4 Best Alternatives to Crumble

Are you looking for an alternative to Crumble, for whatever reason?

It's your lucky day, then!

In this comparison article, I've explored the top 4 alternatives to Crumble, from open-source free tools to enterprise-specialized products.

Let's start with Crumble:

What is Crumble?

Crumble is an extremely simple product tour jquery plugin that depends on grumble.js.

It helps you create bubbles on your WEB product to explain its functionality and educate users.

For ultimately simple products or single-page businesses, Crumble can be highly valuable; because it does not offer much but doesn't require much either.

It is completely free to use, and, compared to its open-source alternatives, requires less effort to create.

How to use Crumble?

Crumble is relatively easier if you have a technical background; here's the developer's basic introduction to the tool from GitHub (visit for the resources):

$('#tour').crumble();<ol id="tour" style="display: none;">
<li data-target="#one" data-angle="130">
   The first step in the tour
</li>
<li data-target=".two" data-options="distance:20">
   This is the second step in the tour
</li>
</ol>

The text of each list element becomes the tour text; this is best kept as short as possible. The possible parameters are:

• data-target: A selector that tells the tour which element on the page to point at. (required)
• data-angle: An override for the angle of the bubble between 0-360 (optional)
• data-options: A list of options that will be passed to grumble separated by semicolons. (optional)

Main Issues with Crumble

1- Too Simple 📭

Crumble might be perfect for the simplest products, but as your product gets more complex, it becomes too simple to show any effect on the users' experiences.

2- No Customization, Single Function 🎨

Crumble offers a single type of function with a single style. Better user onboarding and education experiences demand more customization options and other onboarding elements to perfect the user onboarding experience.

3- Outdated 🗓

Crumble's latest release was on 2012, roughly 8 years ago.

There are also 4 open cases that date back to 2013, so you shouldn't expect any official support.

4- Requires a lot coding 🧑‍💻

Duh!

For technical people, using Crumble is not at all a problem.

But for non-technical people, creating and integrating with Crumble might be impossible, considering there are no-code alternatives.

Top Alternatives to Crumble

• UserGuiding
• Intro.js
• WalkMe
• Appcues

1- UserGuiding

Compared to Crumble, UserGuiding is a much, much more capable product that proves superior in any way imaginable.

With UserGuiding you can create much more customizable product tours that have various functions, also create in-app messages, checklists, self-help centers, and surveys.

With UserGuiding's analytics, you can see how your creations are performing. With its User Segmentation feature, you can segment users based on different groups and offer each user a unique personalized experience.

For the value it offers, UserGuiding is definitely worth the price. Dozens of satisfied customers would agree so!

UserGuiding vs Crumble

UserGuiding Pricing

• 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
• Basic Plan: $89/month when billed annually for up to 2500 MAU
• Professional Plan: $389/month when billed annually for up to 20000 MAU with unlimited guides
• Custom Quotation Available for Larger Companies

UserGuiding Reviews

👍 Pros:

"Unlimited possibilities for creating user onboarding experiences. Various features."

👎 Cons:

"It can get a bit messy if you create a lot of guides."

2- Intro.js

Intro.js is the best open-source alternative to Crumble from various aspects.

First off, Intro.js is widely used and is trusted by 5000+ companies, including Nestle and Amazon. It has more depth as a user onboarding tool.

You can not just create bubbles that explain your product but establish full product tours with different elements.

However, Intro.js only goes that far.

The product doesn't have any other onboarding elements than product tours and has low customization ability, which renders it an inferior to 3rd party user onboarding tools such as UserGuiding, which offers many features and high customization.

Also, if you are going to use Intro.js for a commercial product, you'll need to get a license.

Intro.js Pricing

Intro.js is completely free for those who do not use it for commercial projects.

When the project is commercial, however, a lifetime license is required to be purchased:

• Starter pack without any official support for $9.99,
• Business pack with a month of official support and code review for $49.99,
• Premium package with a year of official support, code review, and unlimited projects for $299.99.

Intro.js Reviews

👍 Pros:

I really like the Intro.js plugin because documentation is straightforward and easy to understand. This can work in almost any webpage using jQuery as an included library.

👎 Cons:

The library is definitely open source and free software, but at the same time if I want to use it for commercial use it seems I need to pay a license fee. Why is this required if the code is open source?

3- WalkMe

WalkMe is a popular user and employee onboarding tool used by many large companies such as Cisco, PayPal, and Microsoft.

It is a great solution, especially for enterprises, if they possess extra developer time to create and maintain the elements. WalkMe is a complex product that you can’t just log in and start using. You will need a while to adapt to it before creating guides.

WalkMe Pricing

WalkMe currently does not provide us with a fixed price at the moment.

They offer customized plans for each of their customers according to their product. But according to the market, these customizations end up being higher prices than their competitors.

WalkMe Reviews

👍 Pros:

"Walkme is great at guiding users through simple processes, teaching them along the way. It also has a good popup system for getting the word out to many users."

👎 Cons:

"I have had bad experiences with the support, and now expect issues to take a lot longer to resolve than they should. Changes 'Improvements' to the system have not always been purely positive, removing some basic functionality that was previously there and very useful."

4- Appcues

Appcues, the very first no-code onboarding tool, provide companies with user onboarding solutions to the day.

With various onboarding elements that you can use to offer better and more personalized experiences, Appcues is a decent alternative to Userlane.

Although the tool is code-free, it requires a bit of technical background to utilize fully. You should be fine as long as you have a developer that oversees the processes in the tool.

Appcues Pricing

The essentials plan for Appcues starts from $249/month, and the Growth package is priced at $879/month.

Appcues Reviews

👍 Pros:

"The interface when using AppCues is pretty friendly and straightforward"

👎 Cons:

"Using AppCues from our development and testing environments was extremely slow and freqently fails and crashes. We wasted an awful lot of time trying to get Appcues to work. Given its steep expense and lack of support for SPAs we ended up abandoning it and building in-house."

Crumble Alternatives Comparison Chart

Conclusion

Crumble is an extremely basic tool for creating simple product tours. If you're looking for an improvement:

• Try Intro.js for a minor upgrade to better product tours with no analytics and limited customization,
• Try UserGuiding for a major upgrade to a complete user onboarding experience, without coding,
• Try Appcues and WalkMe for a major upgrade again, but still with coding requirements.