Appcues vs. WalkMe 2024 Comparison – Which tool is worth your money?

Appcues and WalkMe. Both tools have amazing capabilities, and both of them offer in-app guides.

Also, both of them aren’t the most affordable solution on the market…

And they are almost equally good as well as equally bad.

So, which one of these tools is the best option for your company?

Which one can offer you exactly what you want, and which could be only a waste of time?

Today, I am sharing the results of my research about whether Appcues or WalkMe is a better product adoption platform so that you can provide the best customer experience.

In this article, I will:

• Introduce Appcues and talk about the tool’s cons and pros,
• Introduce WalkMe and talk about the tool’s cons and pros,
• Compare those tools side-by-side for you to have a better overview.

And also, if you want to skip all those, you can benefit from this quick table:

TL;DR – Side-By-Side Comparison Table

Starting Price	$249/month	$9000/month
G2 Rating	4.6⭐	4.5⭐
Interactive Walkthroughs	✅	✅
Tooltips	✅	✅
Hotspots	✅	✅
Onboarding Checklists	✅	✅
Announcement Modals/Banners	✅	❌
NPS Surveys	✅	✅
In-Product Surveys	✅	✅
In-App Resource Center	❌	✅
Avg. Deployment Time	2-3 Hours	Several Months
User Segmentation	✅	✅
User Analytics	✅	✅
Multi-Language Support	✅	✅
User Tracking	✅	✅
Knowledge Base Integration	❌	✅
Learning Curve	😐 Steep	😟 Steeper

What is Appcues?

Appcues is a pioneer of “no-code” onboarding tools on the market.

They have introduced various onboarding elements for the first time while offering great fundamental solutions to their customers.

With a strong focus on user onboarding to web apps and digital products, Appcues can solve all your digital adoption needs regarding your customers and help you become a product-led business.

Pros 🤩 Appcues is good for:

✅ Appcues can help you create beautiful and interactive product walkthroughs so that you can provide your customers an engaging onboarding experience, and get them to like your product easily.

✅ Appcues provides exquisite customer support. They are great at coming up with quick and highly personalized solutions to all your problems whenever you have one.

✅ Founded in 2014, Appcues is among the first comers of no-code digital adoption; it has a strong background and customer portfolio.

Cons 😮‍💨 Appcues isn’t good for:

❌ Appcues isn’t the best when it comes to analytics features. If you would like to get the best out of your customers, you will have to use integrations.

❌ No matter how friendly the UI is, Appcues has a steep learning curve that you have to get past – which is only possible if you have enough technical knowledge.

❌ Appcues is also not affordable. Their starting price is not only above the market average, but they also don’t grant access to all features in the essentials package.

Appcues Pricing

• The Essentials Package of Appcues starts at $249/month when billed annually with 2500 MAU.
• The Growth Package of Appcues starts at $879/month when billed annually, again at 2500 MAU.
• The Enterprise Package of Appcues doesn’t have public pricing, so you need to get a custom quotation.

What is WalkMe?

WalkMe is a digital adoption platform that offers solutions for different product experiences, but its main deal is user flows.

With WalkMe, customers can create product tours for their users or create interactive guides for their employees for inbound use. Besides these app training options, WalkMe offers different solutions. However, these solutions are, in fact, just fancy names for different use cases for their app guides.

A critical matter of fact is that WalkMe is way more focused on employee training than its customer onboarding solutions.

Of course, it is still a powerful tool with key features like:

• Product tours, user guides, and walkthroughs,
• Analytics,
• User segmentation and survey implementation,
• Knowledge base

Plus, famous enterprises like Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe use WalkMe. Good referrals if you were to ask me.

WalkMe Pros

✅ WalkMe is one of the pioneers in digital adoption and user onboarding

✅ WalkMe users get to enjoy an extensive set of high-value features and different onboarding UX patterns like tooltips, checklists, and progress tracking options with progress bars

✅ Although technical knowledge might be required, WalkMe offers a lot of customization options

✅ WalkMe is perfectly scalable for enterprises, especially if the use case is employee onboarding rather than customer education

WalkMe Cons

❌ Among the WalkMe features, even core features might be too sophisticated for inexperienced users

❌ WalkMe’s feature amount/feature usage ratio is often low if there is no dedicated user or employee onboarding team

❌ WalkMe requires a technical skillset and occasionally coding knowledge; this makes setting up and using WalkMe harder than average

❌Not so accessible pricing, WalkMe is not the best option for small or medium-sized businesses or enterprises with an immature budget structure

❌ WalkMe is enterprise software designed for enterprises, feature updates following customer feedback might not be possible; likewise, customer service might be less accessible

WalkMe Pricing

Unfortunately, WalkMe hasn’t ever shared any details about their pricing publicly. However, we know that they work on Annual Contracts that go way beyond $10,000, and some claim that the average deal is $9000/month.

And also, customers have been reporting that WalkMe is doubling their prices without any discounts to old users.

To get exact pricing for your business, you have to get a demo from the WalkMe team.

Appcues vs WalkMe

	Features
Appcues’s main focus is providing amazing onboarding features, thus, compared to Intercom, Appcues is a better solution.	Onboarding ⬅️ 🤩	WalkMe is also a DAP tool, but their main focus is providing customized solutions to enterprise customers rather than only onboarding elements.
Although Appcues does provide in-app analytics, since it is not the tool’s main focus, you might need an integration to handle the analytics.	Analytics 🤩 ➡️	WalkMe isn’t an analytics tool either, but still, the range of options and analytics features is much more comprehensive compared to Appcues.
Appcues provides easy-to-use NPS surveys and simple feedback surveys. If you need a bigger variety, you should use an integration.	Surveying ⬅️ 🤩	WalkMe’s surveying feature has a below-average rating on G2. Although the tool does provide user feedback collection, it is not as complete as Appcues’s.

	Pricing
Appcues’s pricing starts from $249/month – which is above the market average. Still, it is much more affordable than WalkMe.	⬅️ 🤩	Phew, talk about overpriced… WalkMe is probably the most expensive digital adoption platform on the market, so, it is out of reach for most companies.

	Ease Of Use
Appcues is not the easiest-to-use tool on the market, but compared to Intercom, it is a tad more easier to set up and figure out how to use. Beware that Appcues does require technical knowledge et some point.	⬅️ 🤩	WalkMe is a very complex tool that has multiple layers, a steep learning curve, and a long implementation process that can take up months. All in all, the tool isn’t known for be easy to use.

	Customer Support
Appcues clearly cares about their customers and this is why they provide fast and personalized customer support – as per what actual users have said about them.	⬅️ 🤩	WalkMe’s customer support to enterprise customers is said to be exquisite. However, for all other businesses, it can take up to a few days to get a response from their support team.