Pendo Vs UserGuiding: The Ultimate SaaS Onboarding Tool Comparison

At first glance, Pendo and UserGuiding both serve as user onboarding tools aimed at enhancing user experience and product adoption. However, when examined closely, it's clear they cater to different user needs.

Pendo focuses on product analytics and personalized in-app experiences for enterprises, allowing product teams to track user behavior and create targeted onboarding flows. It's ideal for organizations looking for a blend of user onboarding and deep analytics to drive product decisions.

On the other hand, UserGuiding simplifies user onboarding with a no-code platform, focusing on smaller teams or businesses looking for easy-to-use guides and checklists. It’s perfect for startups and SMBs wanting a straightforward, affordable solution for user onboarding.

In this comprehensive comparison, we’ll look at how Pendo vs UserGuiding differ in:

User Onboarding

Product Adoption

Customer Experience

User Feedback

Let’s see how the two compare!

Pendo Vs. UserGuiding: A Comparison Overview

Features	UserGuiding	Pendo
User Onboarding	★★★★ - Drag-and-drop walkthroughs. - Onboarding checklists. - Limited customization on Basic plan.	★★★★★ - Guide layouts and flow triggers. - Extensive customization options. - Localization settings available.
Product Adoption	★★★★ - No-code tool for onboarding. - Basic engagement tracking. - Limited analytics dashboard.	★★★★★ - Comprehensive analytics on user behavior. - Detailed feature engagement metrics. - Feedback collection through multiple channels.
Customer Experience	★★★ - Basic surveys for feedback. - Limited insights on user journey.	★★★★ - Advanced feedback collection tools. - Path analytics to identify friction points.
User Feedback	★★★ - Surveys only (limited in Basic plan). - Less comprehensive feedback options.	★★★★☆ - NPS surveys, polls, and detailed feedback options. - Segmented feedback capabilities.
Pricing	★★★ - Free Basic plan; Professional plan starts at $89/month.	★★★ - Custom Pricing varies by features
Review Platform Ratings	4.7/5 rating from 363 G2 reviews	4.4/5 rating from 1441 G2 reviews
Best For	Startups and small businesses.	Mid-market Businesses.

What is Pendo?

Pendo is a product adoption platform designed to help teams monitor product usage, analyze user behavior, and publish in-app guides—all without the need for coding. Its primary aim is to enhance user engagement and facilitate feature discovery.

In addition to guiding users, Pendo allows you to survey them, segment your customer base, and track metrics such as monthly active users (MAUs) and site visitor counts. However, certain features, such as product areas and resource centers, are only available with the Starter plan or higher.

What is UserGuiding?

UserGuiding is a no-code product adoption tool that empowers users to create in-app walkthroughs, guides, and checklists. This solution enables teams to onboard, engage, and retain users effectively, all without requiring coding skills to develop these experiences.

Overall, UserGuiding is a versatile tool that can significantly improve the onboarding process, boost user engagement, and enhance customer retention.

Pendo vs. UserGuiding for User Onboarding

When it comes to user onboarding, both platforms offer valuable features, but they cater to different needs and user experiences.

Pendo for User Onboarding

Pendo provides standard onboarding features that can be beneficial but comes with some limitations, particularly for free users:

Guide Layouts: Users can choose from templates for lightboxes, banners, and tooltips to create onboarding flows.

Flow Triggers: Activate onboarding guides based on user actions, such as landing on a specific URL or interacting with certain elements.

Localization Settings: Localization requires manual CSV uploads, which can be cumbersome, especially without AI-powered localization features.

Onboarding Module: This module can be integrated into the in-app resource center, allowing for branding adjustments.

Users on the free plan must find an alternative onboarding solution once they exceed 500 MAUs, which can pose challenges for scaling businesses.

UserGuiding for User Onboarding

UserGuiding stands out for its user-friendly and intuitive onboarding capabilities:

Code-Free Experience: Teams can create interactive walkthroughs and checklists without needing developers.

Engaging User Journey: The tool enables the creation of various interactive elements that help guide users through the onboarding process.

Resource Center Integration: Easily provide users with access to educational resources, enhancing their onboarding experience.

The Basic plan is restrictive, allowing only 20 guides, 2 onboarding checklists, and 1 resource center. To utilize unlimited features, users must upgrade to the Professional plan.

🏆 Winner: UserGuiding takes the lead here due to its no-code capabilities and user-centric design, making it more accessible for teams without technical expertise. (UserGuiding-1, Pendo-0)

Pendo vs. UserGuiding for Product Adoption

In terms of product adoption, it’s essential to analyze how each platform supports the ongoing engagement and success of users.

Pendo for Product Adoption

Pendo excels in product adoption with features specifically designed to monitor usage and enhance user engagement:

Product Analytics: Provides insights into user behavior and helps identify underutilized areas of the product through detailed analytics.

Feature Engagement Tracking: Users can analyze engagement metrics across various features, allowing for targeted improvements.

Guides for Engagement: Create guides that not only help with onboarding but also encourage ongoing user interaction with the product.

Feedback Collection: Utilize polls and NPS surveys to gather user feedback, giving insight into user satisfaction and areas for improvement.

Some advanced features, such as in-app resource centers, are locked behind higher-tier plans.

UserGuiding for Product Adoption

UserGuiding offers basic tools for product adoption, focusing primarily on onboarding:

Interactive Walkthroughs: These are effective for guiding users, but they do not provide comprehensive analytics for product engagement.

Checklists and Resource Centers: Helpful for onboarding but do not extend significantly into ongoing user engagement metrics.

The analytics dashboard is limited to elements created within UserGuiding, restricting insight into broader user interactions across the product.

🏆 Winner: Pendo is the clear winner in this category due to its extensive analytics and feedback capabilities that foster deeper engagement and understanding of user behavior. (UserGuiding-1, Pendo-1)

Pendo vs. UserGuiding for Customer Experience

Evaluating customer experience involves looking at how each tool enables organizations to gather insights and improve overall user satisfaction.

Pendo for Customer Experience

Pendo is well-equipped for optimizing customer experience through its robust feedback and analytics features:

Polling Features: Allows targeted polling of user segments to gather actionable insights.

NPS Surveys: Combines quantitative data with qualitative feedback, giving a comprehensive view of user sentiment.

Segmentation: Create tailored user experiences based on demographics and behaviors.

Path Analytics: Helps visualize user journeys to identify pain points and areas for enhancement.

Limitations: The necessity to upgrade for premium features may restrict access for smaller organizations.

UserGuiding for Customer Experience

UserGuiding is primarily focused on onboarding, but it can still contribute to customer experience optimization:

Surveys: While it gathers feedback, the capacity is limited by the restrictions of the Basic plan.

Activity Feed: Provides insights into user engagement but lacks the depth of analytics offered by Pendo.

🏆 Winner : Pendo again comes out on top, thanks to its comprehensive analytics and feedback features that support ongoing customer satisfaction. (UserGuiding-1, Pendo-2)

Pendo vs. UserGuiding for User Feedback

Finally, the ability to collect user feedback is crucial for both platforms.

Pendo for User Feedback

Pendo offers multiple avenues for gathering user feedback, making it a strong choice for organizations focused on continuous improvement:

Customer Effort Score (CES) Polls: Provide insights on usability and specific areas where users may be struggling.

Mobile App Reviews: Useful for collecting feedback on mobile applications, enhancing overall app store ratings.

Centralized Feedback Collection: The Pendo Feedback tool integrates with other platforms, centralizing user insights for better analysis.

The complexity of some features may require a steeper learning curve for new users.

UserGuiding for User Feedback

UserGuiding focuses primarily on surveys, which limits its effectiveness in collecting comprehensive feedback:

Surveys: While useful, the Basic plan restricts users to only one active survey, which may hinder feedback volume.

NPS Tracking: Offers insights into user sentiment but lacks the depth needed for a full understanding of user feedback.

🏆 Winner: Pendo is the winner here due to its diverse and comprehensive methods for gathering user insights, providing organizations with actionable feedback to enhance their products. (UserGuiding-1, Pendo-3)

Pendo Vs UserGuiding : Pricing Comparison

Pendo Pricing:

Pendo’s pricing isn't publicly available on its website; instead, costs are provided via quotes, reportedly starting around $20,000 annually for a single product, with higher-tier plans significantly more expensive.

Pendo offers three paid plans and one free version:

Pendo Free: Supports up to 500 Monthly Active Users (MAUs) and includes basic features like analytics dashboards, feature tagging, event tracking, NPS surveys, and in-app guides. It’s ideal for startups but may be limiting as needs grow.

Growth: Tailored for a single web or mobile app, this plan has customizable MAU limits and includes advanced analytics, in-app guides, and customer support.

Starter: Priced at $7,000 per year (or $2,000 per quarter) for 2,000 MAUs, it offers basic features like unbranded NPS surveys. Full NPS analytics require the Growth or Portfolio plan.

Enterprise: Designed for managing multiple apps, this plan includes advanced features such as cross-app reporting and product engagement scores.

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.

Pendo Vs UserGuding: Pros & Cons

Pendo

Pros of Pendo

Pendo offers a range of advantages that make it a solid choice for product teams looking to enhance their user experience. Here are some of the standout benefits:

No-Code Simplicity: One of Pendo's greatest strengths is its no-code approach, allowing you to create surveys and in-app guides without any programming skills. This feature saves time and simplifies product experiments and split-testing.

Custom Themes: With Pendo, you can customize your in-app materials to fit your brand perfectly. It allows you to create different color palettes to ensure that everything aligns with your existing branding, although you'll need to install the Pendo snippet first.

Flexible Dashboards: Pendo's customizable dashboards are a great asset. You can add various widgets to keep tabs on important metrics like feature adoption, net promoter scores, and monthly active users, ensuring you have a clear view of your performance.

Robust Integrations: Pendo supports 50 different integrations with popular tools like Intercom, Jira, and HubSpot. However, it's worth noting that only four—Salesforce, Segment, Workato, and Zendesk—offer two-way data sharing.

Multi-Platform Analytics: Pendo shines when it comes to tracking product analytics across both web and mobile applications. This holistic approach allows you to understand how different user segments interact with your product on various platforms, although you'll need to upgrade to Pendo Portfolio for multi-product support.

Cons of Pendo

While Pendo has many appealing features, it’s not without its drawbacks. Here are some potential downsides to consider:

Pricing Jumps: Pendo does offer a free version, but it's limited to 500 monthly active users (MAUs). Once you hit that limit, upgrading is necessary to access most features, and the costs can quickly add up—often reaching thousands of dollars each month.

Locked Features: Certain key functionalities, like the data explorer and resource center, are only available on the higher-tier Growth or Portfolio plans, which could restrict access to valuable insights for smaller teams.

Data Lag: Pendo’s analytics dashboards update only once an hour. This lag can be problematic, leading teams to make decisions based on outdated information, which may result in misinterpretations of user behavior.

UserGuiding

Pros of UserGuiding

UserGuiding is particularly well-suited for early-stage SaaS companies that need an easy-to-use tool for their growing teams. Here are some of the advantages:

No-Code Chrome Extension: UserGuiding's intuitive Chrome extension allows you to create onboarding guides without needing any coding experience.

Survey Template Gallery: You can choose from six ready-made survey templates or start from scratch, making it easy to gather user feedback.

User-Friendly Analytics Dashboard: The dashboard provides insights into your monthly active users (MAUs), guide views, and interactions, giving you a clear picture of how your onboarding materials are performing.

Custom Themes: UserGuiding allows for granular customization, enabling you to select colors and themes that match your branding.

Easy Onboarding: The onboarding checklist helps new users navigate key features, such as installing the Chrome extension and creating their first guide.

Cons of UserGuiding

Despite its many benefits, UserGuiding does come with a few notable limitations:

Limited Dashboard Customization: Unfortunately, you can’t edit your home dashboard or choose which analytics to display, which might restrict your ability to monitor what matters most to you.

Pricing Increases: Upgrading from the Basic plan (2,500 MAUs) to the Professional plan (20,000 MAUs) results in a significant cost increase—over four times the price.

Manual Localization: UserGuiding lacks AI-powered localization, so you'll have to manually translate and upload CSV files for your content, which can be tedious.

HubSpot Integration Limitations: The integration with HubSpot is one-way, which limits its functionality and prevents two-way data synchronization between platforms.

Analytics Constraints: The analytics dashboard only provides insights for onboarding materials created with UserGuiding, and those insights are somewhat limited, showing total responses without allowing for date range selection.

Survey Limit: On the Basic plan, you can only run one active survey at a time, which can be disappointing given the annual cost of over $1,000, especially when compared to competitors like Userpilot, which allows for unlimited surveys.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, both Pendo and UserGuiding shine in their own unique ways. If you're looking for a powerful, data-driven solution to track user behavior and improve product decisions, Pendo is a clear winner for its rich analytics and advanced feedback features. It’s perfect for mid-market businesses with complex needs.

However, for smaller teams or startups, UserGuiding offers simplicity and affordability, helping you build onboarding flows quickly without requiring technical expertise. Its no-code setup makes it an excellent choice for businesses prioritizing ease of use and user-friendly guidance.

Ultimately, your decision boils down to your team's specific needs—whether you value in-depth data insights or a straightforward, budget-friendly onboarding tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Which is better for small businesses, Pendo or UserGuiding?

For small businesses, UserGuiding is simpler, affordable, and perfect for easy onboarding.

2. How does Pendo support product adoption compared to UserGuiding?

Pendo offers deeper analytics for product adoption, while UserGuiding focuses more on guiding users with onboarding tools.

3. Is UserGuiding truly a no-code tool?

Yes! UserGuiding lets you create onboarding flows without writing any code—super easy for non-technical teams.

4. What feedback features do Pendo and UserGuiding offer?

Pendo offers detailed surveys and polls, while UserGuiding provides basic surveys, better for smaller teams.

5. Which has better pricing for growing businesses?

UserGuiding is more affordable starting at $89/month. Pendo tends to be pricier, especially for larger teams.

Onboarding gamification tools to engage with new users An in-depth UserGuiding reviews-Features, Pricing, Pros and Cons

Aswin Kumar

I'm a passionate blogger and content creator. I'm driven by a desire to share my knowledge and experiences with others, and I'm always looking for new ways to engage with my readers