The 7 Best Appcues Alternatives for 2024

Mark Spera
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Mark Spera
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If you're looking for a great alternative to Appcues, you've come to the right place.

Appcues is an incredibly powerful user onboarding software tool, but it's not without some excellent alternatives.

I've tested and implemented 7 different product onboarding tools -- and I've cofounded multiple SaaS companies. So I know what separates all these products.

If you're an upmarket company looking for a user onboarding solution, Appcues is a great choice. But there's a few reasons Appcues might not be right for your business:

  • If you're trying to reduce churn at a smaller company on a budget, Appcues may not be the best fit -- you might consider a tool like Hopscotch.

  • Or, if you need in-depth product analytics, you might consider one of the alternatives like Pendo.

  • Or, if you want live chat and more holistic customer support features, consider Intercom.

  • Or, if you have a mobile app, you might try Customer.io

In this blog post, I'll be exploring the best Appcues alternatives to help you find the perfect product for your user onboarding and product engagement needs.


đź“š Also read: 11+ Proven SaaS Growth Hacks for Rapidly Scaling Your SaaS


1. Hopscotch: most affordable alternative

Hopscotch has perfected the onboarding tour experience. And, they have done it without requiring you to be a tech genius. I shouldn't say "they've" -- I'm a cofounder of Hopscotch. I recommend it if you need a stupid simple, versatile user onboarding software tool. Hopscotch is completely no-code, and it features nearly all the same features as other onboarding software tools at less than half the price. It's completely no-code, so you can design product tours and get them live in under an hour. Plus, with design tools and drag-and-drop editing suite, you can get your product tours to look exactly how you want.

Features

  • Segmentation by number of times customer has been seen, type of customer, customer has seen tour or not, and much more

  • In-app guides

  • Mobile and desktop adaptability

  • Interactive product tours via a drag-and-drop no-code builder

  • Design customization

  • In-app messaging

  • Analytics

  • Browser SDK

Strengths

Hopscotch's biggest strength is its versatility. Comprehensive tour-builders, segmentation, and flexible designs to match your brand allow users to not only customize Hopscotch's user-onboarding experience, but also the builder experience. For what it offers, the price is well worth it. Additionally, Hopscotch is its streamline format that is adaptable to mobile, desktop, and tablet environments

Shortcomings

The biggest shortcoming when it comes to Hopscotch is its limited. It does one thing and one thing only: user onboarding tours. Other products on this list include features like NPS surveys or even email marketing. Hopscotch is very specialized.

Hopscotch is highly scalable and offers a flexible solution to meet tech teams of all caliber where they are. When it comes to cost, versatility, and integration capabilities, it's is a great option for businesses of all sizes.

Customers

Vism, GrowthBar, WellPrept, and Hotspex

Price

Starts at $99/month


👉 Try: Hopscotch (no credit card required)


2. Intercom: most comprehensive alternative

Intercom is a popular brand for onboarding a product that is being used in a communication based field. Intercom’s software is, literally, goal oriented which allows you to develop onboarding flows that lead customers down a customizable pipeline. But it does a whole lot more, including live chat, AI chatbots, and messaging like email, SMS, and mobile messenger.

Key Features

  • Code-free builder

  • Interactive guides

  • In-app messaging

  • Multimedia integration options

  • Segmentation

  • Analytics

  • Tooltips

  • Email, SMS, mobile messenger, and other engagement campaigns

Strengths

Intercom offers a code-free and streamline tool for building product guides and tools. It is built for customer support teams at its core. So it is capable of engaging users in a million and one ways -- including user onboarding. Intercom offers a wide range of event-triggered tooltips to empower customers to navigate and self-solve problems.

Shortcomings

One of their biggest cons with Intercom is that the product offers limited customizability in terms of tours and analytics. Users can sometimes find their building workflows to be clunkier than other onboarding tools due to the code-free model. Also, the price is prohibitively high for most teams.

It's a great product for enterprise teams that want a comprehensive customer support software solution instead of a frankenstined collection of tech solutions.

Review

4.4/5 on G2

Customers

Atlassian, Notion, Etoro, and Microsoft

Price

Contact for pricing


3. Chameleon: alternative with the most integrations

Chameleon’s versatility and smart configuration makes it easy for experienced tech teams to create highly customized user onboarding experiences. Templates and analytics allow Chameleon to meet tech teams where they are at, while still providing users with a unique experience. You can customize product tours in a million and one ways, and put them all together with an easy drag-and-drop editor.

Key Features:

  • Tour builder templates

  • Tooltip

  • Microsurveys

  • Analytics and Insights

  • Real-time experience triggering

  • Large selection of styling options

  • Mobile app adaptation

  • AB testing capabilities

  • Integrations with Amplitude, HubSpot, Mixpanel, Salesforce, Heap and Segment

Strengths

Chameleon offers a seamless platform for product adoption workflows. Their tour builder offers users a wide range of templates so that any product person or marketer can assemble tours. Furthermore, their analytics and insights are comprehensive. Features such as A/B testing, goal setting metrics, and more offer businesses great insights into how customers are interacting with a product and potential hotspots in the onboarding process.

Shortcomings

For the limited services offered by Chameleon, some companies may find that their price point is significantly higher. Additionally, their customization options require more advanced IT knowledge. Finally, according to G2 reviews, the software is not quite as intuitive to use as other product onboarding solutions.

For companies that have the capital and manpower to learn the system, Chameleon is a great option. The software offers a happy-medium for larger companies who are looking to build a user onboarding solution that is highly customized who may not want to build something from scratch.

Review

4.4/5 on G2

Customers

Segment, Copy AI, Degreed, and Flexport

Price

Starts at $299/month


4. Userflow: best preview mode

Userflow excels in personalizing the user onboarding experience to create a truly unique and powerful product onboarding experience. Its wide variety of tools allows for comprehensive product adoptions and onboarding flow flexibility. Plus, it has an excellent preview mode via a Chrome Extension, which enables you to build out your tours in preview mode. It's pretty useful if you're building a lot of complicated tours targeting specific elements on your site.

Key Features

  • Segmentation

  • In-app messaging

  • Multimedia integrations

  • Tooltips

  • NPS Survey and analytics

  • No-code event tracking

  • Preview functionality via a Chrome Extension (with 4,000+ downloads)

  • Easy integration

Strengths

When it comes to building a highly interactive onboarding experience, Userflow excels. Userflow enables product managers and marketers to easily integrate diverse media elements such as audiovisual walkthroughs, Gifs, and more. Additionally, tooltips and hotspot identifiers help developers be proactive in building the product onboarding flow.

Shortcomings

One downside of Userflow is that its wide array of features can become a steep learning curve for its users. Additionally, because the company has made its software accessible to both technical and non-technical teams, there is room for growth when it comes to customization and in-app flexibility.

Overall, the Userflow solution offers an easily scalable, highly customizable product.When we consider price, functionality, and versatility, Userflow provides a well-rounded option for development teams for all sizes and technical expertise.

Review

4.8/5 on G2

Customers

Fleetcor, Johnson & Johnson, Payfit, and Descript

Price

Starts at $200/month


5. Pendo: best alternative for analytics

Pendo began as an app analytics solution, but has since transitioned to a comprehensive suite of user adoption products. So, if you’re looking for a powerful tool to both guide your users and learn about their behavior, Pendo is it. This onboarding solution is best for companies who are looking for insight and advanced onboarding capabilities.

Key Features

  • NPS surveys and analysis

  • In-app guides

  • Tooltips

  • In-app messaging

  • Mobile integration

  • User segmentation

  • Integrations with Slack, HubSpot, Jira, Salesforce, Segment, Zendesk and Intercom

Strengths

Pendo gives users a wide breadth of control in individualizing dashboards and building unique segmentation parameters. While Pendo is predominantly an onboarding tool, it does provide developers with substantial data and analytics to aid in product planning and intuitive marketing solutions. This can be an added bonus for teams looking for an onboarding tool that is somewhere between the minimum viable product and a CRM.

Shortcomings

While Pendo is a powerful tool, it is one of the more expensive software solutions on the market. Additionally, their platform requires self-sufficient and independent analysis of metrics and data points. These drawbacks may make it an unrealistic product onboarding solution for smaller businesses and startups who don’t have the capital, man power,

For businesses who are looking to have a stronger grasp of how users are interacting with your product, Pendo is a great option. Because of their price, Pendo is often favored by companies who are already well established and have the financial and time capital to invest in their onboarding flows.

Review

4.4/5 on G2

Customers

Salesforce, Okta, Morgan Stanley, and Verizon Connect

Price

Starts at $7,000/year


6. Userpilot: alternative with growth insights

Userpilot offers a comprehensive option that offers great scalability. They've aligned themselves around product growth: so Userpilot's friendly platform helps you guide users to adopt features and reduce churn. Userpilot is highly-rated and is indeed one of the original players in the product onboarding space.

Key Features

  • User segmentation

  • Event tracking and feature tagging

  • Checklists

  • Resource center

  • NPS survey and microsurvey builder

  • Highly integrative

Strengths

Userpilot’s biggest strength lies in its self-help-centric approach to user onboarding and education. With built-in tools such as the resources center and NPS survey builder, the program is designed to help business owners anticipate the needs of users throughout the onboarding process. With Userpilot, it's easy to reduce time to value for your new signups, and quickly get them up and running with your product’s key features.

Shortcomings

Userpilot's biggest shortcoming is that the app can sometimes be clunky when it comes to physically building the platform. Developers who are looking for refined control of their programs will find that Userpilot to be limited in its customizing capabilities.

For companies who are looking to create an analytics heavy onboarding program, Userpilot is a great option. Their affordable, highly-integrative tool and easy-to-use building tools make it accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Review

4.6/5 on G2

Customers

Adobe, UIPath, Rock Content, and McGraw Hill

Price

Starts at $249/month


7. Customer.io: alternative for mobile

If you’re looking for a tool that essentially provides you a blank canvas, Customer.io is just that. This user onboarding product is great for large businesses with a very specific vision for their user onboarding program. The wide array of tools and in-app flexibility allows you to design unique messaging strategies. But note that Customer.io is really a full suite of onboarding tools, including email, in-app messaging, SMS, and more. It's great for mobile businesses, which is unique on this list.

Key Features

  • Drip Campaigns

  • Message filters

  • In-app messaging

  • Customizable email campaigns

  • Segmentation and customer matching

  • A/B testing

Strengths:

One of the biggest strengths of Customer.io is its easy to use workflow builder. The simple design and navigable layout makes building onboarding flows easy. Additionally, because customer.io is a comprehensive CRM and engagement tool, it offers several options for customizing timing and drip campaigns within your onboarding process.

Shortcomings:

While Customer.io provides great flexibility, the absence of onboarding analytics is noticeable when compared to other tools. Additionally, Customer.io’s primary focus is customer management and lead capture, making the tools available for onboarding flows limited. In general, it does not offer as much flexibility when compared to other applications.

For businesses that are looking for a more well-rounded program that extends beyond onboarding, Customer.io can be just that.

Review

4.3/5 on G2

Customers

The Knot, Shutterstock, Careguide, and Mapbox

Price

Starting at $100/month


8. Javascript and Jquery

If you or your business has advanced coding talent, you need look no further for an onboarding software. JavaScripts jQuery-based plugins are widely regarded as the most adaptable front-end programming tool. They offer developers the ability to work across a multitude of browsers to build highly customized and versatile flows.

Key features

  • Multiple plug-in options

  • Easy-to-use API

  • Extremely customizable

Strengths

The jQuery plug-ins are valuable in providing structure and versatility to tech teams. Their open-ended programming model allows developers to build highly customizable user onboarding programs and additional plug-in options can help to create a cheaper, more in-depth, and unique product adoption solution.

Shortcomings

For non-technical teams, Javascript and Jquery is not an option. Additionally, this program can be an upfront expense in terms of time and money. Furthermore, businesses will need to have a clear direction for their onboarding program, as the open-endedness can be overwhelming.

When it comes to flexibility, Javascript is unmatched. Javascript and jOuery are a great option for technically advanced teams who are looking for a completely customized user onboarding experience.

Which is the best user onboarding alternative?

I hope all of my research served you well and you've found the right user onboarding tool for you.

  • If you want an affordable churn-reducing onboarding solution, try Hopscotch

  • If you want an all-in-one customer support tool with great onboarding tours, try Intercom

  • If you want the alternative with the most integrations with tools like Segment, use Chameleon

  • For a great preview mode to get your tours pixel-perfect, try Userflow

  • For excellent onboarding and deep analytics, give Heap a look

  • Try Userpilot for the alternative with growth insights

  • And finally, use Customer.io for mobile onboarding tours

There are a lot of great tools for product onboarding. Finding the one that's right for you is about balancing functionality with a price that works for your business. Good luck out there!


👉 Looking for affordable user onboarding software? Try Hopscotch (no credit card required).


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