7 Best Apty Alternatives and Competitors

What Apty does well

Apty was designed as an employee training tool that enterprises can use to reduce the amount of time taken to learn complex software applications. It's particularly well suited to training in Salesforce, Workday (pictured), MS Dynamics and ServiceNow.

You can use Apty to make checklists to help employees visualize the onboarding process and know which steps they need to take, in which order. The steps can be personalized to the employee's individual role, experience level, location and department, so there's quite a lot of flexibility in this area.

Apty also comes with powerful analytics so that you can see where in the onboarding process employees are getting stuck. From there, you can create in-app help resources which are contextual – meaning they show up exactly where the employee needs them, saving them from having to reach out to a manager.

Unusually, for this type of digital adoption platform, Apty will also let you export onboarding workflows as PDFs, Powerpoints or MP4 files. This is handy if you have a large number of files that you need to share with colleagues or upload onto a LMS.

As befits a tool that targets enterprise customers, Apty is certified under SOC 2, Type 2. This means that you can be confident that your data is secure from hackers.

Drawbacks of Apty

Missing features for user onboarding

Apty is primarily an employee onboarding tool, so it's missing a number of important features that are essential for the customer onboarding use case. For example:

• Modals
• Hotspots
• Help Center
• ‎Surveys

For the last two items on this list, there are workarounds available.

So, while Apty doesn't have a dedicated help center feature where users can find lots of answers to their questions in one place, you could technically achieve similar functionality with several guides.

Alternatively, if you want to create a survey on Apty, it does offer the ability to embed surveys from other tools.

In both of these cases, however, you have more work to do as a user of Apty than if you were using an alternative.

Clunky user interface

There's a certain irony in saying this because Apty is supposed to make other software tools easier to use, but Apty itself isn't the most intuitive of platforms to get your head around.

This isn't just our opinion – take a look at what these G2 reviewers had to say:

Numerous Apty alternatives listed in this article have a smaller learning curve and are easier to pick up, especially if you're not especially technical.

Even Apty's homepage loads noticeably more slowly than those of its competitors.

Top 7 Alternatives to Apty

In the rest of this article, we'll go over some alternatives to Apty, outlining their pros and cons so that you can make an informed decision for your business.

1. UserGuiding - the all-in-one product adoption platform

• Capterra: ⭐4.7/5 (51 reviews)
• G2: ⭐4.7/5 (391 reviews)

UserGuiding is a no-code digital adoption solution that helps you provide better in-app experiences.

It works with a Chrome extension that lets you create various user onboarding elements as an overlay to your product, without having to use code.

UserGuiding Features

Unlike Apty, UserGuiding is built specifically for the customer onboarding use case. This is immediately apparent from its features.

Whereas Apty is missing surveys, a help center, modals and hotspots, you can build all of these on UserGuiding, code-free, in a matter of minutes.

This means that UserGuiding offers a wider range of different UI elements for product tours than Apty does. And it also means that your users will be able to access self-service support in-app via a help center.

Are you unsure what your users think of a particular feature? Simply use UserGuiding's NPS surveys to get users to score the feature between 1 and 10. If you need more information about why they provided a particular score, you can always follow up with a qualitative survey on top of that as well.

Like Apty, UserGuiding will also let you build tooltips, checklists and product tours as well.

Quick implementation

Unlike Apty's clunky interface, UserGuiding is extremely straightforward to use.

Simply install our Chrome extension, and add it to your website in a few minutes using a snippet of code.

After that, even non-technical product managers will be able to create guides in as little as 15 minutes. Each guide created is a powerful tool that will make your customer journey that much more seamless and intuitive.

If you don't want to take our word for it, here's what a G2 reviewer had to say:

Pricing

UserGuiding’s pricing plans are based on the number of active users you have. When billed yearly:

• Basic Plan: Starting from $69/month.
• Professional Plan: Starting from $199/month.
• Corporate Plan: Custom quote.

UserGuiding vs Apty

2. WalkMe - expensive employee training and analytics for enterprises

• Capterra: ⭐4.4/5 (62 reviews)
• G2: ⭐4.5/5 (412 reviews)

Like Apty, WalkMe is an employee training and engagement tool for enterprises. It's focused on digital transformation and employee productivity, as opposed to user onboarding.

WalkMe Features

WalkMe's main value-add is that it will let you create in-app walkthroughs to help you train your employees in your software systems. If you're an enterprise with a complex tech stack and a high staff turnover rate, this is a useful tool to have up your sleeve.

Is there a particular part of a tool that your people keep getting stuck with? Rather than have employees come to management with questions, WalkMe will let you add contextual support in-app, so that your staff can solve their own problems.

The overall idea here is to make your internal workflows more seamless and automated. WalkMe even has AI-powered analytics that will examine your whole workflow, look for inefficiencies, and give you automated recommendations for solving any problems they uncover.

The way the AI can uncover where users are dropping off from a particular feature is particularly innovative.

As a result of covering so many different, complex, enterprise-level use cases, WalkMe has experienced some feature bloat in recent years. This can make it hard for their support team to do their job – just because the range of queries is so broad.

Pricing

• Not available publicly on WalkMe's website
• Requires you to get a quote from WalkMe's sales team
• Reports online indicate that WalkMe's packages usually start at around $10k per year, which is consistent with its enterprise target market

WalkMe Vs Apty

There's very little difference between WalkMe and Apty.

Both are enterprise-level tools that aim to solve the problem of employee training.

Both have excellent analytics, decent product tours, and not too many user onboarding features like NPS surveys or product announcements.

Both have opaque pricing pages that require you to reach out and get a quote or a demo. We suspect that WalkMe is the more expensive tool from reading reviews online, but we can't be certain.

3. Whatfix - generalist digital adoption for enterprises, with opaque pricing

• Capterra: ⭐4.6/5 (77 reviews)
• G2: ⭐4.6/5 (329 reviews)

Whatfix specializes in providing sophisticated digital adoption experiences for enterprise customers.

Whatfix Features

Whatfix is aiming to position itself as a catch-all digital adoption tool for enterprises.

To that end, it offers some of the functionality that Apty provides for training new employees, such as product walkthroughs and contextual support through tooltips. If you're rolling out a big piece of new software internally, this could be a great way to make that roll-out smoother.

But Whatfix also wants to cover the user onboarding use case and compete with the likes of UserGuiding. It, therefore, also offers features like guides, NPS surveys, and resource centers – although it notably lacks a dedicated product updates feature.

Similar to WalkMe, Whatfix suffers from feature bloat due to trying to pack too many use cases into one platform. If WalkMe's support is bad, Whatfix's support is even worse since their customers generally have to rely on self-service articles rather than talk to support agents.

As such, Whatfix consistently has one of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of the tools in this list.

Pricing

• Not disclosed publicly. For a quote, you'll need to contact Whatfix.
• Reviews suggest that pricing is around $1000 a month for access to all features.

Whatfix vs Apty

Both Whatfix and Apty are aimed at enterprises, and they're both best at dealing with the employee onboarding use case. Both tools have opaque pricing pages that require you to reach out and get a quote.

However, Whatfix also offers a number of features for the user onboarding case that Apty doesn't, such as hotspots, NPS surveys and resource centers. This makes Whatfix by far the better tool if you're looking to educate your customers in how to use your product.

On the other hand, if you need to use a digital adoption tool with good customer service, it's advisable to steer clear of Whatfix. It's not the best in that area.

4. Userpilot - deep onboarding and product analytics, but not easy to learn

• Capterra: ⭐4.6/5 (57 reviews)
• G2: ⭐4.6/5 (382 reviews)

Userpilot is a user onboarding and product analytics tool that targets mid-market SaaS companies.

Userpilot Features

Userpilot was previously known for the strength of its user onboarding elements, such as hotspots, tooltips, and modals. Although you'll need a developer to install Userpilot's code snippet, once that's done, you can customize most of the UI elements without needing to code at all.

This is great for teams where developers are hard-pressed for time and wouldn't want to invest energy into building tooltips manually. However, it must be said that some of the more complex customizations on Userpilot do still require advanced CSS knowledge.

In the last couple of years, Userpilot has invested heavily in becoming more of a product analytics tool – an area that was previously a weakness. You can now see which features are used most frequently and which users spend time on those features. More unusually, they also show you where exactly in the feature flow your users drop off.

If you want to learn why a particular user segment favors one feature over another, you can also use Userpilot's survey feature to get that data from customers in-app.

So what's the catch?

Unlike Apty, Userpilot isn't an employee engagement tool, so it's not the best for that particular use case. It's also less intuitive to use than UserGuiding, for example. The more negative reviews online tend to mention the high learning curve:

Two major features that Userpilot lacks are a product updates page and in-app announcements. You can improvise a solution to the latter using modals, but it's not a dedicated announcement feature as such.

Pricing

• From $249 per month, paid annually.
• This covers up to 2000 MAUs.

Userpilot vs Apty

Although they're both in the field of product adoption, Userpilot and Apty are quite different tools.

Apty is aimed at the employee onboarding use case, whereas Userpilot is aimed more at onboarding customers and users.

Apty's customers are mostly enterprises, while Userpilot is going after the mid-market.

Userpilot's analytics are a lot more comprehensive than Apty's are, so if you need a solution that helps you measure engagement and come up with insights to improve your onboarding, Userpilot might be the better fit.

Both tools are expensive, but at least Userpilot shares its pricing publicly.

5. Intercom - AI-powered customer support tool with mediocre, overpriced onboarding functionality

• Capterra: ⭐4.5/5 (1056 reviews)
• G2: ⭐4.5/5 (3013 reviews)

Intercom bills itself as an AI-first customer service tool.

Intercom Features

Intercom is perhaps best known for its chatbots, which have become a popular way for businesses to answer customers' questions without requiring large numbers of support agents. The company's AI system, branded as Fin, can resolve most simple cases without requiring human involvement.

For more complex queries, Intercom can also reduce response time by training Fin to suggest automated answers on the basis of prior support conversations. You can even go as far as to have Fin learn your agents' style of communication and mirror their tone.

As a customer success platform whose main value-add is reducing churn, Intercom has also invested in creating simple onboarding automation, as a way of making your product more intuitive to use. For example, you can create simple (albeit not especially interactive) product tours, complete with checklists and in-app surveys. Note that most of this functionality requires you to pay for an extra add-on, however.

As befits a tool that's mainly oriented towards customer support, the onboarding functionality offered by Intercom is limited. The only surveys it offers are NPS surveys, so there's none of the more qualitative data you would get from UserGuiding or Userpilot. Intercom also lacks a dedicated product updates feature. Although Intercom's user analytics are powerful, they lack specific insights that relate to product usage or onboarding.

Pricing

• Starting from $39 per seat per month
• This sounds cheap, but consider that more advanced onboarding features such as product tours, surveys, checklists and A/B testing are only available if you purchase the $99 per month add-on.
• For every support case that the Fin AI agent solves, Intercom charges $0.99
• Intercom also has additional, partially-hidden fees for email, SMS, WhatsApp and phone campaigns
• All this means that the cost of Intercom has a tendency to balloon out of control quickly

Intercom vs Apty

Intercom and Apty are very different tools.

Apty is aimed towards helping enterprises train employees and is by far the better of the two tools for that particular use case.

Intercom's value proposition is a bit broader, but the tool is best for AI-powered customer support.

If you're only choosing between the two for user onboarding, Intercom offers much more functionality than Apty – albeit for quite a hefty price tag.

But both tools are less good for the user onboarding use case than UserGuiding, Userpilot or Stonly, which are all dedicated user onboarding platforms.

6. Nickelled - good for simple onboarding of both users and employees

Nickelled is both an employee and a customer onboarding tool.

Nickelled Features

The main features that Nickelled provides are guides, hotspots and an in-app help widget. Of these, the help widget is the most innovative. Your customers can use it to launch guided tours, access support documentation, or navigate to a new area inside your app. All of these tools can be customized to the unique needs of your business and its customer segments.

Nickelled's hope is that you'll be able to use this set of features both to train employees in complex software tools such as Salesforce and to teach new users how to get the most out of your product. And for simple use cases, we think they have a pretty good argument to make for their software.

The problem comes when your needs become a bit more complex. What if you need a surveying tool, or a way to announce product updates in-app? What if you want your company's data to be secured by something like a SOC 2 certification? Nickelled doesn't really provide satisfactory answers to these kinds of questions.

Pricing

• Not shared openly on the Nickelled website
• Requires you to get a quote

Nickelled vs Apty

Nickelled is a more versatile tool than Apty.

While Apty is only really suitable for employee onboarding, Nickelled covers the onboarding of both employees and product users.

Both tools have opaque pricing that requires you to get in touch with their respective sales teams for a quote.

Neither tool is the best option for covering more complex user onboarding use cases involving surveys or in-app announcements. If you need that functionality, try UserGuiding instead.

7. Stonly - product adoption tool with a solid knowledge base function, but poor customization

• Capterra: ⭐4.4/5 (11 reviews)
• G2: ⭐4.8/5 (125 reviews)

Stonly is a user onboarding tool that's known for its knowledge base function and excels in simple use cases.

Stonly Features

Stonly offers the typical range of features that are common to most user onboarding platforms, including hotspots, tooltips and checklists. You can use these features to build product walkthroughs for your customers.

Stonly's knowledge base is particularly good at taking pressure off your support resources. By directing customers to an in-app knowledge base, you'll reduce the amount of support queries your agents will have to deal with, as well as the number of agents you'll need to retain on staff. On top of this, your agents can use Stonly's generative AI feature to get answers to frequently asked questions without having to think too much or type everything out manually.

Unfortunately, the customization options available on Stonly are somewhat limited, unlike UserGuiding or Userpilot. We suspect this is because Stonly is a newer player to the market. Likewise, you can't A/B test your UI elements with Stonly to see which performs best.

While you can make surveys with Stonly, the platform only supports NPS surveys, so qualitative surveys are out of scope, at least for now. Stonly doesn't have a product updates feature as such, although you can improvise a solution to this using in-app announcements. Stonly also hasn't invested as heavily into integrations as some of the other tools on this list – offering only 6 of them as of the date that this article was written.

Pricing

• Not available publicly on Stonly's website
• Requires you to ask Stonly for a quote
• G2 suggests that pricing starts from $125 per month

Stonly vs Apty

Both of these tools would brand themselves as product adoption software, and both have opaque pricing practices, but that's where the similarities end.

Apty is much more aimed at the employee training use case than Stonly is. By contrast, Stonly is a much better fit for the user onboarding use case.

Wrapping up

Apty is a solid digital adoption tool if you're looking for something to help you train employees. However, it lacks the depth of features required for the user onboarding use case.

If your aim is to educate users in how to adopt your product, we encourage you to take a look at UserGuiding. It's explicitly made for user onboarding, so it comes with options like product updates and surveys that Apty lacks. It's also extremely low on code and building UI elements is refreshingly intuitive.

Don't want to take our word for it? Try UserGuiding for free today and make up your own mind.

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