SaaS Branding Considerations

As a SaaS vendor, it’s useful to understand where your branding ends, and the tenant branding begins. In other words, how will your software solution be positioned for your customer base?

Identity plays a critical role within SaaS solutions. It’s an area where extra planning early in your design is recommended.

Common Customer Scenarios

These are common scenarios from the perspective of the customer / user. Understanding which scenario best aligns to you is critical for designing your SaaS application for multitenancy.

Scenario 1 - Pure B2B

User works at a company that has purchased software for their employees to use. The user generally logs on with their corporate identity.

Examples: Yammer, Adobe, QuickBooks

graph LR
	user["fa:fa-user User"]
	isv["fa:fa-id-card Solution"]

	Purchasing-- "$" -->isv
	user-->isv
	subgraph Company
		user
		Purchasing
	end
	subgraph "fa:fa-building SaaS Vendor"
		isv
	end

Scenario 2 - Marketplaces

Customer is purchasing something from an ISV directly. There may also be a vendor paying the ISV.

Examples: Ticketmaster, eBay, Etsy, AirBnB, Instacart

graph LR
	isv[Solution]
	customer[Customer / User]
	vendor[SaaS Vendor]
	
	
	customer-->isv
	vendor-->isv
	isv-->vendor

Scenario 3 - White Label or Embedded

Customer is purchasing from a vendor directly, and that vendor is using a SaaS solution provided by an ISV.

Examples: Shopify, Square, Wix

graph LR
	isv[Solution]
	vendor[SaaS Vendor]
	customer[Customer]
	
	customer-->vendor
	vendor-- "$" -->isv
	customer-.->isv

Note: It is also possible in some cases that the customer doesn’t pay the vendor. For example, SquareSpace or Wix.