Mikhail Sisin Co-founder of cloud-based web scraping and data extraction platform Diggernaut. Over 10 years of experience in data extraction, ETL, AI, and ML.

How to find an alternative to an application or SaaS

2 min read

Very often, when searching for a specific service or software to solve a particular task, we have to spend much time on Google. This is a typical approach because everyone is trying to find a high-quality and cost-effective solution. In general, this process is quite laborious, but recently we have had the opportunity to reduce the time spent searching for alternatives significantly. There are specialized websites devoted to help people to choose the right application or SaaS that can help us. Below we consider the five most exciting sites from our point of view, offering such services.

Capterra

Capterra

It’s one of the oldest services, a pioneer in the field of the so-called Yelpification of business software. The company was founded back in 1999 by Michael Ortner. In 2015, it was acquired by a large analytical company Gartner. The website is easy to use. You can browse applications by category, business, or search by application or service name. On the application page, you can learn about its distinctive features, primary data about the product (such as price, usage model, etc.) and the seller, as well as read reviews on this product left by users.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo is a younger but less conservative website. It was launched in 2009. You can compare applications not only for business but also for private use. Unlike Capterra, the applications here are not tied to any categories. And although there are tags used as a substitute for categories, the main focus of this service is on comparing a particular application with its alternatives. In other words, by typing the name of a web application or software in the search field, we get a list of its alternatives, which can be sorted by popularity or time of addition and studied, choosing the most suitable option for solving your problem.

Fit Small Business

Fits Small Business

Fit Small Business is also a relatively young website. It’s targeted for small and medium businesses. Unlike the two previous websites, the products presented here are manually selected by editors and published. The advantage of this approach is that low-end crafts will not fall here and you will not have to spend your time studying them. The downside is that far from all interesting products are still presented in categories, but we hope that over time they can fill the missing pieces. As well as everywhere, there is basic information about the product and user feedback presented.

G2Growd

G2Crowd

The company was created in 2012 by former employees of BigMachines. Currently, it is one of the most significant players in the niche of business software recommendations services. The data presented on the site will help you not only to find alternatives in a particular area but also to compare them by a number of factors. Recently (at the end of 2018), the company acquired the Siftery. This service allows users to track the stacks of various web services and applications. Using Siftery datasets, we hope G2Crowd will be able to provide more expert analytics and make more complex benchmarking analysis of applications.

CrozDesk

CrozDesk

The service provides a search for software and web applications for business and has fairly broad coverage of various fields of activity. On the website, you can search by the name of the application and consider alternatives. Alternatively, you can explore the numerous categories in search of the software or SaaS that you need. The site contains a fairly standard set of information about the product. However, it is enough to get a primary idea of ​​the cost and list of services provided by the SaaS. Also here you can read user reviews about a particular application.

We hope that this small list will help you choose the application or platform that you want to use.

Mikhail Sisin Co-founder of cloud-based web scraping and data extraction platform Diggernaut. Over 10 years of experience in data extraction, ETL, AI, and ML.

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