Do you know that 55% of people say they’ve returned a product because they didn’t understand how to use it?
Imagine how frustrating it is to watch your customers turn away to competition, without even using your product to the fullest.
This is why user onboarding is so important. Advanced tools, such as Appcues, can make this process smooth and help customers see the value in your product.
However, we’ve analyzed 3 Appcues competitors that can help you achieve even better results in user onboarding.
How is that?
For instance, with Eyelet, you can create detailed onboarding guides and step-by-step checklists without any coding.
Plus, you will get this tool at a much lower price.
In this article, we will review 3 Appcues competitors in detail and show you how these tools compare to one another.
Let’s take a look!
What is Appcues?
Appcues is a product adoption tool that helps businesses increase user engagement and adoption rates. Its main features include in-app guidance and notifications.
In addition, with the help of Appcues insights, you can learn exactly how people interact with your product.
For example, how much time do they spend using it?
How do they interact with the product?
Which features do they mostly use?
With its intuitive workflow, Appcues helps enterprise companies with everything, from user onboarding and surveys to targeting and employee onboarding.
Let’s check out the key qualities of Appcues.
Related: User Onboarding Meaning and Definition With Examples
- It’s easy to use
Despite its complexity, Appcues is very user-friendly. This digital adoption platform is easy to figure out, which means you don’t need to be a tech-savvy person to use this tool. For instance, it has a drag-and-drop tool that eliminates the need for manual coding. You can also create unique templates that perfectly suit the needs of your team.
- You get to enjoy many third-party integrations
Appcues offers a wide range of third-party integrations that can be added in just a few steps. That includes some very important brands like Salesforce, Slack, Google Analytics, Marketo, and Hubspot.
- It’s easy to customize
Appcues contains many templates and ready-made schemes, but it doesn’t stop there. On the contrary, the tool is flexible, and it enables businesses to customize the existing templates. Besides that, you can use features like Minibar and Themes to tailor your workflows.
- The system is data-driven
You know how hard it is to change things you can’t measure, right? In such circumstances, you’ll be glad to learn that Appcues relies on data for targeting and tracking.
You can learn about engagement and performance using Flow Analytics. There is also the NPS Analytics with nice visualizations of promoters, neutrals, and detractors. Thanks to these functions, you are free to monitor the user activation process in real time.
Why do people look for other options?
Many users look for Appcues competitors because it has more than one drawback. Let’s take a look at some of them:
- Technical setbacks aren’t seldom
Every software experiences bugs and minor issues from time to time, but these are not seldom with Appcues. Many clients complain about technical setbacks, noting that they often need to refresh the system in order to move on.
Although such lags are not too serious, they interfere with the natural workflow and slow down many users. Here’s just one example:
- It could use extra features
Appcues contains many interesting features, but not as many as you might expect from a well-rounded user onboarding tool. For example, there is room for improving survey results exporting because it’s only available via Microsoft Excel.
Besides that, the scheduling tool could use additional options. There are also goal-tracking solutions they can add to improve the way you determine campaign criteria.
- User onboarding is not that easy
The last thing you’d want is to choose a tool that’s be hard to use, but that’s often the case with Appcues. There are many clients who complain about the learning curve being a bit too steep. Here’s an example:
Some users even claim they spent a lot of time figuring out the platform together with Appcues customer support agents. Isn’t that strange for a customer onboarding program?
However, keep in mind that we are not talking about drastic flaws here. They don’t make Appcues less relevant, but they can surely encourage detail-oriented clients to consider other options as well.
How we chose the top 3 competitors
Before we dig deeper into the specifics, we would like to explain the way we picked the best Appcues competitors. Here’s what we did:
- We identified the most popular user onboarding platforms
- Our team tested all of them to determine the pros and cons of each tool
- We also checked credible user review websites
- We created a detailed table of features (as you’ll see in the table below)
We also focused on the main features that matter to most clients. It’s a game of priorities—some elements are more important than others. These elements include the following:
- Ease of use: Nobody wants a program with a steep learning curve and a complicated dashboard. That’s why we check user-friendliness first.
- Key features: We also cover the key segments of each tool.
- Pros and cons: We made a quick overview of strengths and weaknesses that helps you know what to expect from each tool.
- Reporting and analytics: The more you learn about user experiences, the better. We played with reporting features to identify platforms with extensive reporting and user analytics.
- Pricing plans: Most companies can’t afford to spend a small fortune on user onboarding, which is why pricing plans play a major role in our review.
The procedure helped us determine three programs that outperformed Appcues in some very important areas. Now it’s time to check them out!
Eyelet
Our list of Appcues alternatives and competitors begins with Eyelet. It’s a platform that helps SaaS businesses, marketers, and customer service teams with user onboarding and product adoption.
Although it may seem biased to put our tool atop the list, we will show you that Eyelet really deserves the number one spot. Let’s check it out:
Ease of use
With Eyelet, you will enjoy a smooth ride from the very beginning. All of its features are easy to understand and deploy—you can make user onboarding checklists or create great examples of product tours within minutes. For instance, launching a checklist only takes a couple of minutes:
- Log in to your Eyelet account
- Open checklists
- Create a new checklist
After that, it’s all about customizing the preferences based on your needs. The learning curve is short because the dashboard is intuitive—everything is available at your fingertips.
Key features
The most notable Eyelet features include product tours, guides, and checklists. Each of these functions helps clients improve product adoption and time to value. They help clients get used to your tool or new functions quickly.
Related: User Onboarding Checklist for SaaS Companies with Examples
Besides that, the platform offers in-app product announcements. It is the best way to point out new features of your app or program using an engaging and interactive solution.
At the same time, you can use Eyelet to conduct surveys and learn more about the user experience. Eyelet bots allow you to pose questions and collect answers, while you can also design self-serve guides.
Pros and cons
We already mentioned the most important functions, but Eyelet is proud of other qualities as well. First of all, it has a well-rounded set of product adoption features. If your goal is to onboard clients quickly, Eyelet is the right tool for you. Secondly, it is much more affordable than Appcues and other competitors.
This review is Eyelet in a nutshell:
As for the cons, we can only say that our platform still doesn’t enable users to create full-time resource centers. That’s the only drawback we can hear from our clients, but that doesn’t influence our customer success rates.
Analytics
Eyelet allows you to design NPS surveys and gather a tremendous amount of data about your users. That way, you can understand customer behavior and make further adjustments to your products.
Price
Pricing-wise, Eyelet is second to none. Our goal is to help companies of all sizes, including small teams and new startups. In such circumstances, affordable prices play a huge role, which is in contrast to Appcues pricing. Here’s what you can expect from our tool:
- Personal plan: $19 per month
- Startup plan: $49 per month
- Professional plan: $249 per month
- Enterprise plan: Upon request
Apart from offering amazing prices, we also allow a free trial for all users. Just fill in the form, and start your free tour!
Walkme
Source: Walkme
Number two on our list of Appcues alternatives and competitors is Walkme. It’s a customer success platform that enables you to simplify software usage. Walkme improves onboarding flows, minimizes customer support requests, and maximizes user retention. Let’s see how.
Ease of use
The first feature is also the biggest weakness of Walkme. Namely, this Appcues competitor is so robust that it can be tricky for new clients to get used to it. While you will love its wide range of functions, Walkme will not impress you with user-friendliness.
Key features
If you want to improve the user journey with a variety of features, Walkme will do the trick. In general, the tool enables users to focus on two segments—employee productivity or customer experience. The list of features is too long to discuss in its entirety, but here’s what we like the most:
- Walkme tracking procedures
- Workflow automation
- User behavior analytics
However, it’s fair to mention that Walkme has a lot more to offer—there’s something for everyone in this tool.
Pros and cons
We already mentioned that Walkme was a high-quality alternative to Appcues with a broad scope of functions. That’s also the main benefit of this tool—you can use it to engage customers and improve nearly all aspects of your business process.
As for the cons, we stated that Walkme was hard to use. Besides that, the pricing policy is not clearly defined. You need to get a quote, which means that the pricing plan is dynamic. However, it is definitely out of reach for most small teams and startups.
Analytics
Walkme has a powerful analytics platform that enables users to learn a lot. You are free to track real-time user behavior across your Walkme content, which helps you understand many aspects of product adoption:
- Software usage
- The way users manage new features
- Points of frustration
At the same time, you can create tailored reports and visualize data. No matter what you want to find out, you can do it quickly with Walkme.
Price
You won’t like the fact that Walkme is a pretty expensive tool. While you will have to ask for a quote, users note that the pricing is higher than expected—particularly when you compare it with Eyelet plans. Besides that, there is no free trial to try and test Walkme before subscribing.
Userpilot
Source: UserPilot
Userpilot is the last item on our list of Appcues alternatives and competitors. The platform allows you to design interactive product tours, greatly improving customer onboarding experiences. It helps businesses reduce training costs, so they can minimize time to value.
Ease of use
Userpilot is a relatively simple program that you can learn quickly. The dashboard is intuitive, so you won’t face any problems while trying to find certain features. All that makes this tool a beginner-friendly user enablement platform.
Key features
Userpilot is a complex system, but not as much as Walkme. Its main features include survey implementation, customer segmentation, and audio-visual tours and walkthroughs.
We also like customer retention support, as Userpilot helps you retain clients with timely highlights for new features. Additionally, this tool provides in-app support on demand. That way, you can assist users instantly without overloading your customer support team.
Pros and cons
If there is one thing we need to highlight, it must be Userpilot design features. The platform enables you to design content any way you want, which means it’s easy to customize your visuals. Apart from that, it’s important to mention that Userpilot has a good customer support team.
The best way to describe the cons is to show you this up-to-the-point user review:
Simply put, Userpilot is a solid tool with many helpful features. However, it still has a long way to go before becoming a well-rounded user onboarding system.
Analytics
Userpilot offers certain analytics features, but not as many as clients would like to see. For instance, NPS reporting doesn’t go beyond the basics. Many clients also can’t customize reports the way they’d like to.
Price
As for the pricing policy, Userpilot is somewhere in the middle and similar to Appcues. If you pay for the whole year, you can get these prices:
- Traction plan: $249 per month
- Growth plan: $499 per month
- Enterprise plan: Starting from $1,000 per month
As you can see, Userpilot is not too expensive, but it’s also not the most affordable tool in the market.
| Comparison table | |||
| Features/tool | Eyelet | Walkme | Userpilot |
| Ease of use | Easy | Hard | Easy |
| Key features | Product tours, checklists, hotspots | Tracking, workflow automation, analytics | Surveys, product walkthroughs, customer retention |
| Pros | Beginner-friendliness, affordability | Lots of features | Tailored design, customer support |
| Cons | No resource centers | User-unfriendly and expensive | No in-depth analytics, not enough integrations |
| Analytics | Good | Good | Subpar |
| Price | Starting at $19 | High | Starting at $249 |
Conclusion
There can be no serious conversations about digital adoption without mentioning Appcues. But does it make the tool irreplaceable? Definitely not!
There are many Appcues alternatives that deserve your attention, and we did our best to present you with the top three options.
Number one on our list is Eyelet, a powerful system that simplifies user onboarding and experiences. With our tool, you will speed up product adoption, reduce user churn, and receive fewer support tickets.
But do you want to know the best thing about Eyelet?
You can try it now for free and test all of its features by yourself. We guarantee it will surprise you with its wide variety of components and qualities.
Are you ready to give it a go?
