Intercom vs. UserGuiding 2024 Comparison – Which software is a better fit?

Intercom is a highly popular user engagement platform that helps you create smooth user experiences and product onboarding flows. But… It gradually gets very expensive.

That is where UserGuiding comes in.

UserGuiding is an amazing product adoption platform software that provides well-designed and engaging walkthroughs for an unbelievably affordable price.

So which one is better for you?

Which one of these tools is the one that is the better fit for your needs and goals?

To help you find an answer to those questions, I will:

• Introduce UserGuiding and talk about the tool’s cons and pros,
• Introduce Intercom 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	$89/month	$74/month
G2 Rating	4.7	4.4
Interactive Walkthroughs	✅	Add-on $199/month
Tooltips	✅	Included in the add-on above
Hotspots	✅	Included in the add-on above
Onboarding Checklists	✅	Included in the add-on above
Announcement Modals/Banners	✅	Included in the add-on above
NPS Surveys	✅	Included in the add-on below
In-Product Surveys	✅	Add-on $49/month
In-App Resource Center	✅	✅
Avg. Deployment Time	15 Minutes	≈ 3-5 Days
User Segmentation	✅	✅
User Analytics	✅	✅
Multi-Language Support	✅	✅
Easy Localization	✅	✅
User Tracking	✅	✅
Knowledge Base Integration	✅	Only for Pro plans
Learning Curve	😄 Smooth	😟 Steeper

UserGuiding also offers free migration services for your in-app content created using other software to minimize your switching costs.

Schedule a demo with one of our experts or start your free trial now:

What is Intercom?

Intercom is a widely known and capable customer service tool providing many features and leveraged customer satisfaction.

The tool also has a G2 rating of 4.4 and is trusted by giant companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Shopify, and Microsoft.

While the tool is known mostly as a chat software, there is more than that to Intercom. It is a full package for almost any customer support team with features such as:

• Business Messenger,
• Customizable Bots and Automation,
• Product Tours,
• And Help Center Articles.

Pros 🤩 Intercom is good for:

✅ Intercom is a good choice for people who need an all-in-one tool to analyze, engage, and guide users.

✅ The tool’s starter plan is fairly priced, and it is a good choice for newly established businesses with fewer users.

✅ Intercom’s live-chat feature and chatbots are definitely top-tier and useful for businesses that need to provide support to users as quickly as possible.

Cons 😮‍💨 Intercom isn’t good for:

❌ Although Intercom is fairly priced for starter-level companies, the pricing becomes unbearable very quickly. Most companies complain about how Intercom finds ways to charge users more and more each passing day.

❌ Intercom’s live chat feature simply rocks, but the onboarding feature is limited to tooltips only, which is not enough to create a fully-cooked onboarding sequence.

❌ Intercom helps you provide better support to your customers, but their own customer support is horrible since they usually respond late and can’t come up with quick solutions.

❌ Intercom isn’t a data tool, and the analytics and data they provide is very limited. Therefore, you will have to adopt a second tool for analytics – such as Google Analytics – to handle the data part for you.

Intercom 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.

• Starter Plan: $74/month for small businesses
  • Product Tours Add-On: $199/month
  • WhatsApp Add-On: $9/user
  • Surveys Add-On: $49/month
• Support Plan: Custom quotation upon request
• Engage Plan: Custom quotation upon request
• Convert Plan: Custom quotation upon request

What is UserGuiding?

UserGuiding is a product adoption platform that doubles down on customer and user onboarding with powerful in-app elements.

It is a “no-code” product that everyone, regardless of their technical background, can set up and start using immediately.

Also, UserGuiding costs below the average of similar products but provides the same value – if not more.

Here is what you can create with UserGuiding:

• Interactive Product Tours,
• Tooltips and Hotspots,
• In-app messages
• User Onboarding Checklists,
• Resource Centers,
• NPS Surveys and in-app surveys
• Easy localization,
• In-Depth Analytics and activity page,
• And custom user segments.

Pros 🤩 UserGuiding is good for:

✅ The #1 strength of UserGuiding is the value it provides for the price it costs. UserGuiding offers a full set of no-code engagement and adoption elements for as little as $89/month.

✅ Unlike many other competitors, UserGuiding’s interface is very user-friendly so that even first-time users can set up and publish their own product engagement sequences.

✅ UserGuiding is also very customizable. You can play with your engagement elements’ shape, color, positioning, and much more.

✅ UserGuiding provides 24/7 customer support. This means that customers can get help quickly – no matter which time zone you are in – and solve their problems without friction.

✅ In terms of User Onboarding, UserGuiding provides a full stack of features so that you won’t have to adopt multiple tools for different features.

Cons 😮‍💨 UserGuiding isn’t good for:

❌ Since UserGuiding’s main focus is onboarding, the analytics features it provides might not be enough for some companies. However, the tool provides various integration options with most analytics tools.

❌ Although you can use UserGuiding for employee training as well as user adoption, the features for employee engagement might be a bit simpler than you expect.

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

Intercom vs UserGuiding

	Features
In order to compete with a digital adoption platform in terms of onboarding, Intercom has a long way to go.	Onboarding 🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding is rated higher in G2 in almost every category concerning user onboarding. Therefore, we could say that UserGuiding
Although Intercom does provide in-app analytics, since it is not the tool’s main focus, you might need an integration to handle the analytics.	Analytics 🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding isn’t a data collection tool. Still, it provides in-depth analytics about overall activity, and allows you to see user-specific data as well.
Intercom is a complete user engagement platform, so it is not a surprise that their surveying and user feedback options, but that feature is not included in any plans and must be purchased separately.	Surveying 🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding provides various types of survey question types that can be mixed and matched to achieve the perfect survey for all tiers of users.

	Pricing
Not only is Intercom’s starting price higher than UserGuiding, but it also has lots of hidden costs (such as expensive add-ons) that drastically increase the pice.	🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding’s pricing starts from $89/month for 2,500 MAU and all features (except for UserGuiding Now)

	Ease Of Use
Intercom is a no-code tool, but to fully benefit from the tool and ease the integration process, coding knowledge is essential.	🤩 ➡️	From free implementation support to CSS-free customization, UserGuiding is one of the simplest digital adoption platforms. You can set up and get going with UserGuiding in under an hour.

	Customer Support
Intercom’s customer support to enterprise customers is said to be exquisite. However, for all other businesses, it can take up to a whole day to get a response from their support team.	🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding has a score of 9.8/10 on G2 in terms of the quality of customer support. Their dedicated support team is quick and provides Customer Support to all users worldwide, no matter which time zone you are in.