A practical, A–Z glossary of essential terms for SaaS founders, marketers, product teams and investors. Use this glossary to quickly understand industry jargon, compare definitions and discover how each term relates SaaS Statistics.
A
- A/B Testing
- Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
- Activation Rate
- Active Users
- Adoption Rate
- AI in SaaS
- Annual Contract Value (ACV)
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
- API (Application Programming Interface)
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
- Application Programming Interface Key (API Key)
- ARPA (Average Revenue per Account)
- ARPU (Average Revenue per User)
- ARR Growth Rate
- Asynchronous Communication
- Average Contract Length
- Average Handle Time (AHT)
- Average Revenue Growth
- Average Session Duration
- Average Time to Onboard
B
- Backlog
- Benchmarking
- Beta Testing
- Bookings
- Bottleneck
- Bounce Rate
- Break-even Point
- Budget Variance
- Burn Multiple
- Burn Rate
- Business Intelligence (BI)
- Buyer Journey
- Buyer Persona
- Buyer’s Intent Data
C
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
- CAC Payback Period
- CapEx (Capital Expenditure)
- Cash Flow
- Churn Rate (Customer Churn)
- Churn Rate (Revenue Churn)
- CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
- CLV:CAC Ratio
- Cohort Analysis
- Conversion Funnel
- Conversion Rate
- Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)
- Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
- Cost per Lead (CPL)
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
- Cross-Sell
- Customer Engagement Score
- Customer Expansion
- Customer Feedback Loop
- Customer Health Score
- Customer Onboarding
- Customer Retention Rate
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
- Customer Segmentation
- Customer Success Management
- Customer Value Optimization (CVO)
D
- Daily Active Users (DAU)
- Data Migration
- Data Retention Policy
- Decision-Making Unit (DMU)
- Deferred Revenue
- Deployment Frequency
- Design Partner
- Digital Transformation
- Discovery Call
- Downtime
- Drop-off Rate
E
- EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization)
- Engagement Rate
- Enterprise SaaS
- Expansion MRR
- Expansion Revenue
- Experimentation Rate
- Exit Rate
F
- Feature Adoption Rate
- Feature Creep
- Feature Utilization
- Freemium Model
- Free Trial Conversion Rate
- Funnel Optimization
- Function-as-a-Service (FaaS)
G
- GAAP Revenue
- Gamification
- Gatekeeping
- Gross Churn Rate
- Gross Margin
- Gross Revenue Retention (GRR)
- Growth Accounting
- Growth Hacking
- Growth Rate
H
- Headcount Efficiency
- Health Score
- Hosting Cost
- Hybrid Cloud
- Hypergrowth
- Hypothesis Testing
I
- Implementation Time
- Incident Response Rate
- Incremental MRR
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
- Involuntary Churn
- Integration Rate
- Investor Update Metrics
- Iteration Speed
J
- Job-to-be-Done (JTBD)
- Journey Mapping
- Just-in-Time Deployment
K
- Kanban
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
- Knowledge Base
- Knowledge Retention Rate
L
- Lead Conversion Rate
- Lead Velocity Rate (LVR)
- Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Logo Churn
- Looker Studio
- Lost MRR
- Low-Touch Onboarding
M
- Magic Number (SaaS)
- Marketing Automation
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
- Market Penetration Rate
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Monthly Active Users (MAU)
- Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
- MRR Churn
- MRR Growth
- Multi-Tenant Architecture
N
- Net Dollar Retention (NDR)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
- New MRR
- Non-recurring Revenue
- North Star Metric
O
- Onboarding Rate
- Open Rate (Email)
- Operating Income
- Opportunity-to-Close Rate
- Opt-in Rate
- Organic Growth
- Outbound Marketing
P
- PaaS (Platform as a Service)
- Payback Period
- Pipeline Velocity
- PLG (Product-Led Growth)
- Pricing Model
- Product Adoption Rate
- Product Analytics
- Product Churn
- Product Engagement Score
- Product Market Fit (PMF)
- Product Qualified Lead (PQL)
- Profit Margin
- Prototype Testing
Q
- Qualitative Feedback
- Quantitative Analysis
- Quality Assurance (QA)
- Quick Ratio (SaaS Growth Efficiency)
R
- Reactivation Rate
- Recurring Revenue
- Referral Rate
- Renewal Rate
- Retention Rate
- Revenue Churn
- Revenue Growth Rate
- Revenue Recognition
- Revenue per Employee
- Run Rate
S
- SaaS Magic Number
- Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)
- Sales Cycle Length
- Sales Efficiency
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
- Self-Service Onboarding
- Service Level Agreement (SLA)
- Sign-Up Rate
- Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
- Stickiness Rate
- Support Ticket Volume
- System Uptime
T
- TAM (Total Addressable Market)
- Time to First Value (TTFV)
- Time to Onboard
- Time to Resolution
- Time to Value (TTV)
- Trial Conversion Rate
- Turnover Rate
U
- Upsell Rate
- Usage-Based Pricing
- User Adoption
- User Engagement
- User Retention
- User Satisfaction Score (USS)
V
- Value Metric
- Viral Coefficient
- Visitor-to-Signup Rate
- Volume Churn
W
- Weighted Pipeline
- Win Rate
- Workflow Automation
- Working Capital
X
- XML API
- XaaS (Anything as a Service)
Y
- Year-over-Year Growth (YoY)
- Yield per Customer
Z
- Zero Churn
- Zero Downtime Deployment
- Zero Trust Security