Help Center

ISVWorld is the largest data platform covering SaaS companies and independent Software Vendors (ISVs) globally - currently tracking over 220,000 ISVs and continuing to grow.

We cover the well-known global multi-billion software companies, but more importantly, we also include the small, innovative and emerging companies and startups. In our tool, you can find ISVs based on market segments, ecosystems, size, geographies and more. Additionally, you can also explore and export market statistics and contact information.

As a registered user

You are a registered user if you have/had a trial account or if you have/had a subscription. While logged in go to the Pricing page and choose the subscription you would like to purchase (by clicking on the “Buy now” button). Next, you can choose to include additional company and contact download credits or add additional users to your subscription. Click on “Checkout” at the bottom of the page and follow the payment process steps. It is recommended that the person who will be designated "account owner" performs these steps, e.g., the person who will manage the subscription users and allocate download access to users.

As a non-registered user

Please first register here. After creating (and verifying) your account, you can go to the Pricing page and follow the steps for registered users (see the section above).

Invoices

During the payment process you will have the option to download an invoice but the account owner will also receive an invoice via email.

Account activation: All accounts are activated automatically upon confirmation of the payment. As a result, payment by credit card is the fastest route to getting full online access since the activation code from our back office/payment provider will be sent directly upon completion of the transaction.

Payment methods: All major credit cards as well as bank transfers are possible. Credit card payments are usually active within 24 hours, subscriptions through bank transfers will be activated once the payment has been received.

IMPORTANT - Credit cards: Usually, a subscription paid by a credit card is activated within a few minutes (but can take up to 24 hours). If this process takes longer you may want to check with your credit card company. Card transactions for large amounts, online and international, are sometimes blocked by the card provider and marked as suspicious. If that is not the case, please contact us.

IMPORTANT - Bank transfers: When you do a bank transfer, please make sure that you use the full reference details to ensure automatic activation.

In case your needs exceed the number of users included in your subscription, the account owner (the person who initiates the contract and processes the payment) can buy additional user seats Dashboard -> Subusers. Additionally, using this same interface, the account owner can assign users to open seats on the contract. Alternatively, you can contact ISVWorld and ask us to activate incremental users for a subscription.

If you would like to change the account owner of your subscription, please contact us at info@isvworld.com. Changing the account owner can only be done only under certain conditions and might lead to some loss of data tracked under your subscription.

It is possible to change the users on a subscription. However, please be aware of our terms & conditions below.

Our terms and conditions state the following:

• ISVWorld works with named users, not with concurrent users. Hence, each User License (seat) enables access to the product by 1 (one) named user representing a single client user. If a named user had to be removed from the access list (s)he can be replaced by a new user, but (s)he is blocked and can never be added back in.
• Access to the ISVWorld database shall be controlled by ISVWorld through the use of username/password combinations for named users, is strictly named users only and will be controlled a/o through IP addresses. Username and password sharing are not allowed.
• Access is limited to employees of the company who has bought the subscription.

The account owner can assign/remove users directly through the platform (Dashboard -> Subusers). After this, if the added user already exists in our system (s)he will be directly added to the subscription. If the added user is not yet registered (s)he will receive an email to set up and verify their account. 

Yes! All subscriptions can be upgraded at any point and you will always receive the full applicable credit for earlier subscriptions you have bought. Upgrade your subscription here.

Unfortunately, we do not offer monthly or quarterly subscriptions, we offer annual subscriptions only.

However, if you need more time to evaluate after your initial free trial has expired, please do contact us and we can always see if something can be arranged to meet your best interests. Additionally, depending on your needs and requirements we can potentially work together on a custom project to get you the data you need.

Unfortunately, we are not able to create and sell subscriptions for subsets of our database. When purchasing our subscriptions you obtain access to the whole database. So, for example, a subscription with US data only or with Western Europe data only is not possible.

If you are looking for one-off custom data sets, please feel free to contact us to evaluate what's possible.

The amount of company and contact downloads/exports depends on your subscription type and is calculated annually per subscription (not per user). Click here o see more details per subscription.

For one company credit, you obtain the profile/information of one company. Please note that contact details (e.g., name, email address, phone number) are not included in a company download and are a part of a contact download, covered by contact credits. For more details see the FAQ item "What is included in a company/contact export file".

You will receive the downloaded data in a csv file. When downloading both company and contact data you receive two separate files (one for company and one for contact downloads) to facilitate import in your CRM or marketing software tool. If needed, additional company and/or contact credits can be purchased with any subscription.

Exported vendor profile contains the basic information about a company and you receive it in a csv format for easy import into your CRM or other software (see next FAQ item).

The online profile contains much more information about the company (e.g. descriptions, industries, application types, ecosystems). Here you can also directly access individual contact information and find other companies similar to this one. See below examples of Online and Exported company profiles.

Example 1: Online Company Profile

Example 2: Exported Company Profile

When making a download the data is always received in a csv file. When downloading both company and contact information, you will receive them in two separate csv files (one for the company and one for contact data).

A basic Company export file will contain the following information: Company name, Website URL, Address (Street, Zip code, City, Country), Company phone numbers and email addresses, 3-5 main areas of activity, Size, Number of employees, Link to the full vendor profile @ISVWorld, Twitter and Facebook page link.

A basic Contact export file will contain the following information: First and last name, Job title, Seniority, Company name and website URL, Address, Email address and/or Phone number (depending on what you choose), and Last updated date. 

ISVWorld aims to cover every company that develops and commercializes standard software products and software IP. However, as almost all our data is computer-generated rather than manually curated, coverage of a Software Vendor (ISV or SaaS company) starts only when sufficient information about a company is available online.
A generally accepted definition of an ISV (Independent Software Vendor, also known as software publisher) on Techopedia is the following: An individual or business that builds, develops, and sells consumer or enterprise software. Although ISV-provided software is consumed by end users, it remains the property of the vendor. See also: 
http://www.techopedia.com/definition/140/independent-software-vendor-isv.

Below are a few examples of what companies are included in ISVWorld and why:

• SAP: an example of a well-known software company that develops and sells software and software-related services. This type of companies represents almost 80% of our database
• HP: an example of a well-known IT-company that has amongst others software products in its portfolio
• Infosys: an example of an IT-services company that includes however a significant software-business with for example Financial Services software
• Accenture: An IT-services and consulting company that also includes a number of software products, both developed in-house as well as obtained through acquisitions
• ABB: may be best known for their power and robotics engineering, but their automation business includes a software business that is sometimes estimated at around 300M
• Agfa: around 25% of Agfa's business is actually in healthcare software
• Content management providers that have developed their own CMS - Content Management system - and productize that CMS

Below a few examples of company types that are NOT included:

• Resellers: that only sell third party software and do not develop their own software
• Hosters and cloud platform providers that only use third party software for their hosting or cloud platforms
• System Integrators that do not have their own IP but only develop and/or implement third party software
• Software development companies that only offer bespoke (custom) development projects but that do not productize software
   

Please note that when companies are ranked by size, we take their TOTAL size (revenue) into account, not only their software business.

The definition of an ecosystem in Biology is: "An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system". In ISVWorld and ICT in general, we use the term "Ecosystem" to define a community of companies that in some form interact as a system. More specifically, we have two types of Ecosystems:

1. Company Ecosystems: Example: "Microsoft" - All companies that develop using Microsoft technology and/or have a business partnership with Microsoft
2. Common Technology Ecosystems: Example: "Cloud" - All ISVs that have cloud/SaaS based products Or "IoT" - All ISVs that show activity and/or integration within the domain of Internet of Things
3. "Payments" Ecosystem - Our Payment Ecosystem includes ISVs whose software is highly likely to process payments based on indicators we find in all profile information collected on every ISV we track. Specific proxy datapoints we track include areas like billing and invoicing functionality in the software, payment methods (for e-commerce in SaaS applications), and typical payment functionalities such as PCI compliance. Based on the spread and frequency of matches in each of these areas we score every ISV as being in the "Payment Ecosystem" Yes or No.

ISVWorld primarily focuses on collecting company data. Contact data is included in all our subscriptions, but it comes from 3rd party sources.

We feel that finding ISVs is the main challenge in this Industry. As a result, that is the product focus we've set for ourselves. ISVWorld is the best Software Vendor intelligence tool in the software industry. Once the ISVs/Companies have been identified there are other contact data providers who can supplement our company data with contact data. Therefore, we evaluate and partner with a number of contact information providers to provide contact data to our customers. Currently, we actively work with Cognism (online and offline), Clearbit & FULL DATA (offline and for dual validation only).

In the software industry usually a distinction is being made between Industries, sometimes called verticals, and Application Domains, more often called horizontals, domains or application types. Application Domains usually offer functionality applicable across multiple industries, while Industries focus on supporting business processes in a specific industry or profession.

Examples of Application Domains: Human Resource Management, Security software, CRM software, and Accounting Software.

Examples of Industries: Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail, and Energy.

You can see our full taxonomy of Industries and Applications here.

All content in our database is collected and generated automatically from a wide variety of sources. While we aim to have all company information as complete and accurate as possible, certain information (e.g., products, key people) is particularly hard to (a) make a clean extract for and (b) keep up to date. Other information is easier but nevertheless our technology always has to make choices on which content best represents a certain software vendor.

Company profiles are created based on a number of AI and Machine learning mechanisms that are updated continuously. Therefore, it is not possible to manually change and update information for a specific company. The information on any company in our database will be updated automatically, once enough (new and updated) information about it is collected.

EU GDPR brought many changes to marketing and sales strategies for companies focusing on EU prospects. Under GDPR, ISVWorld, as any other data provider, cannot obtain an opt-in for all our clients to reach out to contacts and prospects visible on our platform; our clients have the responsibility to get a specific opt-in just for their company. However, we did make a number of changes in our tool to "protect" our clients from reaching out to prospects in GDPR countries:

1. GDPR and Inside Sales in ISVWorld
   For every Contact (name/title) that is being displayed in our tool - on the software vendor profile page that is usually used by Inside Sales Reps – you can see whether that person is in a geography impacted by GDPR. As such, a sales representative can always decide whether (s)he wants to spend credits on obtaining that contact information or not. So, ISVWorld is fully transparent.
2. GDPR and Marketing in ISVWorldSimilarly, on our bulk-marketing download page, there is an option before downloading to include/exclude contacts from geographies impacted by GDPR. This way you can avoid bulk campaigns going to contacts in GDPR-GEO’s

Finally, we do work with external service providers that have access to ISVWorld and can help our clients to get client-specific opt-ins.

ISVWorld encourages clients to engage Marketing Service Providers (MSP) and we welcome Marketing Service Providers as clients as well. However, be aware that an additional MSP agreement needs to be signed in both cases as ISVWorld licenses explicitly prohibit reselling our data by an MSP in any form to any client other than the client identified on the MSP agreement.

Next to subscriptions to our online data platform, we offer a number of services and engage in custom projects.

Our services and projects are always based on data and complemented with additional research and/or consulting activities.

More information is available here.
 

ISVWorld score covers company traction and rank.

Traction: The traction an ISV has is based on a variety of indicators such as employee growth, unique website visitors, Alexa rank, overall web traffic, social media traction, breadth and depth of web presence and more. Traction is mapped against 4 categories ("significantly below average", "below average", "above average", and "significantly above average") and compared to the industry average. It is about the relative trend vs earlier measurements and is measured on a scale of 0 to 5 - with 0.73 being the midpoint.

Rank:  Rank translates traction into a relative position in the Top 100K ISVs we track globally, grouped by tiers (Top 1000, Top 5000 etcetera). This is an absolute score and not a relative trend score.

ISVWorld publishes 2 types of growth projections: short term and long term. They are available on the vendor profile page. Additionally, long term growth projections can be applied as a filter on the companies search page.

Short term: Estimation of projected short-term growth based on a combination of the traction trend and the general ISV profile. Short-term growth prediction is based on data from the last 12 months.

Long Term: Created based on all the (historic) data we have for an ISV. Long-term growth prediction takes into account "how modern" the ISV's application portfolio is and how up-to-date its products are. For example, having IoT, or API or using Microservices increases growth potential, but not having a Cloud-based product decreases the growth potential. Being active in 'hot' industries increases growth potential, the opposite decreases it.
 

We don't make an explicit distinction between B2B and B2C ISVs.

In the past we did make distinctions and estimated whether an ISV was B2B or B2C oriented. However, with many successful B2B/Enterprise software applications actually having their roots either in B2C or in simple departmental tools, we felt the boundaries between the two have completely disappeared

Therefore, we decided that application categories were actually better indicators. For example, categories like ERP, CRM or Marketing Software were complete B2B and others like Anti Virus/Security, Desktop Productivity or Graphics/Imaging were a mix of B2B and B2C.

ISVWorld calculates sizing estimates for private companies based on a number of proxy data points we can find for any company. Datapoints might include the total number of employees, employees per company location, the size of funding rounds, news and press releases that contain size indicators, and more.
We calculate multiple-size estimates, take out statistical outliers, and base our size estimates on consistent indicators only. ISVWorld size estimates are always expressed in ranges, for example, 5-10M$, 10-25M$ etcetera.

In the case of fast-growing companies, public data points usually lag actual company size and as a result, our estimates are sometimes lower than actuals.

ISVWorld uses Personalized labels as an additional level of refining your search results and to help your team more easily keep track of their work and progress. Through Personalized labels, you can exclude from your results (and downloads) companies that are labelled with a specific tag - by selecting the 'stop' sign next to the label name. Alternatively, you can choose to keep in your results only the companies with a specific label - by selecting a specific label name in the filters list.

There are six standard Personalized labels ("Favourite", "Seen", "Current Client", "Prospect", Not Interested", and "API") and an option to create additional six custom ones.

You can label a company in two ways:

1. In the results list - you can find all the labels on the top right corner of each company record
2. On the company profile page - you can find all the labels under the Overview section (top part of the page)

After applying any label it takes a few minutes (up to 60 minutes max.) for it to be indexed and processed, and be visible under the Personalized labels filter. You can find all your labelled ISVs in your Dashboard.

Differences per label:

• Favourite: each user of your subscription can have their list of Favourites. This is the only label that works per user, the rest is per subscription (shared among all users).
• Seen: gets activated automatically whenever you open a company profile
• API: available only for our Enterprise users
• Current Client, Prospect, Not Interested: shared among users. If user A labels a company as "Prospect", user B will also see this company labelled as "Prospect".

It is possible to do volume labelling. Our clients can send us a list of company URLs that they would like to have labelled with a specific label and we can upload this list under their subscription. This feature comes in handy for a quick exclusion of all the existing clients you are already working with, or companies you don't want to target, or for selecting a list of companies you already know but want to enrich.