8 Best Usetiful Alternatives and Competitors That Are More Professional

Usetiful is a cloud-based digital adoption platform software that aims to help you increase user engagement and product adoption rates.

In this article, I will go over the top 6 alternatives of Usetiful, in detail.

I will:

  • Go through the reasons why you might need an alternative to it,
  • Dive deep and analyze all six best Usetiful alternatives and competitors.

So, if there is any reason that makes you think you need an alternative for Usetiful, here you will have a detailed list of how and why you should choose the specific alternative.

So let’s start off by explaining what Usetiful is. I will go over the overall use cases, pricing, and some of the challenges. If you’d rather skip this part, you can directly go to the alternatives section or right to the comparison table.

TL;DR

  • Usetiful is an affordable in-app walkthrough product that also provides onboarding checklists and hotspots for user engagement.
  • While the tool seems like a good way out with the minimum cost, users usually don’t see that the tool doesn’t offer a complete set of features, and this leaves companies searching for complimentary tools to fill in the gaps.
  • UserGuiding, on the other hand, is a better option. It is affordable. It is also quite comprehensive in terms of features and capability. Here is a better look at the comparison:

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!

Don’t Pay a Fortune for Other Tools!

UserGuiding starts from only $89/month.
Create tours, tooltips, and surveys without coding

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Why you need a Usetiful Alternative

There might be a number of reasons for your search for an alternative to Usetiful.

From what I’ve experienced, and from the reviews I’ve found online about Usetiful, here are a few of my observations:

1- Limited Navigation and Difficult Implementation

For non-technical people, Usetiful’s integration and setup can be extremely confusing. While it’s still possible for a person who doesn’t know how to code to integrate the tool into their website, figuring out how to do it will be difficult for sure. In order to get to the required information, the user needs to dig deep into help center articles and cherry-pick the necessary information.

2- Limited Customization and Templates

Compared to most of its competitors, the customization options are limited with colors and fonts. For businesses that want to make it seem like they fully coded the tour, Usetiful might be a let-down.

If you have a small business and don’t really mind simplicity, Usetiful gets the job done. But this time, you will find yourself looking at a blank modal with no clue about where to go. The tool doesn’t start getting interesting unless you give it your full time and attention, and experiment with it – after giving away your credit card information.

It sounds kind of like a long shot, doesn’t it?

3- Segmentation Issues

The most common issue about Usetiful is that the tool doesn’t provide enough segmentation options. To be able to create a different tour for a different segment, you need to embed a few more codes into your website – which takes away all the thrill of having purchased a no-code tool.

4- Limited Help

Even though they have covered almost every issue in their help center, the articles are too short and sound like they were written for people who already know how to use Usetiful.

Top Usetiful Alternatives

Here are the top 6 alternatives to Usetiful:

  1. UserGuiding
  2. WalkMe
  3. Appcues
  4. Intercom
  5. Userlane
  6. Stonly
  7. Intro.js
  8. Shepherd

We’ll go over each tool, how it compares to Usetiful, and in which cases they should be preferred.

Without further ado, let’s get started with:

1- UserGuiding – No-code Interactive User Onboarding

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

👉 Compared to its alternatives, UserGuiding is much simpler to use since it is a no-code platform. It doesn’t require a single line of code to work.

It works with a Chrome browser extension that lets you create various user onboarding elements directly on your website.

Compared to other tools, UserGuiding’s user onboarding features are much more extensive and significantly more affordable, while its analytics functions are limited.

But, this lack of product analytics can easily be covered with product analytics software (that’s more capable than Pendo) such as Mixpanel or Amplitude, which are easily integrated with UserGuiding.

pendo vs userguiding
A product tour I’ve created with UserGuiding on Youtube, in less than five minutes

UserGuiding offers a wide range of features, including:

  1. Interactive Product Tours,
  2. Tooltips and Hotspots,
  3. User Onboarding Checklists,
  4. Resource Centers,
  5. NPS Surveys,
  6. Easy Localization,
  7. Advanced Analytics with User Activity Feed,
  8. Custom user segments,
  9. Material Tagging and Easy Targeting,
  10. Product Tours,
  11. No-code customization,
  12. Advanced integrations.

There are three main upsides of using UserGuiding for user onboarding instead of Pendo:

Interactive in-app guidance

UserGuiding is the easiest tool to use among digital adoption platforms that offer a full scope of onboarding features, with a 93% satisfaction rate regarding the ease of use on G2.

userguiding's leader badge from G2
UserGuiding’s G2 leader badge

UserGuiding’s guides are not only easy to install, but also quick to create. It is possible to push your guides live in under 15 minutes, and see instant results on how much the customer journey has improved.

With tooltips, modals, hotspots, announcement banners, checklists, and resource centers; UserGuiding offers powerful features for all pricing tiers – meaning that you don’t have go out of budget to have a good quality customer retention strategy.

userguiding guide on clickup
Here is a demo product tour for Clickup made with UserGuiding

By using UserGuiding’s browser extension, you can start building and customizing your interactive guides directly on your web app.

Surveys and NPS

In July 2023, UserGuiding launched a new feature, “Surveys,” which allows users to create multiple different types of questions and combine them within a single survey (or launch different surveys for different segments).

userguiding-surveys-feature
UserGuiding’s surveys feature

With this feature, you can get the most specific user feedback that you need, exactly when you need it. UserGuiding also offers NPS surveys for companies to measure their promoter score, and combines all survey results in the dashboard.

Also, thanks to their user details & activity log feature, you can dig deep into how each user journey comes together, and find what is it that makes the customers’ digital experience special for them.

Resource Centers

UserGuiding’s easy-to-create intuitive resource centers have increased their users’ activation rates over 25%.

userguiding resource centers
UserGuiding’s resource centers make everything easier

Resource centers allow you to create a self-paced learning environment right within your app without covering too much space.

You can trigger guides or surveys within UserGuiding’s resource center, insert external links, direct people to help center articles, or provide quick tips based on their usage – all from a single source

Analytics and Customization

UserGuiding brings analytics to a new level.

UserGuiding’s user details page

UserGuiding’s Analytics dashboard gives you actionable insight on the performance of your onboarding content. UserGuiding allows you to track view and completion data for each guide, tooltip, hotspot, checklist, and resource center – while also giving you information about daily active users, and satisfaction scores.

You can mix and match different survey responses and data on the analytics dashboard, and dig deep into each user’s activity using the user details page and activity log.

What is UserGuiding 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 fast and solution-oriented 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.

What is UserGuiding bad 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 on mobile web browsers, it doesn’t work on mobile apps. If you need a solution to work on web and mobile, UserGuiding isn’t the one for you.

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

👉 Compared to its alternatives, UserGuiding is much simpler to use since it is a no-code platform. It doesn’t require a single line of code to work.

It works with a Chrome browser extension that lets you create various user onboarding elements directly on your website.

Compared to other tools, UserGuiding’s user onboarding features are much more extensive and significantly more affordable, while its analytics functions are limited.

But, this lack of product analytics can easily be covered with product analytics software (that’s more capable than Pendo) such as Mixpanel or Amplitude, which are easily integrated with UserGuiding.

pendo vs userguiding
A product tour I’ve created with UserGuiding on Youtube, in less than five minutes

UserGuiding offers a wide range of features, including:

  1. Interactive Product Tours,
  2. Tooltips and Hotspots,
  3. User Onboarding Checklists,
  4. Resource Centers,
  5. NPS Surveys,
  6. Easy Localization,
  7. Advanced Analytics with User Activity Feed,
  8. Custom user segments,
  9. Material Tagging and Easy Targeting,
  10. Product Tours,
  11. No-code customization,
  12. Advanced integrations.

There are three main upsides of using UserGuiding for user onboarding instead of Pendo:

Interactive in-app guidance

UserGuiding is the easiest tool to use among digital adoption platforms that offer a full scope of onboarding features, with a 93% satisfaction rate regarding the ease of use on G2.

userguiding's leader badge from G2
UserGuiding’s G2 leader badge

UserGuiding’s guides are not only easy to install, but also quick to create. It is possible to push your guides live in under 15 minutes, and see instant results on how much the customer journey has improved.

With tooltips, modals, hotspots, announcement banners, checklists, and resource centers; UserGuiding offers powerful features for all pricing tiers – meaning that you don’t have go out of budget to have a good quality customer retention strategy.

userguiding guide on clickup
Here is a demo product tour for Clickup made with UserGuiding

By using UserGuiding’s browser extension, you can start building and customizing your interactive guides directly on your web app.

Surveys and NPS

In July 2023, UserGuiding launched a new feature, “Surveys,” which allows users to create multiple different types of questions and combine them within a single survey (or launch different surveys for different segments).

userguiding-surveys-feature
UserGuiding’s surveys feature

With this feature, you can get the most specific user feedback that you need, exactly when you need it. UserGuiding also offers NPS surveys for companies to measure their promoter score, and combines all survey results in the dashboard.

Also, thanks to their user details & activity log feature, you can dig deep into how each user journey comes together, and find what is it that makes the customers’ digital experience special for them.

Resource Centers

UserGuiding’s easy-to-create intuitive resource centers have increased their users’ activation rates over 25%.

userguiding resource centers
UserGuiding’s resource centers make everything easier

Resource centers allow you to create a self-paced learning environment right within your app without covering too much space.

You can trigger guides or surveys within UserGuiding’s resource center, insert external links, direct people to help center articles, or provide quick tips based on their usage – all from a single source

Analytics and Customization

UserGuiding brings analytics to a new level.

UserGuiding’s user details page

UserGuiding’s Analytics dashboard gives you actionable insight on the performance of your onboarding content. UserGuiding allows you to track view and completion data for each guide, tooltip, hotspot, checklist, and resource center – while also giving you information about daily active users, and satisfaction scores.

You can mix and match different survey responses and data on the analytics dashboard, and dig deep into each user’s activity using the user details page and activity log.

What is UserGuiding 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 fast and solution-oriented 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.

What is UserGuiding bad 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 on mobile web browsers, it doesn’t work on mobile apps. If you need a solution to work on web and mobile, UserGuiding isn’t the one for you.

UserGuiding Pricing

userguiding pricing details
UserGuiding’s pricing detail
  • 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
  • Basic Plan: $89/month when billed annually for up to 2500 MAU. UserGuiding doesn’t limit the number of features available to the customers, and you can benefit from all features – with limitations on active campaigns. For instance, you can create as many surveys as you like, but set only one active at a time with the Basic plan.
  • Professional Plan: $389/month when billed annually for up to 20.000 MAU with unlimited user guides. You get unlimited product engagement features, and you can have. 3 live surveys at a time with the professional plan. This plan also provides you with a dedicated customer success manager.
  • Custom Quotation, Available for Larger Companies, removes all limitations and provides you the smoothest UserGuiding experience.

 UserGuiding also provides add-ons, so if there is a specific feature that you need while you are on the basic plan, you can have it as an add-on without having to upgrade your package.

UserGuiding Reviews

👍 Pros:

“UserGuiding has roughly cut our user training processes in half, for both employees and customers. We’re able to easily create guides and checklists without the need for developers..”

👎 Cons:

“It was a bit hard for us to start with because of our custom targeting needs, but the support team helped us along the way.”

UserGuiding vs Usetiful

usetiful logo
Starting Price$89/month for 2500 MAU€25/Month for 5000 Assists
G2 Rating4.74.8⭐
In-App Resource Centers
Interactive Walkthroughs
Onboarding Checklists
In-Product Surveys
Avg. Deployment Time15 Minutes2-3 Days
User Segmentation
User AnalyticsFull report for premium only
Learning Curve🙂 Smooth😟 Steep
Chart about userguiding vs usetiful
Users like UserGuiding better than Usetiful
Simple, Affordable, and Powerful User Onboarding & Survey Software.

Simple, Affordable, and Powerful User Onboarding & Survey Software.

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2- WalkMe – Powerful Features for Enterprise Digital Adoption

WalkMe seems to be a product experience platform enterprise businesses can’t live without.

walkme vs pendo
WalkMe (Pendo Alternative / Competitor) Overview Dashboard

And they might be right.

Compared to Pendo, WalkMe is an enterprise-focused and expensive digital adoption platform for user analytics and product experience.

Although both products have very similar key features, the way these features (such as product tours, analytics, and event tracking) are set up in each product differs a ton.

Here are WalkMe’s two strongest features:

Analytics and Insights

WalkMe analytics dahboard example
WalkMe’s demo analytics dashboard

WalkMe excells in enterprise level DAP oriented data management.

If you’re more interested in using a DAP for instilling the adoption of digital products through organizations and teams, WalkMe should be your go-to. The setup takes more time, and it’s not as easily operated as Pendo, but it gets the job done for those who need to get other people to get the job done.

WalkMe Training

WalkMe's engagement feature
WalkMe showcases their engagement features

If you need a tool for customer onboarding, WalkMe isn’t the one for you. If you need a solution for employee onboarding, tracking, and management, then WalkMe can offer you quite a variety fo features that will maximize the employee’s productivity and get them quickly up to speed.

What is WalkMe good for?

✅ WalkMe is one of the pioneers in digital adoption and user onboarding

✅ WalkMe users get to enjoy an extensive set of high-value features and different onboarding UX patterns like tooltips, checklists, and progress tracking options with progress bars

✅ Although technical knowledge might be required, WalkMe offers a lot of customization options

✅ WalkMe is perfectly scalable for enterprises, especially if the use case is employee onboarding rather than customer education

What is WalkMe bad for?

❌ Among the WalkMe features, even core features might be too sophisticated for inexperienced users

❌ WalkMe’s feature amount/feature usage ratio is often low if there is no dedicated user or employee onboarding team

❌ WalkMe requires a technical skillset and occasionally coding knowledge; this makes setting up and using WalkMe harder than average

Not so accessible pricing, WalkMe is not the best option for small or medium-sized businesses or enterprises with an immature budget structure

❌ WalkMe is enterprise software designed for enterprises, so feature updates following customer feedback might not be possible; likewise, customer service might be less accessible

WalkMe Pricing

WalkMe doesn’t have public pricing, but most of its users agree on pricing plans that vastly change in the 5-figure range. The average pricing for the small teams seems to be around $10,000/year, but since WalkMe is an enterprise solution that specializes as a DAP for large organizations, you might have to multiply the alleged numbers.

WalkMe Reviews

👍 Pros

“We use WalkMe to accomplish lots of things: in-app communication to clients (emergency banners, marketing campaigns, etc.), self-help, launching our user guide on different pages, etc.”

👎 Cons:

“We never had time to implement the product. It takes a huge time investment, and isn’t designed for full documentation. Rather than maintain two sets of documentation, we removed Walkme from our product.”


3- Appcues – Onboarding Users With Interactive Elements

Appcues, as one of the first user onboarding tools on the market, offers much more comprehensive user onboarding features compared to most onboarding tools.

Appcues dashboard
dashboard from Appcues

The tool is beautifully designed for non-technical people to create and track in-app elements they use for their onboarding flows. With various features and in-depth customization complemented with ready-to-use templates, the tool has everything you need to create power users.

Appcues provides:

  1. Interactive Product Tours,
  2. Tooltips and Hotspots,
  3. User Onboarding Checklists,
  4. Resource Centers,
  5. NPS Surveys,
  6. Easy Localization,
  7. Advanced Analytics with User Activity Feed,
  8. Custom user segments,
  9. Advanced integrations.

Although the pricing of Appcues matches the price of Pendo’s “only product tours” plans, if you have to choose between the two for user onboarding features, Appcues wins by a landslide.

Here are the main features and reasons why:

Interactive Onboarding

Appcues interactive onboarding extension
Here is how the Appcues browser extension looks

Although Appcues is not the easiest tool to set-up, or the most affordable one, it is definitely a strong tool in terms of technical capabilities. Depending on your pricing package, Appcues gives you the liberty of coding and editing your guides to your ideal.

Once you get used to the UI and functionalities of Appcues, the tool becomes relatively easier to use, and maintaining your guides won’t be an issue. Of course, this is only applicable if you get past the steep learning curve with your technical capabilities or with the help of someone knowledgeable.

Experiments and A/B testing

Appcues experiments
Appcues’s experiments feature

You can choose to experiments with new flows or UI elements using Appcues’s new feature, experiments.

Using Appcues, you can create multiple kinds of UI elements and show them to some. of your end-users while others don’t see it and compare the results. This way you can see which of your ideas reach the users more easily, and act accordingly.

Analytics & Data

Appcues's analytics dashboard
Appcues’s analytics dashboard

Appcues’s analytics isn’t much different from it’s close competitors, such as UserGuiding or Pendo. You can see al the data of your guides, surveys, checklists, and so on. What makes Appcues’s analytics strong are the “journeys” and “experiments” features, which allow you to play with custom parameters and dive deep into details.

What is Appcues good for?

✅ Appcues can help you create beautiful and interactive product walkthroughs to provide your customers with an engaging onboarding experience, and get them to like your product easily.

✅ Appcues provides exquisite customer support. They are great at coming up with quick and highly personalized solutions to all your problems whenever you have one.

✅ Founded in 2014, Appcues is among the firstcomers of no-code digital adoption; it has a strong background and customer portfolio.

What is Appcues bad for?

❌ Appcues isn’t the best when it comes to analytics features. If you would like to get the best out of your customers, you will have to use integrations.

❌ No matter how friendly the UI is, Appcues has a steep learning curve that you must get past – which is only possible if you have enough technical knowledge.

❌ Appcues is also not affordable. Their starting price is not only above the market average, but they also don’t grant access to all features in the essentials package.

Appcues Pricing

pricing page of appcues
Appcues’s pricing page
  • 14-day free trial (no credit card required)
  • Essentials Plan: $249/month when billed annually for up to 2500 MAU. This plan has lots of limitations, such as not being able to get localization features or any kind of account security possibilities. And if you are looking for custom CSS customization, you will have to make a huge price jump and pay for the Growth plan.
  • Growth Plan: $879/month when billed annually for up to 2500 MAU. This plan removes most of the barriers, while some limitations persist. You still don’t get a dedicated customer success manager or security options, and you still don’t get localization support. Also, you cannot sign-up for the Growth plan without signing an annual contract, which can be a big burden for a lot. of companies.
  • Custom Quotation Available for Enterprises

Appcues Reviews

👍 Pros:

“The UI is smooth, we are able to sync data directly from Heap Analytics to Appcues so that we can target specific users based on their behaviors in our app.”

👎 Cons:

“The amount of configurability is limited. It does not allow us to set any delays or define any trigger for triggering an app tour.”


4- Intercom’s Product Tours – A Comprehensive Tool With Product Tour Feature

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

Intercom product tours website
Intercom’s take on the product tours

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.

Intercom product tour preview
Intercom Product Tours at work

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.

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

Intercom's dashboard
Intercoms first interface

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.

How to create a product tour
Intercom’s own product tour wasn’t as fast as one would expect it to be, but it was engaging.

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.

Intercom messenger installing
No code, no tours.

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.

Intercom Product Tours Pricing

Intercom pricing
This is how Intercom calculates custom quotes

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 Reviews

👍 Pros:

“It gives you a complete dashboard to help you understand your user’s usage pattern and also helps in creating a very elaborate help center as well. Also, the ability to integrate it with multiple applications like calendars, translation apps gives tremendous opportunities for customer success.”

👎 Cons:

“The pay per feature model can get a little expensive, which some companies might not be willing to pay for.”


5- Userlane – Simple User And Employee Onboarding

Userlane is also one of the solid digital adoption platforms that are suitable for creating employee and user onboarding experiences.

Userlane's sample dahsboard
WalkMe Alternative / Competitor Userlane

With a focus on employee training, Userlane provides interactive UX elements that guide users through any web software.

Although the customization and the features are limited, Userlane has all the core elements of the average user onboarding experience:

User Onboarding Guides

Userlane product tour sample
Userlane’s sample product tour

Userlane offers interactive product guides that you can customize as you like. The targeting and segmentation for those guides are sufficient for most but if you have complicated segments or lots of different language requirements, Userlane might not be the one for you.

Setting up Userlane guides. is easy. You simply download the browser extension, edit and adjust your tooltips and modals, and you are ready to go.

Checklists and Knowledge Base

Userlane checklist on launcher
Userlane knowledge base

While most user onboarding tools offer separate user onboarding checklists and knowledge bases, USerlane brings those two elements together on one launcher.

Just like any other tool, you can use these features to launch product tours. The downside of USerlane’s launcher is the fact that you can’t insert surveys and sort in it.

Data & Analytics

Userlane allows you to track how your users are doing with the onboarding material, but it doesn’t provide any advanced analytics capabilities.

You can try the other tools on the list, like UserGuiding, if you’re looking for something more advanced than basic.

What is Userlane good for?

✅ Userlane is very user-friendly so that even first-time users can set up and publish their own product engagement sequences.

✅ The same goes with the integration, it is relatively easier than most competitors.

✅ Userlane provides good customer support. They are great at coming up with quick and highly personalized solutions to all your problems whenever you have one.

What is Userlane bad for?

❌ If you value the visuality of your product, then you will be disappointed to hear that Userlane doesn’t offer the best customization options. The elements are not really customizable, and they don’t offer many templates.

❌ Userlane isn’t the best when it comes to analytics features. If you would like to get the best out of your customers, you will have to use integrations.

❌ But Userlane doesn’t provide enough integration options either. However, if you only use Zendesk, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and Salesforce, well, then you won’t be disappointed.

Userlane Pricing

Userlane pricing page
Userlane’s pricing page, it was quite difficult to find 🙂

Userlane offers custom pricing based on your needs and the size of your company, so you’ll need to get a demo to get a quote and give the product a try.

Userlane Reviews

👍 Pros:

We are especially enthusiastic about the focus on supporting start-ups in their founding phase. We are benefiting from the idea to help young companies that have not the resources and opportunities to fully support their new customers yet.os.

👎 Cons:

” The implementation was at the first time challenging us a bit but not more than the first use of any other tool. After a while, you get used to it and learn how to get the best overview of all functions and possibilities.”


6- Stonly – Knowledge Bases And Product Tours

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

Knowledge base alternative stonly
Stonly Knowledge Base

The customer service software especially started generating more attention after the series A investment of $22M it received in January 2022.

Stonly offers a fairly basic solution to educate users and take some weight off the shoulders of the customer support team on a small budget, but it might not be giving you the best bang for your buck.

Stonly helps you create help centers and knowledge bases that are much more engaging compared to the traditional ones that are just chunks of writing piled up on a website.

Onboarding Flows

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.

These step interactive guides can also be triggered through tooltips and hotspots for a more hands-on experience.

stonly alternative
Stonly’s Dashboard

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.

Stonly Knowledge Bases and Resource centers

stonly launcher and resource center
Stonly allows you to generate launchers with resource centers

Along with onboarding flows and knowledge bases, Stonly also allows you to create basic launchers with resource centers in them. From those launchers, you can trigger guides, access knowledge base articles, or get support information.

Because Stonly doesn’t offer surveys or such, this is about everything that their launcher can do.

Also, Stonly doesn’t provide analytics capabilities. Therefore, you will have a difficult time understanding how your users behave and navigate within your product.

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 if you have quite a few users, then you should be ready for questionably high pricing plans, since Stonly only has a starter plan, and an expensive plan.

What is Stonly 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.

What is Stonly bad 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 pricing
Stonly’s pricing page

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

  • Free plan forever without charge for up to 1000 MAU and 5 guides. On this plan, you don’t have access to multiple knowledge bases or guides, and you can’t localize your content.
  • Business Plan: $199/month with 4000 monthly guide views, $399 with 15000 monthly guide views with unlimited active guides. On this plan, you get access to language localization, 3 knowledge bases, only 4 integration options, and SEO customization. You don’t get any additional support experience as this plan lists the support as “self-serve”.
  • Custom Enterprise Plans: Additional Enterprise features with increased usage limits, but you need to contact Stonly’s sales team for a custom quote.

Stonly Reviews

👍 Pros:

“I love the variety of guide options Stonly supports (like product tours, NPS surveys, checklists, knowledge bases, etc).”

👎 Cons:

“There’s not a lot of visual customization, and the design is a bit clunky. Setup is difficult”


7- Intro.js – Open Source Library for Product Tours

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

intro.js product tour
Intro.js’s product tour.

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's pricing plan details
Intro.js’s pricing

8- Shepherd.js – Open Source Usetiful Alternative

Shepherd is a JavaScript library for guiding users through your app.

Product Tour from Usetiful Alternative / Competitor Shepherd.js
Usetiful Alternative / Competitor Shepherd.js

Shepherd.js is not a fully developed 3rd party tool like most of the other alternatives that I listed. It is an open-source library to make it easier to create simple product tours.

This means you have to have technical knowledge in order to use the source. There are certain manuals and tutorials about how to use the source, yet, many people complain about different bugs, such as the screen not scrolling or the button not clicking.

Shepherd.js is a good alternative if you have a spare developer, don’t want to waste any money, and don’t need customization in your product tour.

Shepherd.js Pricing

  • Sheperd.js is completely free!

Usetiful Alternatives Comparison Table

usetiful alternatives comparison table
A Comparison Table of Usetiful Alternatives

Conclusion

As you see, there are numerous alternatives to Usetiful, and the one you’ll choose really should be based on your business’ needs.

  • If you want a better-designed experience and access to essential features such as resource centers, try UserGuiding.
  • If you need even more features, and have a complex tool that requires extra detail and heavier technical knowledge, try WalkMe.
  • If you have a low budget but an ample amount of spare developer time at hand, try Intro.js or Shepherd.
  • If you are a technical person and looking for a better experience with a higher price, try Appcues.
  • If you’re eager to sacrifice a complete user onboarding with a good cost for keeping everything in one place, try Intercom’s Product Tours.

Frequently Asked Questions


Who should use Usetiful?

Product owners, growth managers, customer success teams, and product managers can use Usetiful and its alternatives such as UserGuiding to effectively onboard new users.


How much does Usetiful cost?

Usetiful has a free version available, but it covers only one tour and up to 2000 assists. There is a 14-day free trial, credit card required. Their plus plan costs $29/month for up to 5000 assists, and their premium plan costs $99/month for up to 20.000 assists.


What are the top alternatives to Usetiful?

The top 6 alternatives to Usetiful are UserGuiding, WalkMe, Shepherd.js, Appcues, Intro.js, and Intercom.


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Hilal Çökeli

Hilal Çökeli

I’m UserGuiding’s growth-obsessed product marketer. I like to research and write about product, onboarding, and inbound marketing. If you feel like we could exchange ideas, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or email! P.S. If I don’t respond, please know that I’m on a road trip with my camera and motorbike.