Stonly vs. UserGuiding 2023 Comparison - Which tool is more beneficial?

Stonly is a highly popular digital adoption platform that helps you create smooth user experiences and product user flows. But… It isn’t perfect.

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 Stonly and talk about the tool’s cons and pros,
Introduce UserGuiding 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	$61/month	$89/month
G2 Rating	4.5⭐	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 Days	15 Minutes
User Segmentation	✅	✅
User Analytics	✅	✅
Easy Localization	Only For Enterprise Users	✅
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

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,
In-Depth Analytics
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 and 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

What is Stonly?

Stonly is a self-serve support and user education platform that offers engaging and (not so) interactive guides for software products.

With Stonly, you can create Help Centers and Knowledge Bases that are much more engaging than traditional ones.

Stonly onboarding offers step-by-step instructional guides that you can add images inside to illustrate your topic better, and the content of these step guides can be optimized based on end-user segments and preferences.

Of course, you can use these guides to create product tours that show your users how different UI elements and core functions of your product work.

Although it doesn’t actually have the most interactive content, it can be a good choice for small to medium-sized businesses that would prefer free/affordable products.

But the rest of the users should be aware of the expensive plans and hidden costs within the product.

Pros 🤩 Stonly is good for:

✅ Stonly is relatively more affordable and has a free plan, which is something that most of its competitors don’t have.

✅ Stonly makes it easy to create product walkthroughs. Once you pass the integration step, the ease of use increases quickly.

Cons 😮‍💨 Stonly isn’t good for:

❌ If you want to integrate Stonly into your UI elements, and of course, implement Stonly’s knowledge base and help center into your platform, you’ll definitely need a bunch of developer hours to get it done.

❌ It looks like most of the interactivity, in Stonly’s case, is pressing the “Next” button on the guide steps after reading a bunch of text and looking at a screenshot.

❌ Your customization options are very limited with Stonly. After a while, a lot of the guides look very similar to each other, and since you’re limited to a single element, you can mix things up as you can in other user onboarding products like UserGuiding.

Stonly Pricing:

Stonly has 3 pricing tiers at the moment, and a 14-day free trial:

Starter Plan: $99/month with 2500 monthly guide views, 30 guides, and access to core features.
Business Plan: $199/month with 4000 monthly guide views, $399 with 15000 monthly guide views, unlimited guides, and additional VIP features.
Custom Enterprise Plans: Additional Enterprise features with increased usage limits, but you need to contact Stonly’s sales team for a custom quote.

Stonly vs UserGuiding

	Features
You can use Stonly for onboarding purposes, but if you want an actual interactive product walkthrough, Stonly isn’t the one for you.	Onboarding 🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding is as good as Stonly in terms of text-bubble walkthroughs, but the fact that UserGuiding also has advanced audio-visual support within walkthroughs – making it more modern and user-friendly.
Stonly doesn’t have an in-app analytics feature at all and the tool doesn’t have many integration options either.	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.
Stonly doesn’t have a surveying feature.	Surveying 🤩 ➡️	UserGuiding also doesn’t provide lots of surveying options, but the surveys are easy to create and customize.

	Pricing
Stonly isn’t a cheap tool either, but the fact that they do provide a free plan makes it affordable.	⬅️ 🤩	UserGuiding’s pricing starts from $89/month for 2,500 MAU and all features (except for UserGuiding Now)

	Ease Of Use
Stonly is not the easiest-to-use tool on the market, but compared to most others, it is a tad easier to set up and figure out how to use.	🤩 ➡️	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
Stonly clearly cares about their customers and this is why they provide fast and personalized customer support – as per what actual users have said about them.	🤩 ➡️	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.

Stonly vs. UserGuiding 2023 Comparison – Which tool is more beneficial?