Appcues vs Userguiding
Which onboarding software will better suit your needs?
I tested Top In-app Onboarding Software: Appcues, Userpilot, Pendo, Stonly, Userflow, Chameleon, Product Fruits, Userguiding, Usetiful.
Discover the best software here.
Userguiding
UserGuiding is a decent alternative if your budget is limited and you don’t need more advanced functionalities. You won’t find the localization feature, event builder, or flexible audience targeting. Also, its flow builder is pretty basic.
However, the value-for-money ratio is still high, considering it’s the second cheapest user onboarding software I reviewed.
Appcues
What struck me most is that Appcues looks like Userpilot’s clone. Their app panel layouts and flow builders are very similar, with only cosmetic changes.
Nonetheless, Appcues is less “polished” and doesn’t offer the resource center feature, what I treat as a major inconvenience. Also, even though the localization feature is there, I wouldn’t wish using it my worst enemy.
If you think about going for Appcues, check out Userpilot first. In my opinion, it’s better and half as cheap!
Appcues vs Userguiding: Engagement features
Table: Main feature availability
| Appcues | Userpilot | Pendo | Userflow | Stonly | Chameleon | Product Fruits | UserGuiding | Usetiful | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Modals/Pop-ups/Slideouts | |||||||||
| Tours/Tooltips | |||||||||
| Hotspots/Spotlights/Pins | |||||||||
| Checklists | |||||||||
| Resource centers | |||||||||
| Surveys |
Checklists
| Appcues | Userpilot | Userflow | Stonly | Chameleon | Product Fruits | Userguiding | Usetiful | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Add title & description | ||||||||
| Embed images/videos in the header | ||||||||
| Item description | ||||||||
| Add guides and links | ||||||||
| Run JavaScript on click | ||||||||
| Set targeting per checklist item | ||||||||
| Item completion based on user attributes/events | Only events | |||||||
| Embed the resource center in a page |
Resource centers
| Userpilot | Userflow | Stonly | Chameleon | Product Fruits | Userguiding | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Embed checklist | ||||||
| Add guides and links | ||||||
| Add custom content | Only videos | |||||
| Add nested pages | ||||||
| Add content groups | Only flows | |||||
| Set targeting per item | ||||||
| Built-in “Contact us” section | ||||||
| Built-in contact form | ||||||
| Embed iframe | ||||||
| Search items or flows | ||||||
| Search knowledge base | ||||||
| Integrate live chat (e.g., Intercom, Zendesk) | ||||||
| Notifications about new items |
Appcues vs Userguiding: Flow setup options
Triggering
You might think there’s not much science to flow triggering. While in most cases you’ll use a page view to trigger a flow, there are some additional possibilities you might find interesting.
- Appcues – Custom event triggering, Element click
- Userguiding – Element is present/not present, Delay (time), Delay (scroll)
Audience targeting
Most user onboarding software allow for the same targeting options based on user attributes and performed events (both generated by interactions with the messages/widgets as well as custom events). There are, however, a few things worth mentioning:
- Appcues: Lets you create endless nested logic groups (logic group in a logic group).
- Userguiding: For each guide, you need to create and save segments outside the guide/trigger setup, which seems somewhat inefficient.
Scheduling
Userguiding lets you set exact dates your guides will be shown.
Frequency (single flow)
- Appcues: Once, Every time
- Userguiding: Once, Repeat every session/day/week/month, Always
Appcues vs Userguiding: Additional features
Table: Feature availability
| Appcues | Userpilot | Pendo | Userflow | Stonly | Chameleon | Product Fruits | UserGuiding | Usetiful | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Localization | Only flows | In beta | |||||||
| Versioning | |||||||||
| Frequency capping (throttling) | |||||||||
| Account structuring/Flow organization | |||||||||
| Flow analytics | |||||||||
| Event builder |
Localization
In the table above, you can check the availability of the localization feature, but these checkmarks don’t tell the whole story.
In Appcues, you can localize only flows (and not checklists or pins), and what’s worst is that after localizing the content is locked (you can’t edit it). It causes a lot of trouble, especially for onboarding/lifecycle flows (in contrast to regular, one-off communication) that are meant to stay there for longer and should be subject to iterative optimization.
However, Userguiding doesn’t offer localization at all.
Account-wide frequency cap (throttling) + Flow prioritization
I was surprised that not all the user onboarding software offer this crucial function. In the end, you don’t want to spam your users with too many pop-ups in a short period. Appcues offers the high flexibility of guide prioritization (you can define the exact order in which your flows are to be shown).
Appcues vs Userguiding: Pros, cons, prices
Name
Pros (summary)
Cons (summary)
- Has all the important features
- Advanced resource center
- Lots of triggering/targeting options
- You can show/hide elements inside guides, checklists, resource center dynamically (each element can have their own targeting)
- Advanced and easy-to-use event builder
- Generally seems to be a very well-thought-out product
- Building a flow can become a bit complex
- Has all the important features
- Event triggering
- Good look and feel from end-user perspective
- Good targeting options
- High flow design flexibility
- Seems like a better thought-out version of Appcues
- Flow priority limited to 3 categories
- No bells and whistles
- Easy to use
- Great look and feel from end-user perspective
- A tree view on a guide structure
- Integrated knowledge base
- Good guide organization options
- Advanced flow analytics
- Generally seems to be a very well-thought-out product
- In my opinion the best localization feature
- Guide structure (design) is set, without the possibility to change
- No guide prioritization & frequency cap for all active guides
- No out-of-the-box guide interaction events
- No user segments
- No event builder
- Pricing based on views and not MTU
- Easy to use
- Good resource center
- Flow scheduling
- While has all the main features, they are all pretty basic
- Targeting is not really flexible (you need to use segments)
- No localization feature (you’d need to duplicate guides)
- No guide prioritization & frequency cap for all active guides
- No event builder
- Event triggering
- High flow design flexibility
- User diagnostics useful for debugging
- No resource center feature
- Very poor localization (after adding translations you can’t edit flows)
- Limited checklist options
- Quite a few quirks that make working with Appcues frustrating in the long run
- You can show/hide elements inside checklists/resource center dynamically (each element can have their own targeting)
- Quite a lot of options in terms of building flows
- Delight animations (throwing confetti all over the screen)
- Mediocre builder UX (seems a bit buggy)
- No event builder
- Localization in beta
- Has all the important features
- It’s not just a product adoption platform — it also has product analytics and roadmapping
- No user-friendly (UI can be a bit confusing)
- Poor out-of-the-box look and feel from end-user perspective
- Localization only with XLIFF file
- I constantly experienced issues starting the builder
- Resource center (and checklists) not available on free plan what made it impossible for me to test
- A lot of features and setup options
- You can show/hide elements inside resource center dynamically (each element can have their own targeting)
- Poor UX (ugly panel/builder; not user-friendly for non-developers)
- No logic groups in audience targeting
- No guide prioritization & frequency cap for all active guides
- Only manual localization (no file upload)
- Easy to use
- Many page interaction events you can use for triggering flows
- Generally, everywhere you have very limited options
- You can’t send custom events to Usetiful (?)
Read full comparison of the 9 top in-app onboarding software here.