Cloud Vs SaaS: What’s the Difference?

(This post was last published on February 6th, 2018. It has been updated for accuracy and completeness.) 

Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) are two terms you see all the time now. When evaluating different technology options to run your business, you’ll see descriptions like cloud-based, hosted, SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS.

It’s important to understand these terms because their differences affect how you interact with the different technology you use every day.

So, what do these different terms actually mean?