Guide to 7 Userlane Alternatives and Competitors (with free tools)

What Userlane does well

Userlane provides the best value for money when used as an employee engagement tool.

If you're training new employees in a particular tool, Userlane will let you provide onscreen walkthroughs for them. This will reduce their learning curve, make their workflow more intuitive and remove the need to hire expensive, third-party software trainers. Walkthroughs can be personalized to the specific needs of individual users or user segments.

On the analytics side of employee engagement, Userlane allows you to dive deep into employee behavior across different platforms, so that you can optimize both the employee experience and their productivity.

To give a practical example of Userlane being used as an employee engagement tool, the company has partnered with Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national rail company. Userlane's product tours will help employees navigate Oracle, ServiceNow and SAP internally, while also providing Deutsche Bahn with analytics that will help them optimize their software investments.

When a big name like Deutsche Bahn signs up for your software, you know you're doing something right.

So where's the catch?

Drawbacks of Userlane

Missing critical features

Userlane is missing several essential features for the customer onboarding use case, features that several alternative solutions possess.

There's no resource center feature on Userlane. This means that your users will have to talk to your support agents when they have questions, which is both more expensive for you and slower for them than using a resource center.

Userlane also lacks any sort of surveying tool. This is problematic, because it limits your options in terms of obtaining direct feedback on a particular feature in-app. Other digital adoption platforms frequently have NPS survey features, together with qualitative surveys to figure out the "why" behind the "what."

Looking for a way to announce new product updates to your customers in-app

To be fair to Userlane, this is a feature that lots of the players in this market lack. As a tool that's primarily for onboarding employees, it makes sense that adding a product updates section isn't a priority for Userlane right now.

Limited analytics

Userlane's analytics are based on the HEART framework established by Google, which stands for:

• Happiness
• Engagement
• Adoption
• Retention
• Task success

It's interesting how even Userlane themselves frame their analytics in terms of tracking employee sentiment – not customer product behavior.

So as far as product analytics goes, Userlane's offering is limited.

You can track the number of guides started, announcements viewed, or assistants opened, but that's about it.

If you need a tool for product analytics specifically, it's probably a good idea to use a dedicated analytics solution like Mixpanel or Hotjar, or a digital adoption platform with stronger analytics like UserGuiding or Appcues.

Top 7 Alternatives to Userlane

In the rest of this article, we'll go over some competitors to Userlane, outlining their pros and cons so that you can make an informed decision for your business.

Let's get right into it!

1. UserGuiding - the all-in-one product adoption platform

• Capterra ⭐4.7/5 (51 reviews)
• G2 ⭐4.6/5 (231 reviews)

UserGuiding is a no-code digital adoption solution that helps you provide better in-app experiences.

It works with a Chrome extension that lets you create various user onboarding elements as an overlay to your product, without having to use code.

Unlike Userlane, UserGuiding is built specifically for the customer onboarding use case. This is immediately apparent from its features.

UserGuiding Features

Orientated towards user onboarding

Remember how we said that Userlane is missing resource centers, in-app surveys and a product updates section?

Well, you can build all of those things with UserGuiding.

This means that your customers will be able to access self-service support and view your product updates from inside your app. It also means that you'll be able to ask your customers for their opinion of certain product features using in-app messages.

None of this functionality is possible with Userlane. And it makes sense – why would an employee onboarding tool need to have a product updates feature?

UserGuiding will also let you create tooltips, hotspots, announcement modals and checklists for your product tours.

Quick implementation

UserGuiding is extremely intuitive to use.

Simply install our Chrome extension, and add it to your website in a few minutes using a snippet of code.

After that, even non-technical product managers will be able to create guides in as little as 15 minutes. Each guide created is a powerful tool that will make your customer journey that much more seamless and intuitive.

If you don't want to take our word for it, here's what a G2 reviewer had to say:

Sophisticated analytics

UserGuiding offers you a far deeper dive into behavioral analytics than Userlane can manage.

For example, UserGuiding will let you set specific actions as goals, and then see how many users or user segments viewed, completed or abandoned those goals. You can filter your view by user, by segment, or by company.

This allows you to answer complex questions such as: "How many enterprise users who onboarded before January 2024 completed the product walkthrough for feature XYZ within one week of its launching?"

It's the answers to these sorts of questions that will determine the success of your product onboarding process.

(And note that if you wanted to find out why one of those enterprise users failed to complete the feature walkthrough, you could even use UserGuiding to send them a qualitative in-app survey!

Pricing

• On a sliding scale, depending on your number of MAUs.
• Assuming 1000 MAUs, the Basic Plan costs $69 per month (paid annually) and the Professional Plan costs $199 per month.

Note that UserGuiding's pricing is shared transparently on our website, whereas Userlane's is not.

UserGuiding vs Userlane

2. WalkMe - expensive employee training and analytics for enterprises

• Capterra ⭐4.4/5 (62 reviews)
• G2 ⭐4.5/5 (412 reviews)

WalkMe excels as an employee training and engagement tool for enterprises. It's focused heavily on digital transformation and employee productivity, as opposed to user onboarding or product adoption.

WalkMe Features

WalkMe enables you to create walkthroughs to make internal workflows more seamless and intuitive for your employees. It will also let you add contextual guidance to the tools you're using so that employees can receive the help they need in-app, rather than having to consult a manager.  

The company combines its walkthroughs with sophisticated, AI-powered analytics. These can be useful if you want to uncover inefficiencies in your workflow, such as a tool that employees aren't using, or a feature that people are getting stuck on. The AI will identify drop-off triggers in user behavior and even give you recommendations for how to fix the problems it notices.

Both these features are a good fit for enterprises who want to reduce friction in internal software workflows. But it's worth saying that WalkMe offers so many features that it's easy for users to feel overwhelmed and not know where to start.

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As a result of offering so many features, their support team has a difficult job to do. There are so many possible areas of the product that customers could have problems with that support requests are invariably complex and nuanced. The range of complex support queries also makes it hard for WalkMe to offer self-service support, further increasing the burden on their support agents.

Since it's not focused primarily on the user onboarding use case, WalkMe also doesn't offer an in-app product updates feature.

Pricing

• Not available publicly on WalkMe's website
• Requires you to get a quote from WalkMe's sales team
• Reports online indicate that WalkMe's packages usually start at around $10k per year, which is consistent with its enterprise target market

WalkMe Vs Userlane

WalkMe is basically Userlane for enterprises.

Like Userlane, it excels as a tool for employee training and engagement. Both tools are more focused on internal digital transformation and employee productivity than they are on the user onboarding use case.

Both Userlane and WalkMe have opaque pricing that requires you to reach out to them and get a quote, but reports suggest that WalkMe is significantly more expensive than Userlane – and more likely to lock you into a lengthy annual contract.

Both tools lack a product updates feature, so if you need a way to share product updates in-app, it's better to go with an alternative like UserGuiding.

One area where WalkMe is much stronger than Userlane is analytics. So if you don't mind paying extra for the better analytics and mostly need an employee engagement tool, WalkMe could be a fit.

If your use case is more toward customer onboarding, it's better to skip this tool.

3. Whatfix - generalist digital adoption for enterprises, with opaque pricing

• Capterra ⭐4.6/5 (77 reviews)
• G2 ⭐4.6/5 (329 reviews)

Whatfix specializes in providing highly detailed digital adoption experiences for enterprise customers.

Whatfix Features

On the onboarding side of digital adoption, Whatfix allows you to create in-app elements such as checklists, hotspot, guides, NPS surveys and resource centers. You can also make in-app announcements, although there isn't a dedicated product updates page feature – unlike UserGuiding.

Like both Userlane and WalkMe, Whatfix has aimed to create a solution that solves all the digital adoption problems of large enterprises.

As such, Whatfix can also help you with employee onboarding and internal training. If you're rolling out a big piece of new software internally, this could be a great way to make that roll-out smoother.

The fact that Whatfix caters to so many different types of use case is simultaneously a strength and a weakness. It's a strength because there's a certain type of enterprise that is going to see Whatfix as the solution to all their digital adoption problems.

But it's also a weakness, because Whatfix is so bloated with diverse use cases that it makes the role of their support agents very complex. Since direct customer support is so limited, customers often need to rely on self-serve support articles. As such, Whatfix consistently has one of the worst customer satisfaction ratings from the tools in this list.

Pricing

• Not disclosed publicly. For a quote, you'll need to contact Whatfix.
• Reviews suggest that pricing is around $1000 a month for access to all features.

Whatfix vs Userlane

Whatfix might not be as expensive as WalkMe, but it's still basically a more expensive version of Userlane, with equally opaque pricing.

Both tools are focused on internal digital adoption – in other words, the onboarding of employees, not users or customers.

Both tools lack a product updates feature, something which is really important for the user onboarding use case.

Whatfix has better analytics than Userlane, so if that's important to you, it might be worth paying more for.

But for the user onboarding use case, you can get equally good analytics from UserGuiding for a fraction of the price –  plus features that are more geared to that use case.

4. Stonly - product adoption tool with a solid knowledge base function but poor customization

• Capterra ⭐4.4/5 (11 reviews)
• G2 ⭐4.8/5 (125 reviews)

Unlike most of the other tools on this list so far, Stonly is aimed more at the product adoption and user onboarding market.

Stonly Features

As such, it offers a range of typical user onboarding features, such as hotspots, tooltips and checklists. You can use these features to build product walkthroughs for your customers.

Perhaps the best part of Stonly is the effect it will have on your support team. By directing customers to an in-app knowledge base, you can relieve the pressure on your support agents, as well as reducing the number of agents you'll need to retain. On top of this, your agents can use Stonly's generative AI feature to answer questions more efficiently than they would do otherwise.

Unfortunately, the UX elements you can create with Stonly aren't especially customizable, and you also can't A/B test your options to see which one works best. This suggests that perhaps Stonly thinks that you'll get your user onboarding UI right the first time – which is wishful thinking, in our experience.

While Stonly does have a survey feature, it's limited to NPS surveys, so more qualitative surveys aren't possible to create. Stonly doesn't have a product updates feature as such, although you can half-improvise a solution to this using in-app announcements. Stonly also hasn't invested as heavily into integrations as some of the other tools on this list – offering only 6 of them as of the date that this article was written.

Pricing

• Not available publicly on Stonly's website
• Requires you to ask Stonly for a quote
• G2 suggests that pricing starts from $125 per month

Stonly vs Userlane

To summarize: Userlane is the better tool for employee onboarding, but Stonly is a stronger option for user onboarding.

Whereas Userlane has no surveys at all, Stonly does offer surveys – albeit only NPS ones and, somewhat bizarrely, only for their enterprise plan.

Stonly offers a knowledge base function, while Userlane doesn't have a resource center, as we discussed earlier.

Neither product has particularly transparent pricing, but we suspect that Stonly is cheaper, from the look of other reviews online.

5. SAP Enable Now - software adoption for enterprise employees

• Capterra: no reviews
• G2: ⭐4.5/5 (4 reviews)

SAP is a large German company that specializes in enterprise software solutions. Enable Now is SAP's digital adoption platform.

Like Userlane, Whatfix and WalkMe, Enable Now is focused on the employee onboarding use case, as opposed to the onboarding of customers.

SAP Enable Now Use Cases

Enable Now will let you build guides to help employees navigate the complex software applications that are common in large enterprises. These guides enhance the employee experience by making the software more intuitive to use. An in-app help feature allows employees to answer the majority of their own questions without having to bug a manager.

One nice benefit of Enable Now is that it syncs with the rest of SAP's software suite. So for example, you could use the SAP Translation Hub to translate your guides into any language you want. This is quite a nice touch for an enterprise customer with multi-lingual teams.

Given that SAP is not a specialist in the onboarding space, the guides and analytics it provides with Enable Now are rather simple in scope. It's not SAP's priority to develop them to the depth of other solutions in this article. This has the advantage that they're simple and easy to use, but the downside is that Enable Now won't give you in-depth insights into your onboarding.

Pricing

• $204 per user per year
• Minimum of 50 users
• Minimum contract length of 1 year
• This equates to a minimum investment of $10,200, which is very expensive compared to other players in this market

SAP Enable Now vs Userlane

Both Enable Now and Userlane are focused on employee onboarding and internal training – at the expense of user onboarding.

Neither tool has particularly great analytics. Other tools in this article do a better job here.

Unlike Userlane, Enable Now shares its pricing publicly, but it comes with a hefty price tag.

Enable Now might be the better solution if you already use other SAP products, or if you need to translate your guides into multiple languages.

Otherwise, I'd stick with Userlane here.

6. Appcues - powerful user onboarding tool, but expensive

• Capterra ⭐4.8/5 (102 reviews)
• G2 ⭐4.6/5 (305 reviews)

Founded in 2013, Appcues is one of the oldest and most established onboarding apps on the market.

Unlike Userlane, it's squarely aimed at the customer onboarding use case, as opposed to training employees.

Appcues Features

Appcues' software allows non-technical product managers to build all the typical user onboarding features with a minimum of code, including:

• Guides
• Interactive Product Tours
• Tooltips
• Hotspots
• Checklists

They deserve special mention in this article for the quality of their analytics, in particular.

Their Event Explorer feature will let you analyze user events and create tracking dashboards based on your chosen segmentation, without having to code at all. Note, however, that Appcues' analytics are more suited to tracking individual users than they are to tracking data at the company level.

The only meaningful features that Appcues lacks are resource centers and a product updates page.

Pricing

• Sliding scale based on your number of MAUs
• Starts from $279 per month, paid annually
• Custom pricing available for enterprises with more complex use cases

Appcues vs Userlane

Appcues and Userlane are both product adoption tools, but they have very different use cases.

Appcues interprets product adoption as user onboarding, whereas Userlane sees it more in terms of training employees. As such, Appcues is a much better tool for the user onboarding use case, whereas Userlane outshines Appcues as an employee onboarding tool.

If you want to compare apples to apples, Appcues' analytics are way ahead of what Userlane can offer. Appcues also has the survey feature that Userlane lacks.

Neither product has resource centers or an in-app product update section. For those features, you'll need to check out a different solution like UserGuiding.

7. Intro.js - affordable JS library that's good for simple product tours

• Github: 22.6K ⭐
• Capterra: no reviews
• G2: no reviews

Intro.js is an open-source JavaScript library for creating product tours.

Intro.js Use Cases

Intro.js does one thing well, but it does it spectacularly well: product tours. There are no fancy features with this tool: just really solid, secure product tours that are infinitely customizable. You can apply the tours to your whole product, or just one particular feature.

Intro.js' library is used by big names such as Nestle, Amazon and (ironically) SAP, so they must be doing something right.

So what's the catch?

The product requires a developer to function at all times. This means that while the product itself might be cheap, the cost of maintaining and customizing onboarding UI elements probably won't be. And this is to say nothing of the opportunity cost of dedicating a developer or two to your user onboarding, instead of your core product!

Pricing

• Free for open-source, personal and non-commercial sites
• Sold as a lifetime license for commercial sites, which is great value for money
• Prices range from $9.99 for one site to $299.99 for unlimited sites and premium support

Intro.js vs Userlane

In most cases, Userlane is the better option for employee onboarding, whereas Intro.js is the better option for user onboarding.

That being said, if you need anything else beyond product tours, Intro.js won't be of much help. So Userlane is the winner on product analytics, for example.

Both products lack the more sophisticated features that a dedicated onboarding tool like UserGuiding provides, such as surveys, resource centers and product updates.

Wrapping up

Userlane is a decent tool when it comes to onboarding or training new employees – although it's hard to fully gauge value for money when it has such opaque pricing.

For the user onboarding case, it lacks critical features, such as resource centers, surveys and product updates.

The only tool on this list that has all 3 of these features is UserGuiding – which also happens to be more affordable than the majority of Userlane alternatives, as well.

And you can even build these onboarding elements without using code.