Is Intercom Product Tours Worth It? In-depth review & 6 alternatives

Intercom is mostly known as a Customer Success Tool that provides in-app live-chat widgets and help centers.

There is more than that in Intercom, though.

The tool has a Product Tour feature as well.

And since we have made product tours of our bread and butter or peanut butter and jelly, or literally any simple thing nowadays, I prepared a list of tools that can be very good alternatives to Intercom, including low-cost products.

For you to get the best insights, I tested the tool myself, gathered information from lots of user reviews from websites such as Capterra or G2, and evaluated their pros and cons in terms of functionality and pricing.

This article will be helpful for you to understand Intercom Product Tours and the main differences between its 6 popular alternatives.

Additionally, I prepared a comparison chart for you to analyze and compare the tools side-by-side, which is at the end of the article.

What is Intercom Product Tours?

Intercom is known as one of the most popular customer messaging platforms, although the tool has many other features that are also helpful.

In April 2019, they launched their “Product Tours” feature that allows you to create step-by-step interactive onboarding guides. Intercom’s Product Tours helps you manage adoption and onboard new visitors by building product walkthroughs and tours within your product.

Using the add-on, you can:

• Create step-by-step product walkthroughs,
• Tooltips and hotspots,
• Announcement banners,
• And create basic user segments.

However, I need to point out that Intercom Product Tours isn’t the most powerful and most developed tool on the market. It has limits in terms of functionality when it comes to product adoption and user onboarding.

Even though it is not Intercom’s main focus, there is a lack of UI elements in product tours. They do not give you many onboarding features, which means that you can’t use checklists, modals, or any other key UI elements for user onboarding.

Also, some features such as end-user surveying or advanced analytics are priced separately, causing the price of Intercom to become unreasonable.

But I have to point out that the features that Intercom does provide are very user-friendly and easy to use. If you are currently using Intercom’s messaging widget already, it is really easy to implement and use Product Tours and start decreasing churn rates.

Briefly, Intercom Product Tours is very simple and easy to use, but it lacks efficiency and is particularly pricey to early-stage startups.

Intercom Product Tours Pricing

According to user comments on Reddit and HelpCrunch, Intercom's pricing can range between $74/month (only for newly established companies with under 5 employees) and $999/month. Also, some features are billed separately, and cost an additional monthly fee.

For instance, if you have 5-9 employees, the starting price jumps up to $89/month.

If you want to use Intercom with Product Tours add-on:

• 14-day Free Trial requires credit card information.
• Start Plan: $74/month for Intercom subscription (2 seats) plus $199/month for Product Tours add-on = $273/month Total
• Support Package: Custom quote on request

Intercom Product Tours Reviews

👍 Pros:

"Intercom is the best platform I have ever used for my work as a Customer Success Manager. It has more than just a ticketing system, interacting with customers daily, it will allow you to enrich your own customers' experience."

G2 Review

"It has helped our small team scale by providing a centralized location for all customers and leads to interact with our organization. The articles/help center, in-app product tours, and automatic emails have helped with self-service onboarding and continued support."

G2 Review

👎 Cons:

"The price is far from scalable. We wanted to use them for our marketing activities + Product tours. But our product has 50,000+ new users every month. The price for product tours, in that case, would be over 4,000 EUR which is too much."

G2 Review

"The least helpful aspect of Intercom (so far) is that their customer support can take longer than hoped to respond. Takes about 24 hours to hear back from someone, which is too long to wait for little questions that are all solved very quickly."

G2 Review

How Do I Make A Product Tour In Intercom?

Creating a product tour on Intercom is an easy process. It's simple, and Intercom provides all the help that you might need - in case this is your first time creating a product tour.

Also, if you are already familiar with creating product tours with another tool, it is going to be easy to adapt to Intercom since the process is quite similar.

Let's go over the steps of how to create a product tour on Intercom:

1- Get to the product tours page

To open product tours page, click on "Outbound" on the left-side slider within Intercom. Then, click on "Product Tours" from the menu that opens.

2- Click on the "New product tour" button

This will be a blue button on the top-right of your screen.

When you click on it, you will get 2 options to choose from:

1. Start from scratch,
2. Or choose a template.

If you choose to go with a template, the next screen asks me to select a template (although there is only 1 choice.)

I decided to create one from scratch since that is what the walkthrough asked me to do.

3- Install Intercom to your website and start editing

It is not possible to edit intercom product tours without code installation. If you just want to try the product without all the hassle, I'm sorry to say that you won't get the chance.

If you have the code installed, a new window displays your website and the product tours editor.

You can edit and place the elements in the editor, and preview your product tour before publishing it.

To your walkthrough modals and tooltips, you can add:

• ✅ Texts,
• ✅ Images,
• ✅ Gifs,
• ✅ Videos with/without audio,
• ✅ Buttons,
• ✅ And directions about how to proceed to the next step.

And that's it.

As simple as it is, it is also limited to this.

Intercom product tours definitely delivers what it promises, but it only promises walkthrough steps. Nothing else.

Is Intercom Product Tours Worth It?

Intercom's product tours feature sure is very simple and effective if you already use Intercom Messenger since you can showcase the product tours within the messenger, or order resolution bots to suggest product tours in certain cases.

But, the price and the lack of customization options make me wonder: is Intercom product tours really worth it?

1- 💰 It's Expensive

It is correct that Intercom provides more than onboarding walkthroughs for $273/month, but the add-on alone costs $199/month and this price for an add-on that does so little is too much for most businesses.

2- 📉 The Onboarding Features Aren't Sufficient

Intercom's Product Tours is a feature itself. Thus, a single feature can't (and doesn't) provide you all the necessary elements that you need to build a fully-cooked user onboarding journey to your existing and potential customers. All you get is simple product tours for $199/month while other options on this list provide triple size value for less than half this price.

3- 🎨 It Doesn't Have Customization Options

This is a general problem with all Intercom features: they are not so much customizable. For an onboarding sequence to be fully successful and efficient, it needs to blend into your product and feel like a part of the process rather than an additional annoying layer of information.

Top Alternatives to Intercom Product Tours

• UserGuiding
• WalkMe
• Appcues
• Userlane
• Pendo
• Intro.js

I will go into detail about each tool, talk about their pros and cons, and inform you about their pricing details along with how the tool compares to Intercom Product Tours:

1- Intercom Product Tours vs. UserGuiding – No-code Interactive User Onboarding

UserGuiding is a no-code product walkthrough software that helps you provide better in-app experiences.

With UserGuiding, you can create:

• Interactive product tours,
• Tooltips and hotspots,
• In-app messages
• User onboarding checklists,
• Resource centers,
• NPS surveys,
• In-depth analytics,
• User activity pages,
• Easy language localization,
• Product updates,
• Announcement modals,
• Custom user segments,
• No code customization along with custom CSS customization capabilities.

Compared to Intercom's Product Tours feature, UserGuiding is an easier and much more capable method for creating user onboarding experiences and improving product and feature adoption.

Built-in Analytics help you track the performance of your content and understand the user journey, while the segmentation feature allows you to create personalized user onboarding experiences.

What makes UserGuiding better than Intercom Product Tours?

• Proficiency:
  UserGuiding is a leading digital adoption platform and customer engagement software that solely focuses on providing you everything you need for minimum effort and time. On the other hand, Intercom isn't a product tours software, thus, can't provide in-depth solutions to your problems.
• Diversity:
  UserGuiding has all the necessary elements you need to enhance customer experience, while Intercom charges per feature, thus, you won't have access to most of them.
• Pricing:
  UserGuiding costs only $89/month, while the prices of Intercom start at $273/month.

UserGuiding Pricing

• 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
• Basic Plan: $89/month when billed annually for up to 2500 Monthly Active Users (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:

"They make a system that I always thought would be out of my reach accessible and easy to use! Anyone can figure out their GUI in about 10 minutes and be flying within a day or two! They have 2 shifts of support people though so it's great, I get quick responses any time of day and their support articles are AMAZING so I hardly ever really needed them."

G2 Review

👎 Cons:

"Sometimes there are inconsistencies in terms of where the guide appears or does not appear. But the support team (Shout out to Gabriel, very helpful!) walked me through why I was seeing these things."

G2 Review

UserGuiding vs Intercom Product Tours

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2- Intercom Product Tours vs. WalkMe - More Comprehensive Features for An Enterprise Plan

WalkMe is a cloud-based user onboarding platform that helps enterprises to conduct in-app experiences and create product walkthroughs.

WalkMe is one of the first-ever "no-code" user onboarding and digital adoption platforms. For years, it has developed itself to help people overcome the learning curve with interactive walkthroughs.

The actual truth behind why WalkMe has been around for approximately a decade is that it is good. That's why ,t is trusted by famous and respected businesses such as Cisco, RBC Royal Bank, Microsoft, and Paypal.

Therefore, it reassures enterprises about digital adoption, and provides advanced features.

But, the pricing of Intercom next to WalkMe is like the price of a BMW compared to a Rolls Royce. WalkMe is beyond just "expensive."

Therefore, it may not be the best option that can fit well with what you are exactly looking for. Also its implementation requires considerable technical knowledge, and the tool is not non-technical friendly at all.

WalkMe Pricing

WalkMe currently doesn’t offer a fixed price. Its prices change according to the company’s customized plans for your product.

WalkMe Reviews

👍 Pros:

"With WalkMe we were able to build simple flows and processes that people could follow without manuals and trainers hanging over their shoulders."

👎 Cons:

"It is a big challenge to keep all WalkMe content working on a website that is still changing, and which website isn't. This would be a great improvement to stabilize content."

3- Intercom Product Tours vs. Appcues - The Tool That Invented The Core Features Of Onboarding

Appcues is one of the first to introduce 3rd party no-code SaaS onboarding tools.

Appcues made a breakthrough in onboarding history.

Before it came out, high technical knowledge was required for creating a simple onboarding guide. Appcues broke taboos by putting a no-code onboarding product on the market.

They also presented several revelationary UI elements to the market, which we willingly use today, such as checklists and tooltips.

But being a pioneer means that you have to bear the weight of not being the best as other tools improve your idea and make it theirs. Having said that, I would like to emphasize that, Appcues is not as easy-to-use as you may expect.

It can be time-consuming for businesses that don't have spare developers who can devote a long time to building onboarding flows and product tours.

Also, Appcues charges a bit above the market average - not more than Intercom, though.

Appcues Pricing

• 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
• Essentials Plan: $249/month when billed annually for up to 2500 MAU
• Growth Plan: $879/month when billed annually for up to 2500 MAU
• Custom Quotation Available for Enterprises

Appcues Reviews

👍 Pros:

"Appcues is really easy to use and makes creating flows to onboard users very engaging and pleasurable."

👎 Cons:

"Steep price hike last year that made us evaluate whether to continue using the service."

4- Intercom Product Tours vs. Userlane - Similar Key Features For A Better Price

Along with its User Onboarding and Product Adoption features, Userlane also offers automated Employee Training.

Userlane doesn't have a wide range of features, but it provides all that Intercom Product Tours also provides.

The tool is very practical and an affordable option, which makes Userlane a great fit for startups. Also, it is very easy to implement.

If you’re looking to onboard your own employees along with your users, Userlane probably is the right option for you. But if you are aiming to grow your product-led business faster, Userlane can fall short of being the best tool to guide users.

Userlane Pricing

Userlane offers custom prices for each of their customers as they believe“that custom pricing is the best way to effectively serve such a diverse customer base“. You can contact Userlane to learn the cost of your customized plan.

Userlane Reviews

👍 Pros:

“At least at the start, we had a really responsive and helpful Customer Success person. Their team has also done a good job reaching out to us for feedback.”

👎 Cons:

“We don’t have a huge number of users, and it’s difficult to filter out internal users, which makes interpreting the usage analytics rather difficult.”

5- Intercom Product Tours vs. Pendo - A Comprehensive Customer Data Platform

Pendo is another 3rd-party software that provides tools for user onboarding, in-app training, feature adoption, product road mapping, and user surveying.

It is an all-in-one solution for product teams, helping you can gain valuable insights about your users.

Particularly data-focused product managers use Pendo to understand what users are doing inside their product, what functions/features are being more utilized, how product changes affect business metrics and more.

However, many Pendo users complain that it is not as simple as other tools since the integration and maintenance of Pendo is a full-time job for at least one technical person, especially during the initial setup.

When compared to Intercom, Pendo can provide better insights about customer journeys and help you collect customer questions. But if you need to focus on customer interactions, Intercom could be the better choice.

Pendo Pricing

Pendo has a free plan with up to 1000 MAU and some basic features.

Their paid plans don’t have fixed pricing, so you’ll have to contact Pendo to get a quotation.

Pendo Reviews

👍 Pros:

"Having everything together in one solution and being able to service the full feedback loop from one platform."

👎 Cons:

"Importing of business specific data elements to Pendo to use in Segmentation is clunky and difficult to use. Element matching for some types of page designs isn’t 100%, so elements go untagged."

6- Intercom Product Tours vs. Intro.js - Open-Source Customer Onboarding Library

Intro.js is an open-source library for user onboarding that is used by big brands such as Nestle, Amazon, SAP, and more.

You can create product tours and feature introductions using the library.

The good thing about using an open source is that it is affordable, even free, if it is not for commercial use.

The bad thing is... actually, there are two bad things:

1. The product requires a developer to function at all times, making it not such a viable option for businesses that need to keep updating their products.
2. The onboarding elements are very limited so any user onboarding designed with Intro.js will not be likely to satisfy every need of a user.

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 on 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?”

Intercom Product Tours Alternatives Comparison Table

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