for?
Quolum is for any company that uses SaaS regularly and wants to a) manage its SaaS portfolio more efficiently and b) save money.