Paid Ads vs SEO vs Cold Email vs Viral Posts vs Integrations: Which Gets an Early SaaS Users?

Short answer: no channel clears every obstacle an early-stage SaaS runs into. We put five of them through the same six:

• Zero audience.
• The spam filter.
• The ad budget running out.
• An algorithm change.
• A "launch by Friday" deadline.
• The trust gap.

Integrations with a revenue share cleared five. They failed only the deadline, because you need a partner to say yes and a day to build. Viral posts cleared four, one of them on luck. Paid ads and SEO cleared three each, and cold email two. The practical answer is to use the fast channels for launch week and start one integration in parallel, because it's the one that keeps working when the others stop.

Picture day one of your app. Nobody's there.

So you buy ads. The clicks are expensive, and the people who do click mostly leave. Meanwhile, the app next door, a product that serves exactly the same customers you want, already has them. Every day, in a tool those customers trust.

So you put in a door: your feature, inside their product. And you split whatever comes through it.

That's the whole of this post in four sentences. The rest is the scoreboard.

Why is getting users so hard for a new SaaS right now?

When I went through every channel I could think of to get users for Ordana, the more I looked, the uglier it got:

• Search ads cost more per lead every year.
• Organic search sends fewer clicks now that AI answers sit on top of the results.
• Paid social mostly reaches people who will never pay.
• Influencers are expensive, and their audiences trust them less every year.
• Communities punish anything that smells like promotion.
• Automated outreach gets very few replies.

None of these channels is dead. But each one now has an obstacle that a new product with no audience and no budget hits head-on. So rather than ranking channels by how good they are in general, it's more useful to ask: which obstacles does each one get through?

The six obstacles every early SaaS hits

1. Zero audience. Nobody knows you exist. No followers, no domain authority, no list.
2. The spam filter. Inboxes, feeds and communities are built to keep strangers out.
3. The ad budget runs out. Anything you pay for stops the moment you stop paying.
4. An algorithm change. A platform you depend on changes its rules overnight, and your reach goes with it.
5. Launch by Friday. You need users this week, not next quarter.
6. The trust gap. Even when people see you, they don't know you, and an unknown product asking for their data or card is an easy no.

The scoreboard

This is a judgement, not a controlled experiment, and your market will move some of the ticks. Every tick and cross has a reason, though, and those reasons are what's worth arguing with.

Paid ads: 3 out of 6

Clears: zero audience (you pay your way up), the spam filter (an ad isn't filtered, it's sold), and launch by Friday (a campaign can run today).

Fails: the budget running out (the users stop when the spend stops), an algorithm change (a change to targeting or pricing can double your cost overnight) and the trust gap (an ad reads as an ad, and a stranger's product in an ad is the easiest thing in the world to ignore).

Still the right call when you know what a customer is worth, you know what one costs to acquire, and the first number is comfortably bigger. That's rarely true in month one.

Cold email: 2 out of 6

Clears: the budget running out (it's cheap to keep sending) and launch by Friday (you can send today).

Fails: zero audience (you need a list, and a reason a stranger would read past the first line), the spam filter (literally), an algorithm change (deliverability rules change, and your domain is the one that pays) and the trust gap (an unsolicited email from an unknown company is the definition of it).

Still the right call when you sell something expensive to a small, precisely defined group of businesses, you can write to each one personally, and one reply is worth a lot.

SEO: 3 out of 6

Clears: the spam filter (people come looking for you), the budget running out (a page that ranks keeps working without spend), and, slowly, the trust gap (useful content builds credibility a page at a time).

Fails: zero audience (a new domain with no authority ranks for almost nothing), an algorithm change (one update can reshuffle your traffic) and launch by Friday (SEO is measured in months).

Still the right call when people already search for the problem you solve and you can wait six to twelve months for it to compound. Start early, because it's slow, but don't depend on it for the launch.

Viral posts: 4 out of 6

Clears: zero audience (one post can reach people you've never met, though that's mostly luck), the spam filter (a feed isn't an inbox), the budget running out (posting is free) and launch by Friday (you can post today).

Fails: an algorithm change (your reach belongs to the platform, which can change it whenever it likes) and the trust gap (viral attention is wide and shallow: lots of people see you once and remember nothing).

Still the right call when you have a story or a point of view people actually want to share, and you can keep posting without depending on any single post. Treat a hit as a bonus, not a plan.

Integration with a revenue share: 5 out of 6

Clears:

• Zero audience: you borrow the partner's. Their users are already there, every day.
• The spam filter: your product appears inside a tool the user chose, not in their inbox.
• The budget running out: there's no upfront spend. The partner is paid a share of the sales that come through the integration.
• An algorithm change: there's no algorithm between the partner's product and the partner's users.
• The trust gap: the partner's trust carries you. Their users meet you inside something they already rely on.

Fails: launch by Friday. You need a partner to say yes, and someone has to build the integration. With a coding agent, building one side is often a day's work: one integration of ours went live 24 hours after both sides said yes. Finding the right partner and agreeing terms takes longer than posting on a Friday afternoon.

How well it can work: in one of our own integrations, our product sat inside a partner's app, and 32% of the founders who clicked through signed up. (What happened when the partner put four affiliate links next to ours.)

Where it's weak: it depends on choosing the right partner, one that shares your customer at a different step of the same job, and on agreeing who gets paid what, who fixes what and how either side leaves. Get those wrong and it fails slowly instead of quickly.

How should an early SaaS combine these channels?

You don't have to pick one. The scoreboard tells you what each is for.

• Launch week: posts and personal outreach. They're the only channels that clear the deadline cheaply.
• Start in parallel: one integration with a product that already has your customers. Use the launch-week channels to learn your customer's language. Use the integration to reach them where they already are.
• Start early, expect late: SEO, on the questions your customers already search for.
• Last, not first: paid ads, once you know what a customer is worth.

If you want to score a channel against your own numbers rather than ours, use our five-criteria method for evaluating a growth channel. And if you've been posting more and getting less, here's why "post more" stopped working.

How do you start your first integration this week?

1. Write down the step your customer takes just before using you and the step just after it.
2. List the products that serve those steps and don't compete with you. Small ones first. Why five small partners usually beat one big one.
3. Offer each one something their users can use, like one feature of yours inside their product, plus a share of every sale it brings. Here's how to get other SaaS products to integrate yours.
4. Agree the terms before anyone builds anything.

Where Ordana fits

Ordana is where the integration channel gets set up. You can list one of your features as a widget that other startups can add to their products, or find startups that already sell to your customer and agree a revenue share with them. Every sale is tagged at the payment and split automatically, so each side is paid into its own account. You build your side of the integration yourself, and Ordana handles the contract, the tracking and the split.

Frequently asked questions

Is SEO or paid ads better for a startup?

It depends on time and money. Paid ads can bring users this week but stop the moment the budget does. SEO costs little to keep running and builds trust, but takes months to work on a new domain. Most early-stage SaaS products should start SEO early on the questions customers already search for, and hold off on ads until they know what a customer is worth.

What is the best marketing channel for an early-stage SaaS?

No single channel clears every obstacle. In our comparison, an integration with a revenue share got through the most (zero audience, spam filters, a budget running out, algorithm changes and the trust gap) but is slower to start. Posts and personal outreach are best for launch week. A combination usually beats any single channel.

Does cold email still work for SaaS?

It works best for expensive products sold to a small, precisely defined group of businesses, where each email can be written personally and one reply is worth a lot. For low-priced self-serve products, it fails most of the obstacles a new company faces: no list, spam filters, deliverability changes and a lack of trust.

How do you market a SaaS with no audience?

Borrow an audience that already exists and already trusts someone. The most direct way is an integration with a product that serves the same customer at a different step of the same job, so your feature appears inside a tool they already use, with the partner earning a share of the sales it brings. Use posts and personal outreach in parallel while it gets set up.

Are integrations a real growth channel for small SaaS?

Yes, when the partner shares your customer and earns from the integration. A product shown inside a tool users already trust converts very differently from a link: in one of our integrations, 32% of the founders who clicked through signed up. The work is in choosing the right partner and agreeing terms first.

Related reading:

• How to Evaluate a Growth Channel: 5 Criteria: score any channel against your own numbers.
• Why "Post More" Stopped Working for SaaS Marketing: the volume trap.
• How to Get Customers for Your SaaS Without Ads: the partnership models compared.
• Should a Startup Partner With a Big Company?: why your first partners should be small.