You know what your competitors say. You don't know what it's like to be their prospect.
Fringes goes through their demos, trials, and sales sequences as a real prospect, and delivers the intelligence your sales and marketing teams can use immediately.
Finished intelligence, not a platform to build it yourself
Fringes is an outsourced competitive intelligence service for B2B SaaS: competitor mystery shopping, demo and trial teardowns, and sales-motion research, delivered as finished briefs.
Most competitive intelligence starts and ends with public information: marketing copy, G2 reviews, pricing pages. That tells you what a competitor wants the market to think. It doesn't tell you what a prospect actually experiences when they evaluate them.
Fringes closes that gap. We engage with your competitors as real prospects: requesting demos, going through trials, capturing nurture sequences, documenting every touchpoint in their sales motion. Then we synthesize what we find into finished intelligence your team can use: written briefs, battlecard-ready content, recorded walkthroughs.
On an ongoing retainer, we layer in continuous monitoring, tracking messaging pivots, pricing changes, new feature announcements, and early moves from competitors your team isn't watching yet.
We go through competitor demos as real prospects and document what your reps are actually up against.
Email sequences, objection handling, pricing conversations: the full post-demo experience, documented.
The players at the edges of your market: new entrants and adjacent tools gaining traction, tracked before they become a problem.
No platform to manage. Intelligence arrives as finished content your team can use the day it lands.
Built for the gap between DIY CI and Klue
Fringes is built for product marketers and sales leaders at mid-market B2B SaaS companies, typically 50 to 500 employees and $5M to $50M ARR.
You have a sales team losing deals to one or two competitors they don't understand well enough. You're writing battlecards from G2 reviews and marketing copy, but nobody on your team has actually been through a competitor's demo. You've looked at Klue or Crayon and thought "this is more platform than we need right now."
Fringes is what comes before a platform is justified.
A platform stores intelligence. We produce it.
A Klue and Crayon alternative for teams without a dedicated competitive intelligence owner.
- Aggregates public signals
- Requires someone to run it
- Battlecards you have to write
- No firsthand product experience
- $20K+ annually, platform cost
- Firsthand demo and trial experience
- We do the research and synthesis
- Finished content, ready to use
- Inside the competitor's sales motion
- Retainer-based, scoped to your needs
Active research on a retainer
We scope your competitive landscape and identify primary and fringe threats
We engage competitors as real prospects: demos, trials, email sequences
We deliver finished intelligence: briefs, battlecards, or recorded walkthroughs
Ongoing monitoring keeps you current as competitors evolve
Questions buyers ask before a scoping call
What is Fringes?
Fringes is an outsourced competitive intelligence service for B2B SaaS companies. Instead of software that aggregates public signals, a Fringes researcher goes through your competitors' demos, free trials and sales sequences the way a prospect would, then delivers finished intelligence: written briefs, battlecard-ready content and recorded walkthroughs your sales and marketing teams can use immediately.
How much does Fringes cost, and how does the retainer work?
Fringes is retainer-based rather than per-seat software. Every engagement starts with a scoping call to map your competitive landscape, then a single-competitor deep-dive so you can judge the output before committing to ongoing monitoring. Pricing depends on how many competitors you need covered and how often. Email [email protected] to book a scoping call.
Is it legal and ethical to evaluate a competitor's demo or trial as a prospect?
Yes, when it is done the way Fringes does it. We only use channels a competitor opens to any prospect: public demo requests, self-serve trials and standard sales outreach. We do not access private systems, sign agreements we would breach, or use confidential information obtained improperly. This is competitor mystery shopping, a standard B2B competitive research method.
How is Fringes different from Klue or Crayon?
Klue and Crayon are platforms: they aggregate public signals and give your team a place to store battlecards, and someone on your team still has to run them and write the content. Fringes is the research and the writing. We produce firsthand intelligence from inside a competitor's sales motion and deliver it finished. Fringes suits teams that are not ready to staff and pay for a platform, which is usually the stage before a dedicated competitive intelligence owner is justified.
How is this different from win-loss analysis?
Win-loss interviews your own buyers after a deal closes, so it tells you how you were perceived. Fringes goes through the competitor's demo, trial and follow-up directly, so it tells you what their prospects actually experience, whether or not you were in the deal. The two complement each other. Fringes is the part you cannot get from your own customers.
What do you actually deliver?
Finished, ready-to-use intelligence, not raw notes: written competitor briefs, battlecard-ready content, and recorded demo and trial walkthroughs. On a retainer we add ongoing monitoring of messaging pivots, pricing changes, feature announcements and early moves from fringe competitors. Nothing requires a platform to manage.
Who is Fringes for, and who is it not for?
Fringes is built for product marketers and sales leaders at mid-market B2B SaaS companies, typically 50 to 500 employees and $5M to $50M ARR, who are losing deals to one or two competitors they do not understand well enough. It is not the right fit for enterprises with a staffed competitive intelligence function and a platform already in place, or for teams that only need public-web monitoring.
Can I start with a single competitor?
Yes. Most engagements begin with a single-competitor deep-dive after the scoping call. It is the fastest way to see whether the intelligence changes how your team sells. Most clients find something useful in the first report, and ongoing monitoring or additional competitors can be added afterwards.
See what your competitors' prospects see
Start with a single competitor deep-dive. Most clients find something useful in the first report.