SaaS vs PaaS - what's the difference?

The world of IT services is full of acronyms these days, and you can get almost everything "as a service." You may have heard of SaaS or PaaS, but what's the difference, and which do you need in your day-to-day operations?

What is the difference between saas and paas

SaaS stands for Software as a Service, and PaaS stands for Platform as a Service. You may have heard of some other offerings, such as Infrastructure as a Service. The idea of each of these is that instead of purchasing a one-off software license, a server or another product, you subscribe to a full-service offering, getting updates, maintenance and other support.

Comparing SaaS vs PaaS can be confusing at first because there's some overlap in terms of what constitutes software and what's considered a platform — both are a form of cloud service — but the differentiator is what the cloud product is being used for.

Examples of SaaS include:

  • Dropbox
  • Salesforce
  • Office 365
  • Nextcloud
  • Microsoft Teams

Examples of PaaS include:

  • Heroku
  • Openshift
  • Microsoft Azure
  • AWS Direct Connect

SaaS or PaaS: serving different use cases

Both SaaS and PaaS offer convenience and flexibility in IT services. Large businesses often find using products such as Office 365 reduces the burden on their IT teams, making it easier for them to manage upgrades, support and security patches because the software runs in the cloud rather than being installed on individual machines.

Access control, sharing, deployment and license management are all simpler when you're dealing with a hosted service compared to individual installations, and the clients themselves can typically run on lower-end machines, compared to sometimes bloated standalone applications.

The trade-off with SaaS is that the subscriber doesn't own the product; they're paying an ongoing license fee, and they give up control. If the service provider updates the cloud service, it's often difficult (or impossible) for the subscriber to block the update and continue using an old version.

PaaS offerings are similar to SaaS in those respects, but the target audience is different. Services such as AWS, Azure and Heroku are cloud platforms for developers to deploy applications to, and subscribers choose to use those platforms because they allow for quick, simple, scalable and affordable deployments.

However, with the advent of NVMe VPS hosting, developers now have access to blazing-fast storage solutions, offering enhanced performance and efficiency for their applications while still retaining control over their server environment. Before PaaS became mainstream, a developer would need to hire a VPS or a bare metal server or a dedicated server, setting up their own frameworks and server software. While this makes sense for a large, resource-demanding application, it doesn't make sense to have a full server for a simple script. Traditional server deployments are also a poor choice for applications that go through periods of very heavy usage along with periods of limited use. There's some overlap between the middleware of PaaS and the server infrastructure of IaaS, with many service providers offering both.

Using Cloud PaaS offerings allows developers to spin up instances when required and disable them when they're not needed, which can reduce costs while still making it easy to keep up with rapidly changing demand.

Both SaaS and PaaS have a lot to offer in terms of flexibility, scalability and managing the finances of a growing organization. At 8x8, we offer a variety of SaaS solutions for all-in-one communications, CRM and customer support.

If you'd like to know more about how our SaaS solutions can help you scale a growing contact center, call us today for a free consultation or check out our free resources for more information.