Nickelled is a scam.
It is unbelievably overpriced for a tool that doesn’t provide much.
Having said that, since you are looking for an alternative user onboarding solution to Nickelled, you are in the right place.
Because in this article, I will:
- First go over the features, pros, and cons of Nickelled,
- Than its 6 alternatives that can do the same or more as Nickelled, including open source and enterprise-ready solutions.
- And add a comparison table at the end of the list so that you can easily compare all the alternatives side-by-side.
I will evaluate each product based on my experience with them and the reviews I have gathered from trusted platforms such as G2 and Capterra.
So, let’s start with exploring today’s main act:
What is Nickelled?
Nickelled is a digital adoption software that offers a simple solution to create product tutorials.
The main strength of the tool is that the product is easy-to-use and could be adopted by anybody in your company.
It provides two different types of product tours:
- Snapshot guides: These are simple recordings that aren’t interactive, but can be used without any installation.
- Interactive guides: These are the more advanced interactive step-by-step guides that drastically improve customer experience, and look better on the user interface.
This means that you don’t need any developer to create guides and get them live. It is a great alternative to online documents and product walkthrough videos but it is not currently the most functional onboarding solution on the market.
Nickelled lacks most features its competitors have, which keeps you from providing a complete user onboarding experience with this tool. The pricing might be affordable but there are products that offer more value than Nickelled for the same price.
Nickelled Pricing
- 14-day free trial available
- Nickelled User Onboarding: $249/month for 2500 MAU and unlimited guides.
- Nickelled User Onboarding Premium: Custom quote for unlimited MAU and guides.
Nickelled Reviews
👍 Pros:
“I can set links to any section of our guide, making our table of contents the key feature for clients to get to where they need to go.”
👎 Cons:
“I think with any piece of software there are always features you wish were available for your specific needs. Our website will be changing and this means we will need to update all of the web pages to our guides.”
Why you need a Nickelled Alternative
1- 🐴 It is a one-trick pony with no features
It is correct that having the option to create guides without a browser extension or JS installation is great, but this doesn’t change the fact that Nickelled doesn’t provide anything else than product tours.
👉 An onboarding needs other user experience elements such as hotspots or checklists as well to be efficient.
2- 🎨 The customization is limited
You can change the colors of the walkthroughs and the position of the on-page elements, but that’s about it with Nickelled. There is no option to insert any visuals to the onboarding flows or change the shape or size of the elements.
3- 💰 The tool is incredibly overpriced
As someone who has been in the DAP business for years, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the pricing. Nickelled charges $249/month only for non-customizable walkthroughs? No wonder why they don’t have any customer reviews on G2 and only 6-years-old reviews on Capterra.
Top Nickelled Alternatives
- UserGuiding
- WalkMe
- Appcues
- Pendo
- Intro.js
- Crumble
I’ll go over each tool, compare them to Nickelled, and talk about in which cases they should be preferred. So, without further ado, let’s start with our first product:
1- Nickelled vs UserGuiding – No-code Interactive User Onboarding
UserGuiding is an all-in-one user onboarding solution that offers many more functions than Nickelled with a much better starting price.
With UserGuiding, you can create:
- Interactive Product Tours,
- User Guides,
- Onboarding Checklists,
- Feature Highlights,
- NPS Surveys,
- In-App Messages,
- In-App resource centers.
UserGuiding also has in-depth analytics with which you can track the performance of every step in onboarding elements and a segmentation feature you can use to group and target different groups of users.
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:
“You can get it going in minutes after signing up. The team is very responsive and they are always asking for feedback to improve the product.”
👎 Cons:
“Sometimes interface and Chrome extension could become confusing but once you get used to, it is not a big deal.”
UserGuiding vs. Nickelled
 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $249/month | $89/month |
| G2 Rating | − | 4.7⭐ |
| On-Screen Slide Modals | ✅ | ✅ |
| In-App Resource Centers | ✅ | ✅ |
| Knowledge Base Feature Integration | ❌ | ✅ |
| Announcement Modals/Banners | ❌ | ✅ |
| Interactive* Walkthroughs | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tooltips | ✅ | ✅ |
| Hotspots | ❌ | ✅ |
| Onboarding Checklists | ❌ | ✅ |
| In-Product Surveys | ❌ | ✅ |
| Avg. Deployment Time | ≈ 2-3 Hours | 15 Minutes |
| User Segmentation | ✅ | ✅ |
| User Analytics | ❌ | ✅ |
| Learning Curve | 😟 Steep | 🙂 Smooth |
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:
Don’t Pay a Fortune for Other Tools!
UserGuiding starts from only $89/month.
Create tours, tooltips, and surveys without coding
2- Nickelled vs WalkMe
WalkMe is a popular user and employee onboarding tool used by many large companies such as Cisco, PayPal, and Microsoft.
It is and has been a great solution for especially enterprises; if they possess extra developer time to create and maintain the elements.
At least one person to be only responsible with WalkMe is essential if you really want to get the best out of the tool.
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. Also, as complicated as it is, it is incredibly expensive too.
Even more expensive than Nickelled, but trust me, if you have the budget, it is worth it.
WalkMe Pricing:
WalkMe doesn’t have a set pricing, but it is known that they offer way above the market average.
WalkMe Reviews:
👍 Pros:
“Walkme has allowed us to almost entirely eliminate the need for live training. Our system is specialized and can be complex, yet we now have most clients onboard completely on their own with no training.”
👎 Cons:
“It becomes a bit difficult to manage active content when you reach a certain level of use.”
3- Nickelled vs. Appcues
Appcues is a pioneer of no-code user onboarding solutions. It has been around for a long time with countless customers who are pleased with the product tours and other onboarding elements it offers.
However, there are numerous negative aspects of Appcues as mentioned in the reviews.
Though the product can be used without the help of a developer, most users complain that to get Appcues working correctly they often needed assistance.
Also, Appcues costs 2.5 times more to start than UserGuiding, even though it costs the same as Nickelled.
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:
“The main benefit of Appcues is its flexibility. You can embed custom code into tooltips to change their appearance, run scripts, embed an iframe, or insert buttons that do custom actions.”
👎 Cons:
“Frequent bugs when building flows requiring a refresh. Lots of cool stuff you can do but it often requires time from developers to implement properly. Anyone running ad blockers won’t see Appcues flows at all. There seems to be a significant delay between steps, both when previewing flows and when seeing them as an end user.”
4- Nickelled vs Pendo
Pendo is not only a user onboarding software, but also an employee training, detailed analytics, and collecting feedback tool.
Pendo is a comprehensive platform for improving product experience.
Yet, the user onboarding bit isn’t the strong suit of Pendo; it is often praised for its analytics feature.
It lacks variety in onboarding, so creating a combination of elements to achieve a complete user onboarding is rather difficult with Pendo.
Pendo Pricing
You need quotations from Pendo team in order to learn about their pricing options as they offer custom plans based on your business.
Pendo Reviews
👍 Pros:
“I like the ability to add things to pages without the need for a product release. If there is an issue, we can quickly make a lightbox guide to tell the user something isn’t working, or to give them an alternate route.”
👎 Cons:
“One thing that can sometimes make me frustrate when I build a guide appears as if it’s natural to edit the text in the center of the guide, but Pendo can edit only from the left.”
5- Nickelled vs Intro.js
Looking for a free solution to create product walkthroughs and onboard users?
Intro.js can help you do just that, well not just that since you will need to pay a small amount to use the library in commercial products. It is an open-source user onboarding solution that you can create product tours with.
If you adopt Intro.js for your product, you will not have access to analytics or segmentation features and the variety of onboarding elements will be extremely limited with just feature introductions and product tours.
Also, since it is an open-source library, you will need full-time devotion of a developer to implement to your product.
Intro.js Pricing
As I’ve mentioned, you’ll need a license for commercial use:
- 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?”
6- Nickelled vs Crumble
Need something even more basic and completely free? Here’s Crumble:
You’ll only be able to create bubbles that show around your product, but as we all know, some products are self-explanatory and don’t need anything else than a few bubbles.
You can download Crumble from the public repository on GitHub.
Nickelled Alternatives Comparison Table
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should use Nickelled?
Product managers and customer success managers should use Nickelled to improve their user onboarding.
How much does Nickelled cost?
Nickelled starts from $99/month with the Guides Package and it allows you to create up to 10 guides.
What are the top alternatives to Nickelled?
The top 6 Appcues alternatives are UserGuiding, Walkme, Appcues, Pendo, Intro.js and Crumble.
