distinct SaaS categories per 1,000 review entries, 2026 H1

577.1

“Our website has been "successful" enough that they just TRIPLED my expenses... A jump from $89 - to $249US/month which is VERY frustrating for a small business owner.”

“Too many different screens to go to, when adding a new employee to make sure they have the proper access.”

How to read these charts

• How often a category shows up: we take the category's share of this group's review activity and divide it by the category's share across the full pool of Capterra reviews we studied, from 2023 to mid-2026. Above one means this group leans on the category more than the full pool of reviews does. A product is listed under several categories at once, so one review counts toward each of them. A category needs at least 200 reviews from this group to appear.
• Overlap of competing products: for each category shown, the share of its named reviewers who reviewed two or more rival products in that category between January 2023 and June 2026. This counts reviews written, not purchases made. The products need not have been in use at the same time. A category needs at least 50 such reviewers to qualify, and we show only the eight highest.
• Contract price ranges: real negotiated prices that Vendr publishes from actual contracts, grouped by what each vendor charges for. Some labels are a rate per unit, such as a user or a device. Others are a whole charge, such as a subscription or a platform fee. So the rows are not the same kind of number. Each point is the midpoint of one published range. Here, each price applies to a purchase-quantity tier. That tier is what the band shows, not the buyer's headcount. So we do not compare these ranges between bands. Only labels with at least five points appear, and we show the eight deepest.
• The variety of software categories: how many different software categories show up when we pull 1,000 review entries at random from this group, once for each year. A review counts once for every category its product is listed under, so 1,000 entries covers a couple of hundred reviews. Higher means more varied software across the group. It is not the number of tools any one company runs.
• Sprawl complaints: the share of TrustRadius reviews whose 'cons' mention any of ten set phrases about tool overload, among them 'too many tools', 'unused' and 'duplicate'. A review counts once, however many phrases it hits. The comparison rate covers the whole TrustRadius pool. That includes a 'large' size group the bars leave out, because TrustRadius gives it no employee range. These are different reviews from the Capterra pool behind the charts above.