In Italy, 75.6% of companies with 10 or more employees pay for cloud services; in Spain the figure is 41.65%. That gap is why one plan for both countries wastes budget. A SaaS market entry strategy for Spain and Italy comes down to six steps: size the market, define the ideal customer profile (ICP), map competitors, set your positioning, choose channels and commit to a 90-day plan with clear checkpoints. Done in that order, each step narrows the next one, and spend stays low until the data justifies more.
If you are wondering how to expand SaaS to Spain or Italy without an office, a local team or a customer base, treat the two countries as separate markets that share a language family and some buying habits. They differ in cloud maturity, company structure and regulation. A single “Southern Europe” plan hides those gaps, and that is where budgets disappear. The rest of this guide walks through each step with typical, hypothetical situations, so your international expansion plan for SaaS starts from data instead of assumptions.
Step 1: Size the market with a bottom-up count
Top-down numbers such as “the European SaaS market is worth X” tell you little about your first year. Start from the companies you could actually sell to.
Spain gives a useful base. On 1 January 2025 there were 3,310,824 economically active companies, up 1.7% year on year (INE, DIRCE). Of those, 19.9% had been operating for less than two years and 18.9% for 20 years or more. A product aimed at new businesses that are still choosing their tools faces a very different pool from one aimed at established firms with entrenched processes.
Cloud maturity differs even more. According to Eurostat’s 2025 survey, 75.6% of Italian companies with at least 10 employees paid for cloud computing services, 14.2 percentage points more than in 2023. In Spain the figure was 41.65%, and the EU average was 52.7%. For a SaaS vendor, Italy looks like a market where buyers already understand the category. Spain may require more education, but it also leaves more room before the market saturates.
To turn this into a number, filter by sector, size and region, count the companies that match, and multiply by a realistic annual contract value. For illustration only: if 6,000 companies match your filters and your average contract is 3,000 euros a year, the ceiling is 18 million euros. Your first-year target will be a small fraction of that, and the exercise tells you whether the market is worth entering at all.
Step 2: Define the ICP with geography included
An ICP for a new market needs four fields: company size, sector, buyer role and the event that triggers a purchase. Add a fifth: region.
In Spain, three autonomous communities hold the largest share of active companies: Catalonia (18.4%), Andalusia (16.3%) and the Community of Madrid (15.9%). Together they account for more than half of the total, so a first focus on one or two of them is easy to justify. A hypothetical B2B invoicing tool might choose Madrid and Catalonia because of company density, then test Andalusia once the sales process works.
Write the ICP as a one-page document. If two people on your team describe the ideal customer differently, you are not ready to spend on acquisition.
Step 3: Map competitors in each country
Your competitors in Spain and Italy are not necessarily the ones you know from your home market. Local vendors often win on language, support hours and integrations with national tools, even when their product is simpler.
Build a table with five columns: direct competitors, indirect alternatives (spreadsheets, consultants, legacy software), pricing model, languages supported and key integrations. Then check how each one presents itself: which segments appear on its homepage, which case study types it shows, and which review sites it uses. A typical finding is that every local player targets the same segment, which leaves a neighbouring segment underserved.
Keep the mapping factual and descriptive. Its purpose is to reveal gaps and the alternatives your buyers use today, which are often not software at all.
Step 4: Set positioning that fits local buyers
Positioning answers one question: why should this specific buyer choose you over the current alternative? Take your global message and test it against what you found in steps 2 and 3.
Localization goes beyond translation. Pricing in euros, local payment methods, support in the local language and compliance with local rules all shape trust.
Italy is a clear example. Electronic invoicing through the Sistema di Interscambio (SDI) has been mandatory for B2B and B2C since 1 January 2019 (Legislative Decree 127/2015), and since 1 January 2024 it applies to all VAT-registered businesses, including those under the flat-rate regime. Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/3150 lets Italy keep the obligation until 31 December 2027.
Foreign companies with no permanent establishment or Italian VAT number are not subject to it. Even so, if your product touches billing, accounting or finance, Italian buyers will ask how it works with SDI, and a clear answer on your page can shorten the sales cycle.
Write one positioning statement per country, in the format: for [ICP] who [problem], [product] is a [category] that [main benefit], unlike [current alternative]. If the Spanish and Italian versions end up identical, check whether you are describing two markets or just copying one.
Step 5: Select channels by stage, not by habit
With no brand awareness, pick two channels and give them enough time to produce data. A reasonable shortlist for a SaaS company entering Spain or Italy:
- Outbound to a list built from your ICP, with messages written natively in Spanish or Italian.
- Search content targeting local-language queries, which tend to have less competition than English ones.
- Partnerships with local consultancies, agencies or integrators who already serve your ICP.
- LinkedIn presence from a named person, since many B2B decisions start with a profile check.
- Paid ads, used later, once messaging has been validated.
The order matters. Outbound and partnerships generate conversations quickly and reveal objections. Content compounds more slowly, so start it early but do not expect results in the first month. Paid ads amplify a message that already works, and they punish one that does not.
Step 6: Build the first-90-days plan
Divide the plan into three blocks of 30 days, each with one question to answer.
Days 1-30: Is the ICP real?
Run interviews and a first outbound batch. Set up the legal and billing basics: local pricing, a Spanish or Italian version of your key pages, and a clear answer on invoicing and data protection. Deliverable: a validated ICP and a list of the top objections.
Days 31-60: Does the message convert?
Launch outbound at modest volume, publish the first local-language content and open two or three partner conversations. Track reply rate, meetings booked and the reasons for rejection. Adjust positioning weekly.
Days 61-90: Can you repeat it?
Look for a repeatable path from first contact to signed deal. Document it, estimate the cost of acquiring a customer, and decide whether to scale, change segment or pause. A hypothetical result such as “three paid pilots in Madrid, none in Milan” is a valid outcome, because it tells you where to put the next quarter’s budget.
Define the success metrics before day 1: number of qualified conversations, demos, pilots, and a target for acquisition cost. Without them, a 90-day plan turns into 90 days of activity.
One practical tip: hold 10 local conversations before spending on ads
Before you buy a single ad, talk to 10 people who match your ICP in each country. Ask how they solve the problem today, what they pay for it, who signs off on the purchase, and which words they use to describe the pain.
Record the exact phrases. Those phrases become your headlines, your outbound subject lines and your positioning statement. If you cannot find 10 people willing to talk, that is also data: the segment may be too narrow or the problem not urgent enough.
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