Best User Activation Tools to Increase Retention
Discover the top user activation tools to boost retention and turn new users into loyal customers with our expert guide.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
At first glance, Appcues and UserGuiding both serve as powerful user onboarding platforms, designed to simplify the user experience and increase product adoption. However, when we look closer, we see significant differences in their functionality, target audiences, and price points, making each suitable for different types of businesses.
Appcues is a no-code onboarding platform, best suited for mid-sized to large SaaS businesses that need advanced user segmentation, detailed onboarding analytics, and flexibility in customizing user experiences. It’s aimed at product managers and growth teams looking to scale customer success through tailored in-app flows.
On the other hand, UserGuiding is geared towards startups and smaller teams looking for a simple, affordable solution for onboarding and user guidance. With a focus on ease of use and rapid setup, it targets product teams, customer success managers, and marketers who want a user-friendly platform without extensive customization.
In this detailed comparison of Appcues vs. UserGuiding, we’ll explore the differences across the following areas:
- User Onboarding
- Product Adoption
- Customer Experience
- User Feedback
Let’s dive into the comparison!
Comparison Summary: Appcues Vs UserGuiding
Features | Appcues | UserGuiding |
User Onboarding | ★★★★★ - Extensive customization and features | ★★★★ - Intuitive onboarding flows with fewer customization options |
Product Adoption | ★★★★★ - Strong analytics and segmentation | ★★★ - Basic analytics and limited segmentation |
Customer Experience | ★★★★ - Good user support tools | ★★★★★ - Excellent user engagement features |
User Feedback | ★★★ - Basic feedback collection tools | ★★★★★ - Comprehensive feedback options with in built survey templates |
Pricing | ★★ - Higher cost starting at $249/month | ★★★★★ - Affordable starting at $89/month |
Review Ratings | ||
Best For | Enterprises and large teams | Startups and small businesses |
What is Appcues?
Appcues is a powerful no-code platform designed for user onboarding, in-app messaging, and feature adoption. It offers product managers the ability to create personalized user experiences and guides without any coding.
Key features include:
- Drag-and-drop onboarding flow builder.
- Pre-defined UI patterns like hotspots, modals, and tooltips.
- In-app guides for feature education.
- Advanced user segmentation based on behavior and attributes.
- Analytics for tracking onboarding success and user engagement.
Who’s it best for?
Appcues is ideal for large teams or enterprises that require a flexible and customizable onboarding solution with detailed segmentation and analysis capabilities.
What is UserGuiding?
UserGuiding offers a more budget-friendly solution for creating onboarding flows, product tours, and in-app messages. It focuses on simplicity and ease of use, allowing teams to create onboarding content without any technical expertise.
Key features include:
- Step-by-step product tours and onboarding checklists.
- No-code builder for in-app guides and tooltips.
- Segmentation tools for targeted onboarding experiences.
- Feedback collection through NPS and CSAT surveys.
- Affordable pricing plans tailored for startups and smaller teams.
Who’s it best for?
UserGuiding is a great fit for startups, small businesses, and teams looking for an easy-to-use tool for product onboarding at an affordable price.
Appcues vs. UserGuiding for User Onboarding
In this section, we will compare Appcues and UserGuiding regarding user onboarding, helping you determine which tool is best suited for your needs.
Appcues for User Onboarding
Appcues excels at seamlessly onboarding new users. It offers a variety of features aimed at enhancing user activation, conversion, and retention.
Here’s how Appcues supports new user onboarding:
- Drag-and-Drop Builder: The no-code builder allows you to design customized onboarding tours and checklists to assist new users. You can personalize UI elements such as hotspots, modals, slideouts, and tooltips.
- In-App Guides and Tours: Use various UI patterns to introduce users to product features in a structured sequence, or guide them with checklists as they explore your app.
- Checklists: Although checklists are available (not on the Essentials plan), they offer limited functionality compared to alternatives like UserGuiding, lacking options for triggering JS functions or adding gamification.
- Measure and Improve: Track in-app flow performance and measure specific events (limited to five on the Essentials plan) to identify improvement opportunities.
- Test and Optimize: The A/B testing feature enables you to compare different onboarding flows, helping you refine your processes based on performance.
- Segmentation: You can utilize pre-defined audience segments or create custom segments based on factors like plan tier and lifecycle stage, allowing for personalized messaging.
UserGuiding for User Onboarding
UserGuiding is a no-code onboarding tool packed with features to create flows for new customers, guiding them through their journey.
Here’s what UserGuiding offers:
- Interactive Walkthroughs: Create engaging product walkthroughs without needing developer input, as the platform is completely code-free.
- Onboarding Checklists: Drive customers toward activation by clarifying the next steps with checklists.
- Engaging Elements: Utilize interactive features like product tours, tooltips, and pop-ups to maintain user engagement and increase onboarding completion rates.
- Resource Center: Build a resource center to house various educational materials for users.
While UserGuiding is an excellent choice for startups with budget constraints, its Basic plan imposes strict limitations, allowing only 20 guides and hotspots, 2 onboarding checklists, and 1 resource center. To unlock unlimited guides and UI patterns, you would need the Professional plan, which ranges from $249.
A notable drawback of UserGuiding is its analytics dashboard, which only tracks elements created within the platform.
🏆 Winner : Appcues (Appcues-1, UserGuiding-0)
Appcues excels in this round due to its advanced segmentation, A/B testing, and diverse customizable UI patterns.
Appcues vs. UserGuiding for Product Adoption
In this section, we will evaluate Appcues and UserGuiding regarding product adoption, helping you identify the best option for your requirements.
Appcues for Product Adoption
Appcues features robust tools to drive conversions from free to paid plans and encourage upsells. Here’s how it aids product adoption:
- No-Code Builder: The intuitive builder allows you to create onboarding flows that guide users through your app while publishing in-app announcements to highlight new features and events.
- Pre-Designed Templates: Access a variety of templates for each UI pattern to easily create product tours, tutorials, and announcements.
- Flow Targeting: Segment users based on in-app activity, online behavior, and lifecycle stage, making it easier to customize your messaging and convert trials into paying customers.
- Review Prompts: Available on Appcues Mobile, this feature encourages users to rate and review your app at opportune moments, potentially driving new sign-ups.
- Other Features: Additional functionalities like event tracking and A/B testing enhance product adoption efforts.
However, while Appcues emphasizes in-app experiences, it falls short in product analytics. Without detailed data, understanding user adoption and identifying areas needing support can be challenging. Integrations with tools like Amplitude incur extra costs, making it less ideal for those solely focused on product adoption.
UserGuiding for Product Adoption
As a no-code onboarding solution, UserGuiding offers features to help create onboarding flows for new customers and guide them along their journey.
Here’s what to expect from UserGuiding:
- Interactive Walkthroughs: Design product walkthroughs without developer involvement.
- Onboarding Checklists: Guide users toward activation by clarifying the next steps.
- Engaging Elements: Implement interactive features like product tours, tooltips, and pop-ups to enhance user engagement.
- Resource Center: Build a resource center with educational materials for users.
While UserGuiding is a strong option for budget-conscious startups, its Basic plan comes with stringent limitations. Users can only create 20 guides, 2 onboarding checklists, and 1 resource center. The Professional plan, ranging from $249 allows for unlimited guides and patterns.
A significant downside is the limited analytics dashboard, which only provides data on elements created in UserGuiding, lacking the comprehensive tracking of all user interactions.
🏆 Winner:Appcues (Appcues-2, UserGuiding-0)
Appcues takes the lead again for product adoption due to its advanced targeting capabilities, rich feature set, and customization options.
Appcues vs. UserGuiding for Customer Experience
In this section, we will examine how Appcues and UserGuiding contribute to customer experience, helping you decide which tool fits your needs best.
Appcues for Customer Experience
Appcues significantly enhances customer experience (CX) by offering:
- Guided Tours: UI patterns like checklists, hotspots, modals, and tooltips simplify onboarding with in-app tours.
- Launchpad: Users can access Appcues onboarding flows from a notification dropdown within your product.
- NPS Surveys: Collect customer feedback to improve your product, though unlike Userpilot, Appcues only provides NPS surveys.
- Segmentation and Event Tracking: These features assist in personalizing the user experience.
However, Appcues focuses primarily on onboarding and doesn't guarantee a seamless overall customer experience. To enhance UX, attention to customer support and relationship-building is necessary, requiring additional surveys, on-demand support, and comprehensive analytics, which are areas where Appcues may lack.
UserGuiding for Customer Experience
UserGuiding’s features are primarily geared toward the earlier stages of the user journey, but certain elements can still enhance customer experience optimization:
- Surveys: Gathering qualitative feedback through UserGuiding surveys can provide insights for improving customer journeys.
- MAUs: Tracking Monthly Active Users helps assess trends in customer experience over time.
- Activity Feed: Analyze user engagement with different tool areas to identify potential improvements.
🏆Winner: Tie (Appcues-3, UserGuiding-1)
Both platforms offer robust customer experience tools: Appcues features advanced UI patterns and segmentation, while UserGuiding prioritizes simplicity and ease of use.
Appcues vs. UserGuiding for User Feedback
In this section, we’ll explore how Appcues and UserGuiding facilitate user feedback collection, helping you decide which tool is more suitable for your needs.
Appcues for User Feedback
Appcues offers a comprehensive suite of tools for collecting and analyzing product feedback for mobile applications. However, for web apps, only NPS surveys are available.
Key features include:
- Feedback Prompts: Prompt users to rate their experience with specific features through survey forms.
- NPS Survey Analysis: Collect and analyze NPS results to enhance in-app experiences.
- App Store Review Prompts: Encourage satisfied users to rate and review your app on various app stores.
UserGuiding for User Feedback
UserGuiding primarily focuses on surveys for feedback collection, making it more suitable for gathering user input rather than comprehensive product feedback. Key features include:
- Surveys: UserGuiding’s surveys can help collect user feedback from scratch or through their survey templates, though the Basic plan limits you to one active survey at a time.
- NPS Tracking: Monitor NPS trends before and after product updates to assess user response.
- Checklists: Incorporate feedback prompts within onboarding checklists to gather user insights post-product tour.
Due to the Basic plan's restrictions, the volume of product feedback collected may be limited.
🏆Winner:UserGuiding (Appcues-3, UserGuiding-2)
UserGuiding wins this round with its broader range of feedback tools, including churn surveys and product ratings, which help teams gather more actionable insights.
Pricing Comparison: Appcues vs UserGuiding
Appcues Pricing:
- Essentials Plan: Starts at $249/month for 2,500 Monthly Active Users (MAU), increasing to $299/month for 5,000 MAU. Offers 3 user licenses and allows up to 5 audience segments. However, UI patterns like checklists and custom CSS support are not available, and customer support is limited to email.
- Growth Plan: Starts at $879/month for 2,500 MAU, with 10 user licenses and unlimited audience segments. Includes full access to UI patterns and premium integrations with tools like Slack, Salesforce, and Zendesk.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing with advanced security features, multi-account support, and a dedicated customer success manager. Includes all UI patterns, premium integrations, and localization support.
UserGuiding Pricing:
- Basic Plan: Priced at $89/month for up to 2,500 MAU. Includes limited features like 1 active survey, 2 active checklists, and basic integrations with Google Analytics and HubSpot. Customer support is available via email and chat.
- Professional Plan: Costs $249/month for 2,500 MAU, with removal of branding, language localization, and full customer support. Includes unlimited guides, checklists, and 5 customizable themes.
- Corporate Plan: Custom Pricing with unlimited MAU, team seats, and customizable themes. Offers enterprise-level perks such as Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Data Processing Agreement (DPA).
UserGuiding offers 40% off on annual plans.
🏆Winner: UserGuiding (Appcues-3, UserGuiding-3) UserGuiding wins for affordability, offering a lower entry price with decent features for startups and small teams.
Appcues vs. UserGuiding: Which Should You Choose?
To help simplify your decision, let’s summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. Understanding their distinct advantages and potential drawbacks will provide a clearer path toward making an informed choice!
Pros and Cons of Appcues
Pros of Appcues:
Appcues, as a pioneer in the no-code product adoption space, boasts several valuable features. It’s particularly well-suited for mid-market SaaS companies seeking a user-friendly tool that enhances onboarding, retention, and overall customer experience.
- User-Friendly Interface: Appcues offers an easy-to-navigate interface, allowing non-technical users to create engaging in-app flows with a simple drag-and-drop builder.
- Quick Setup: Getting started is straightforward—just add the SDK to your app or integrate with platforms like Segment or Google Tag Manager.
- Feedback Options: Create NPS surveys to gather actionable user insights and monitor results on your Appcues dashboard.
- Mobile Onboarding: In addition to web apps, Appcues facilitates comprehensive experiences for mobile environments, supporting various frameworks.
- Wide Integration Capabilities: Integrates with over 20 tools, including CRM, email automation, and analytics solutions, with many offering two-way integration.
Cons of Appcues:
While Appcues is packed with useful features, it has some limitations:
- Element Detection Issues: The algorithm can struggle to identify in-app elements, making it challenging to integrate new UI components into your flows.
- Limited Analytics: Appcues doesn’t provide comprehensive user journey insights, relying on integrations for advanced analytics capabilities.
- Pricing: Pricing can be a concern, especially for startups and small businesses, as plans can be pricey for limited features.
Pros and Cons of UserGuiding
UserGuiding is a strong contender for startups looking for no-code onboarding solutions, offering affordable plans that scale as your needs grow.
Pros of UserGuiding:
UserGuiding provides many features and a great user experience:
- No-Code Solution: Create interactive onboarding experiences without any coding, making it accessible for all team members.
- Cost-Effective: UserGuiding offers affordable pricing plans, making it a great option for startups and small businesses.
- Ease of Use: The platform is designed to be user-friendly, enabling teams to create and manage onboarding experiences efficiently.
- Interactive Walkthroughs: Create engaging product tours, onboarding checklists, and pop-ups to enhance user experiences.
Cons of UserGuiding:
Despite its strengths, UserGuiding has some drawbacks:
- Limited Feedback Collection: The Basic plan restricts the number of active surveys and feedback options, limiting your ability to gather insights.
- Basic Analytics: UserGuiding offers limited tracking capabilities compared to more advanced tools, making it challenging to measure user engagement comprehensively.
- Customization Constraints: While it provides no-code solutions, customization options may be less flexible compared to Appcues, especially for more complex workflows.
Conclusion
Based on the comparison, Appcues emerges as the winner for mid-sized to large SaaS companies needing advanced onboarding tools, with its strong customization, detailed segmentation, and robust analytics. It’s ideal for teams requiring a powerful, no-code platform with A/B testing and targeted in-app flows, despite its higher price point.
However, UserGuiding is a solid choice for startups and small businesses due to its affordability, simplicity, and ease of use. While it lacks the depth of Appcues in features like analytics and customization, it offers excellent value for teams with limited budgets and basic onboarding needs.
Ultimately, Appcues leads in overall functionality and scalability, while UserGuiding wins on affordability and ease of setup for smaller teams.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What makes Appcues the better onboarding platform?
Appcues stands out with its powerful customization options, targeted user segmentation, and detailed analytics. It also supports A/B testing, making it ideal for scaling companies that need more control over their onboarding experiences.
2. Is UserGuiding a good choice for startups?
Yes, UserGuiding is perfect for startups and small businesses due to its affordability and ease of use. It provides essential onboarding features like product tours and interactive guides without overwhelming users with complexity.
3. How do Appcues and UserGuiding compare in pricing?
Appcues is typically more expensive due to its advanced features, which cater to mid-sized and larger companies. UserGuiding, on the other hand, is a budget-friendly option for smaller teams with fewer onboarding needs.
4. Which platform offers better product adoption features?
Appcues excels in product adoption with its sophisticated analytics and behavioral targeting. However, UserGuiding offers simpler, easier-to-set-up product tours and user guides, making it suitable for teams needing basic onboarding functionality.
5. Can UserGuiding handle advanced onboarding needs like Appcues?
While UserGuiding provides useful onboarding features, it lacks the depth and advanced capabilities of Appcues. Appcues is more suited for teams needing extensive customization, integrations, and detailed user tracking.
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