Earlier this week, software marketplace G2 released results from its summer 2021 research project, which invites enterprises to compare aggregated software review scores and discover solutions. In total, the research includes a whooping 7,000 reports and market grids across 2,000 categories. The company also announced it had raised $157 million in funding.

In addition to traditional topics like analytics, customer service, and IT management, this quarter’s research includes 32 new categories. The company says the new categories are largely driven by travel and digital marketing software, including CMS tools, ecommerce tools, and event stream processing. Additional fast-growing verticals included for the first time include revenue operations, hybrid cloud storage, and conversational support.

“This is the largest number of new reports since our fall 2020 reports, which signals strong growth and reflects what we’re seeing in the market. Companies are investing in digital transformation and software tools that enable nimble growth in the post-pandemic age,” G2 market research manager Emily Malis told VentureBeat.

The reports evaluate software based on customer satisfaction and market presence, providing scores for each, as well as a “G2 score.” Based on these factors, the evaluated offerings are also compared to each other for a view of each category’s competitive landscape. Products described as “leaders,” for example, are rated highly by G2 users and show a substantial market presence. There are also “high-performing” products, which have high customer satisfaction but low market presence compared to competitors. “Contender” products, on the other hand, may have positive reviews but not enough total reviews to validate the ratings. G2 also considers “niche” products, which have low satisfaction and market presence scores.

CMS tools

G2 said total visits to the CRM tools category on its platform increased 38% between June 2020 and June 2021, showing strong growth. Additionally, the number of unique visits increased 48%.

The research in this category shows WeTransfer is a clear leader, with more than 4 times the number of reviews as its competitors. The company, which provides file-sharing tools, achieved near-perfect scores in both customer satisfaction and market presence — 98 and 99, respectively. G2’s report also lists Beyond Compare, Patreon, and Tube Buddy as leaders in the CMS tools category, though most of their scores were significantly lower than WeTransfer’s.

While several additional CMS tool providers scored well in customer satisfaction, they generally demonstrated low market share. Overall, the findings indicate that We Transfer is edging out competitors, even those with satisfied users.

Revenue operations software

In the revenue operations software report, the landscape looks much more distributed, with Clari, InsightSquared, Gong, and Aviso emerging as leaders. And while Clari ranks highest — as the only one with a G2 score above 90 — the others aren’t far behind. Tableau CRM, formerly Einstein Analytics, is the only company currently considered a contender. BoostUp.ai and Boost showed high market presence, while Gainsight, TopOPPS, and SalesDirector.ai came in as “niche.”

G2 told VentureBeat it considers software categories robust enough for a grid report when they have six or more products with more than 10 reviews on a platform. Additionally, the category as a whole must have at least 150 reviews. G2 just added revenue operations to its platform last month, so the fact that the category was already eligible for inclusion speaks to its growth.

“We believe this category will continue to expand as revenue operations software continues to grow in popularity,” said Malis, who added that the category’s boost stems from a need for better alignment with customer data across departments involved with revenue. Customer success, marketing, and sales teams have long operated in silos, but revenue software can combine customer data across various tech stacks into one unified platform and allow businesses to improve efficiency, drive revenue predictability, and achieve higher revenue growth.

G2 said monthly Google search volumes for the term “revenue operations” have increased over 500% since May of 2018, according to data from Ahrefs. What’s more, over 25% of the revenue operations vendors on G2 have secured additional funding rounds in the last two years.

AI and data

The pandemic “turbocharged” digital transformation, so it’s not surprising to see interest spiking in AI and data-related solutions.

“Established companies ended up scrambling for software to ensure business continuity during the past year, and SMB companies struggled to stay afloat. Many companies realized they had tons of unstructured data but no plan or strategy on how to use or manage it,” Malis said.

She added that G2 has seen an influx in buyer interest in new data-related categories and has recently added categories like data fabric software to meet that demand. Soon it will launch additional data-related categories, including DataOps platforms and data warehouses.

Along with the rise in interest, G2 has observed changes in the data marketplace, including an increase in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Malis said since February 2021 G2 has addressed over 100 M&As, and the company is seeing an increase in consolidation in various software markets. Predictably, the tech giants of the world, including Amazon, Google, and Alibaba, are getting bigger, due to acquisitions and the rewards of the cloud boom. G2 has also seen established companies become more entrenched by launching new products or partnering with other vendors. For example, Mailchimp moved into the ecommerce space, and Celonis announced a partnership with IBM to sell its process mining software. But G2 says even small and medium-sized businesses are focusing on data more than ever.