Userpilot vs Pendo
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.
Userpilot
Userpilot is like a friend that doesn’t stand out from the crowd, but you can always rely on them. It’s altogether a quality tool that should satisfy the needs of a vast majority of user onboarding managers.
All the features needed to do your job are in place. But compared to Userflow and Stonly, it lacks an element of a positive surprise. It doesn’t shine.
Pendo
I can’t say Pendo isn’t a decent tool. In the end, it has all the main features and many of the more advanced options. But it’s expensive, not pleasant to use, and takes time to get used to.
If its flow builder went through an overhaul, I’d be curious to test it again. But for now, I wouldn’t want to use it on a daily basis.
Userpilot vs Pendo: 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 |
Userpilot vs Pendo: 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.
- Userpilot – Custom event triggering, Element click
- Pendo – Element click
Scheduling
Contrary to Userpilot, Pendo offers flow scheduling.
Frequency (single flow)
- Userpilot: Once, Every time
- Pendo: Once, Repeat every X days/hours and set the frequency cap
Userpilot vs Pendo: 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.
Simply put, it works better in Userpilot. It allows manual localization in the platform/builder, as well as via file upload. You can easily localize images/videos too. You don’t need to unpublish flows to edit translations and you can make changes to the original version whenever you want.
In Pendo, you can work only with XLIFF files (no CSV or manual changes).
Account-wide frequency cap (throttling) + Flow prioritization
While the frequency cap works similarly everywhere, Pendo offers higher flexibility of guide prioritization (you can define the exact order in which your flows are to be shown). On the other hand, Userpilot limits it to a few levels (Low, Medium, and High).
Additionally, in Userpilot, I didn’t find any information about the possibility to exclude specific types of flows from throttling, which is crucial for the onboarding experience.
Userpilot vs Pendo: Pros, cons, prices
Name
Pros (summary)
Cons (summary)
- 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
- 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
Read full comparison of the 9 top in-app onboarding software here.