The 24 Hottest French SaaS Companies to Watch

France, like most other European countries, has been swept by the power of SaaS.

Already established global SaaS contenders such as Front and Algolia lead the way. However, hundreds of new companies are coming to life in the Silicon Sentier neighborhood in Paris, and across the French land.

French SaaS is predominantly focused on marketing, development and productivity, with Point Nine Capital’s report from 2016 showing that these three categories make up 51% of the 200 companies examined. Companies working on marketing solutions receive the highest median level of funding — $5.4 million. About two-thirds of the companies are horizontal, offering solutions for a wide range of industries rather than focusing on a single field.

With SaaStock on Tour Paris fast approaching and early-bird tickets running out on April 12th, we have gathered a list of the most impressive up-and-coming French SaaS companies. Come meet them en personne on May 3rd.

ContentSquare

ContentSquare offers a mobile and web solution for optimizing the customer experience of e-commerce companies’ websites. It provides businesses with valuable in-depth insights into the browsing and buying patterns of users visiting their websites and apps. This allows brands to maximize the impact of each element in their online presence. Established brands such as Unilever, Gazprom, and Walmart are among ContentSquare’s most prominent customers.

CEO: Jonathan Cherki
Founded: 2012
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $62M from Canaan Partners, Highland Europe, and others

Talentsoft

Talentsoft offers a range of tools, including a cloud-based staffing and recruitment tool called Hello Talent. It allows businesses to easily source candidates from all corners of the web, gather data about them, and handle the recruitment process. Talentsoft helps companies such as Celio, Toyota, Naval Group, and Lacoste find and manage the recruitment of top talent.

CEO: Jean-Stéphane Arcis
Founded: 2007
Based in: Boulogne-Billancourt
Funding to Date: $44M by Highland Europe, Goldman Sachs, and others

SendinBlue

SendinBlue is an email marketing tool that helps businesses ace their customer relationships. It boasts a rich range of features, including email campaign builder, contact management, reporting, marketing automation, and transactional messaging. SendinBlue currently helps more than 50,000 small and mid-size companies around the globe manage their email marketing needs with an affordable enterprise-level solution.

CEO: Armand Thiberge
Founded: 2012
Based in: Paris, Delhi and Seattle
Funding to Date: $37.7M from Caloga, Partech Ventures, and others

AB Tasty

AB Tasty’s CRO platform offers businesses an easy-to-use tool for A/B testing, personalisation and user engagement. AB Tasty provides handy features for website optimization that help increase conversions without the need to gain extensive technical knowledge. The conversion optimization platform has been trusted by more than 2,500 clients, including Peugeot, Cartier, and Decathlon.

CEO: Alix de Sagazan
Founded: 2011
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $23.9M from Omnes Capital, Partech, Korelya Capital, and others

PayFit

PayFit’s tools make payroll and HR processes easier and cheaper for SMBs. By automating payment of salaries, tax management, and leave tracking, it saves companies thousands spent on accounting and HR subcontractors. PayFit has grown significantly on the French market, and is now planning to expand in other European countries such as Germany, Spain, Italy, and the UK.

CEO: Firmin Zocchetto
Founded: 2015
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $19M from Otium Capital, Accel Partners, and others

PeopleDoc

PeopleDoc is a cloud-based HR services platform that aims to simplify the work of HR departments across the globe. Its solution provides case management, processes automation, and employee file management. PeopleDoc can be integrated with current HR systems to accelerate implementation. It already has more than 500 customers in 165 countries.

CEO: Jonathan Benhamou
Founded: 2007
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $75.5M from Eurazeo, Accel Partners, and others

Aircall

With Aircall, companies in more than 30 countries can get cloud-based localized phone presence. The outstanding contact center infrastructure allows businesses to communicate with their customers via voice calls, which are as easy to conduct as email or chat. Aircall has dedicated solutions for call centers, as well as for support and sales teams. It already has more than 3,000 companies as customers, including top brands such as Uber, Vice, and SeatGeek.

CEO: Olivier Pailhès
Founded: 2014
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $11.5M from Balderton Capital, 500 Startups, and others

Botify

Botify is a website crawler and log analyzer for SEO. It provides marketers with insights on how they can boost organic, social and mobile traffic. Botify has grown exponentially in the last few years, gaining customers from small companies and large enterprises alike, including Airbnb, Expedia, Decathlon, eBay, and more.

CEO: Adrien Ménard
Founded: 2012
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $7.2M from Ventech and Idinvest Partners

Beekast

Beekast is a web app that allows users and businesses to create interactive presentations that can powerfully engage their audiences. The tool can be used for business and cultural events, educational purposes, training sessions, and work meetings. Beekast allows easy online collaboration and offers a number of useful features such as word clouds, polls, lists, challenges, and more. Microsoft, Google, and Total are just some of the notable companies that have used Beekast.

CEO: Yassine Chabli
Founded: 2015
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $3M from I-Source Gestion and Microsoft Accelerator Paris

Welcome to the Jungle

Welcome to the Jungle is an innovative platform that aims to connect top talent with matching recruiters and businesses. Companies can ace their employer branding by using the services of Welcome to the Jungle. In the same time, the platform also allows job seekers to find employers that best suit their skills, interests and values.

CEO: Jeremy Clédat
Founded: 2014
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $2M from NUMA and others

Station

Station is a web-based workstation that aims to combine all work apps in a single web browser. Its mission is to become “the app store of software-as-a-service” in order to simplify the processes in the modern online workplace. Station has already integrated more than 500 SaaS applications in its practical sidebar. Hubspot, Shopify, and TransferWise are just some of its current customers.

CEO: Julien Berthomier
Founded: 2016
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $120,000 from Y Combinator

Recast.AI

Recast.AI is a bot platform with more than 500,000 bots currently, which aims to help businesses manage their customer relations. Companies can create their own bots and can train them to understand the needs of their specific audiences. Recast.AI’s benefits for customer support are being used by a long list of tech and business names, including Cisco, Deloitte, Slack, Salesforce, and even Facebook.

CEO: Patrick Joubert
Founded: 2015
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $2M

Shippeo

Shippeo is a supply chain visibility platform. It helps transportation professionals — shippers and carriers of all sizes — get a full overview of their shipments and improve their customer service. Shippeo provides both real-time and predictive information about deliveries. More than 40,000 European shipments are tracked through the platform every month.

CEO: Pierre Khoury
Founded: 2014
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $12M from Otium Capital, Partech, and others

Mention

The goal of Mention is to make online reputation management on the web and social media a breeze. It transforms media monitoring from a tedious procedure into a simple and quick task for companies in various industries, including e-commerce, financial and business services, education, and retail.

CEO: Matthieu Vaxelaire
Founded: 2011
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $800,000 from Point Nine Capital

Slite

Slite is a content platform geared for the needs of the modern workplace. It enables teams to collaborate on documents with ease — whether it’s meeting notes, processes, or how to’s. With Slite, businesses can easily organize and unify their document database. The Next Web, PayFit, and Spendesk are already using the functionalities of the platform.

CEO: Christophe Pasquier
Founded: 2016
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $120,000 from Y Combinator

SimpliField

SimpliField offers B2B companies a powerful field intelligence tool. The mobile app provides businesses with a retail execution and sell-out solution by giving them insights into field sales, store management and maintenance, merchandising, and franchise performance. Some of the industries that can benefit from SimpliField include fashion and apparel, cosmetics, consumer goods, electronics, and healthcare.

CEO: Benjamin Zenou
Founded: 2013
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $4.5M from 50 Partners, Runa Capital, and others

FretLink

FretLink is a transportation marketplace that connects carriers with companies that need to make shipments. It is a flow management solution which aims to provide more business opportunities for transportation companies, as well as improve the visibility of logistical streams.

CEO: Paul Guillemin
Founded: 2015
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $6.4M from Elaia Partners, Daphni, and Breega Capital

Hyperlex

With Hyperlex, companies get a great helper with the management of their legal documents. The platform allows companies to organize and annotate their contracts and other paperwork. Contract management is executed via trained natural language processing algorithms.

CEO: Alexandre Grux
Founded: 2017
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $1M from Isai

Sellsy

Sellsy is a platform that assists companies with their customer relationship management, as well as sales management. Its main solutions include CRM pipeline, invoicing, time tracking, and more. With their help, businesses can track their full customer cycles — from prospecting to support — and thus boost their lead generation and customer relationship efforts.

CEO: Frédéric Coulais
Founded: 2009
Based in: La Rochelle
Funding to Date: $8.6M from Alto Invest, Sofiouest, and others

Azalead

Azalead’s account-based marketing solution aims to revolutionize B2B account-based marketing for global manufacturers. It offers reporting, execution, marketing intelligence, and account management tools, which allow B2B businesses to go beyond direct mail and email in their ABM efforts. Microsoft and Cisco are just two of the top companies that have chosen Azalead’s platform.

CEO: Nick Heys
Founded: 2013
Based in: Paris, Stockholm and Madison, USA
Funding to Date: $7.2M by Aurinvest and Idinvest Partners

Datananas

Datananas is a B2B sales engagement and lead relationship management platform that helps companies align their sales and marketing teams. It helps businesses communicate with their key customers and aggregate their sales data. Datananas also provides training and runs its own academy, dedicated to teaching B2B marketing professionals the top sales enablement techniques.

CEO: Romain Simon
Founded: 2014
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $1M from Xerys Funds and others

Smartly.ai

Smartly.ai is an artificial intelligence platform for voice and chat bots. Conversations are supported via Amazon Alexa, SMS, Web chat, Slack, Skype, and Facebook Messenger. Smartly.ai bots can be used in banking, e-commerce, tourism, and for smart speakers. Some of its top customers include Deloitte, Orange, and BNP Paribas.

CEO: Hicham Tahiri
Founded: 2012
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $945,500 from BNP Paribas, NUMA, and others

Captain Contrat

Captain Contrat is the leader in legal tech in France. The platform provides business owners and managers with a wide range of legal documents, which have been prepared by lawyers in their respective industries. Captain Contrat can supply entrepreneurs with the necessary documentation to start a business, manage processes and staff, and draft all sorts of contracts.

CEO: Philippe Wagner
Founded: 2013
Based in: Paris
Funding to Date: $5M from CapHorn Invest, Aurinvest, and others

Streamdata.io

Streamdata.io provides a proxy-as-a-service solution. It transforms APIs into event-driven feeds without complicated technicalities. Some of its use cases include UX animated interfaces, feeding AI systems with time-sensitive data, and efficient information distribution. Streamdata.io can be useful for data providers by allowing them to generate revenue from existing APIs, as well as for data scientists who can use APIs to input time-sensitive information in their event models.

CEO: Eric Horesnyi
Founded: 2008
Based in: Meylan
Funding to Date: $9.4M from Seventure Partners, Naxicap Partners, Sigma Gestion, and others