How to Use SaaS Video Onboarding in 2025 (with Examples)
In 2025, video isn’t a nice-to-have for SaaS onboarding. It’s the standard. Customers expect to see how a product works. A decade ago, onboarding meant checklists and long tutorials. Today, users want quick, visual cues that help them reach value in minutes.
74% of people have watched a video to learn how to use a website or application. Across the SaaS world, teams are using short, personalized videos to shorten the gap between “signup” and “success.” It’s the fastest way to show users what’s possible inside your product, and the easiest way to build trust when you can’t be in the room yourself. I can tell you, as founder of a product onboarding solution, video tours have the highest completion rate.
Whether it’s a founder recording a 60-second welcome video
Or a CSM embedding a quick feature walkthrough
Or a beautiful animated explainer video
...video helps new users feel guided rather than overwhelmed.
Why Use Videos for Customer Onboarding?
SaaS teams don’t stop when they sell a subscription. Part of the selling is also making sure users have a complete understanding. And nothing speeds up understanding like video. Here's why it works:
1. People Learn Faster Through Visuals
Studies show that viewers retain up to 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to just 10% when reading text. That’s a massive difference, especially in onboarding, where every second counts.
A short, 60-second video can often replace multiple steps in a written guide and still leave users more confident about what to do next.
2. Video Humanizes the Product Experience
Video brings a human touch back into digital onboarding. A quick greeting from your founder or success team can instantly create trust and warmth that static screens can’t. It reminds users there are real people behind the product, and that emotional connection often translates into higher activation and retention rates.
3. It Scales Personalized Onboarding
One of the hardest parts of growth is maintaining a personal feel as your user base expands. Video solves that. Instead of manually onboarding every new account, you can record once and reuse forever, or even tailor multiple versions for different user segments (for example: new admins vs. team members). Some AI tools are enabling exactly this.
4. It Drives Engagement and Action
Video also works as motivation. Users who watch onboarding videos are more likely to complete setup, explore features, and reach their first “aha” moment faster. Combine that with interactive guidance (like tooltips or in-app checklists) and you get the best of both worlds: clarity and momentum.
When Should You Use Videos in the Customer Onboarding Process?
What Makes a Good Onboarding Video?
Not every moment in onboarding needs a video. Of course, the best product teams build intuitive products that don't require them. But video is a high-impact tool to clarify complex steps, celebrate milestones, and add a human touch where words fall short. These are the moments where video shines most in the onboarding journey.
1. Welcome Moment
First impressions matter. The moment right after signup is a great time to show a video. A short, friendly welcome video from your founder or team instantly builds trust and sets the tone. The goal is to answer one simple question: “What’s next?” Even a 30-second Loom clip can help users feel like they’re in the right place.
2. “Aha” Moments
When users hit friction points (setting up integrations, creating their first project, or inviting teammates) videos can demonstrate what success looks like. It’s the difference between telling users how to do something and showing them exactly what good looks like.
For example:
“Here’s how to connect Slack in under 60 seconds."
“Watch how easy it is to publish your first campaign.”
The goal is to help them get their first "aha" moment as early as possible after they have their first touchpoint with your product. That increases their odds of staying and actually using your product significantly.
3. Milestones
Progress deserves reinforcement. After a user completes a major step (creating their first document, sending their first email, publishing their first dashboard) use a quick video to celebrate and guide them to the next stage. These micro-moments keep motivation high and users moving forward. Tools like Hopscotch enable you to activate tours based on custom properties, which means you can show video modals or tours to users at the most important moments.
4. Feature Explanations
Video is ideal for walking users through advanced features without overwhelming them. Instead of dumping all information upfront, surface these videos contextually, like inside a tooltip, modal, or “Learn more” button when the user first explores that feature.
5. Troubleshooting & Support
Sometimes, showing a fix is way faster than explaining it. Embed short support videos in help docs, chatbots, or even inside the app to reduce repetitive tickets. It’s faster for users, and lighter on your support team.
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How to Create Onboarding Videos for Your SaaS?
Creating onboarding videos used to mean storyboards, studio lighting, and endless editing cycles. In 2025, it’s simpler, and faster, than ever. Making the videos itself is no longer the hard part. Making them work inside your flow is. And that's where Hopscotch can help you. This is a step-by-step guide for building effective onboarding videos.
1. Start With the User’s First Friction Point
Before you hit record, identify the exact moment where new users tend to stall. Maybe it’s connecting an integration, creating their first workspace, or publishing a project. That’s your starting point. Record a short, clear clip that helps them get unstuck. Don’t start your video with “Welcome to…”, instead start with “Here’s how to [achieve the goal].” Your user is watching for momentum.
2. Keep It Short, Specific, and Human
The average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. The best onboarding videos are under 90 seconds, focus on one outcome, and feature a real voice or face whenever possible. Authenticity beats polish. Screen recordings, webcam intros, and casual voiceovers all work better than high-budget animations for SaaS audiences.
3. Record With the Right Tools
Skip the heavy editing suite. Tools like Loom, Tella, or Descript make it easy to capture your screen, webcam, and mic at once, and let you edit it in the tool really quickly too. You can add simple captions, arrows, or text overlays to highlight important actions. Once your video is ready, upload it to YouTube, Vimeo, or your internal hosting platform. Hopscotch supports direct video embeds from all major sources.
4. Deliver Your Video Inside Hopscotch
Here’s where the magic happens. Instead of sending users off to watch a video elsewhere, embed it directly in your onboarding flow using Hopscotch:
Add the video to a modal that appears on the first login, perfect for welcome videos.
Embed it in a tooltip or step-by-step tour for context-specific guidance.
Add a “Watch this quick demo” step in your onboarding checklist to drive completion.
Combine videos with interactive prompts (“Try it now”) so users act while watching.
Users learn by doing, not just by watching. For example: A CRM platform could use Hopscotch to display a 45-second “Add your first contact” video inside the app, followed by a tooltip pointing directly to the “Add Contact” button.
5. Personalize Your Videos
Not every user needs the same onboarding. With Hopscotch’s targeting rules, you can show different videos based on user type, role, or progress:
New admins see a setup tutorial.
End users see a “how to get started” walkthrough.
Returning users see advanced feature videos.
This kind of personalization helps you scale human-like onboarding, without a single sales or success call.
6. Measure and Optimize
Don’t stop after publishing. Use Hopscotch’s analytics to track views, completion, and engagement across your video steps. See which videos users skip, where they drop off, and which ones correlate with activation or conversion events. Then iterate: shorter videos, better thumbnails, clearer next steps.
SaaS Video Onboarding Examples
No two products onboard the same way, but the best SaaS teams share a few traits: they respect the user’s time, they teach visually, and they make every step feel purposeful. Here are 7 of our favorites.
1. Notion
Notion blends written and visual onboarding better than anyone. New users are greeted with short, clear videos embedded right into Notion pages. Each video shows real workflows inside the product, from creating your first workspace to building a team wiki.
Because the videos are hosted on YouTube but embedded in Notion’s own templates, users never have to leave the app. The result feels natural.
2. ClickUp
ClickUp uses video to turn what could be a complex setup into an easy, guided flow. After signup, new users see a setup checklist with short clips showing how to create a workspace, assign tasks, and invite teammates.
Each video is paired with contextual pop-ups and tooltips, so users can follow along as they watch. It’s an excellent example of how video and in-app guidance can reinforce each other.
3. Loom
It should be no surprise Loom excels at video onboarding, they use their own product to do it. New users are greeted by friendly faces in quick modals that walk through features like recording and sharing clips. The tone is conversational and authentic, not polished or corporate. Loom also fills its empty states with tutorial videos, turning downtime into a learning opportunity. It’s a great lesson in combining product education with personality.
4. Miro
Miro’s onboarding uses short animated clips and GIF-style visuals to teach without overwhelming. Instead of long tutorials, new users see brief “getting started” videos showing how to drag, drop, and collaborate in real time. Every animation reinforces Miro’s core value: that creativity and collaboration should feel fun, not formal. Their videos appear contextually throughout the workspace.
5. Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s approach is all about human connection. Rather than flooding the app with tutorials, they use recommendation-style videos led by real people. Each one starts with a warm greeting and invites users to explore more clips from a friendly, searchable library. It feels less like training and more like a personal walkthrough. By turning their own product into the onboarding experience, Tolstoy shows how video can make a brand instantly likable.
6. Smartsheet
Smartsheet introduces new users to its project management platform with a sleek welcome video that doubles as a quick-start guide. The clip walks through the main views (grids, dashboards, and task lists) so users immediately understand how the system works. From there, the flow continues into Smartsheet’s Solution Center, where users can create their first sheet or import existing data. It’s a smooth transition from watching to doing, giving users immediate momentum.
7. Replit
Replit’s onboarding makes coding approachable from the very first click. A step-by-step video tutorial guides new users through creating a project, writing code, and running it. The interface is explained visually, highlighting the text editor, console, and collaboration tools in action. What makes Replit stand out is how quickly it turns curiosity into accomplishment. Within minutes, users are building.
How to Do Video Onboarding with Hopscotch
Once you’ve created your onboarding videos, the real challenge begins: getting users to actually watch them, and act on what they’ve learned. That’s where Hopscotch comes in.
With Hopscotch, videos don’t live on an external help page or get buried in an email sequence. They appear exactly where users need them, inside your product. You can embed a short welcome message in a modal that greets new signups, add a quick feature walkthrough video next to a tricky button, or include a 60-second explainer in a checklist that nudges users toward activation.
The result is onboarding that feels effortless and intuitive, not like homework. The beauty of Hopscotch is how seamlessly video fits into the broader experience. You can start with a short video introduction to explain the “why,” then guide users with interactive tooltips and end with a checklist that celebrates completion. And with Hopscotch’s targeting rules, you can make this happen for any segment of users within your product.
➡️ Hopscotch is a no-code product tour and tooltip builder, you don’t need a developer to maintain. You can update videos, change messages, and launch new flows in minutes. Analytics are built in, so you can see how many people are watching your videos, tours, modals, and tooltips, to see which steps they complete, and where they drop off.
FAQ
What Is Video Onboarding for SaaS?
Video onboarding uses short, contextual videos to help new users learn how your product works. It’s often embedded directly into your app or onboarding flow to replace or complement text-based tutorials.
How Long Should an Onboarding Video Be?
The sweet spot is between 45 and 90 seconds. Long enough to show a clear outcome, short enough to keep attention.
Should Every SaaS Have Onboarding Videos?
Not necessarily, but most can benefit. If your product has multiple user personas, complex workflows, or key “aha” moments that require showing rather than telling, video onboarding can significantly boost activation rates.
How Do I Measure If My Onboarding Videos Work?
Track view rates, completion rates, and downstream metrics like feature adoption, trial-to-paid conversion, and time-to-value.
Can I Combine Hopscotch Tours With Videos?
Absolutely. Hopscotch lets you embed videos directly inside onboarding modals or steps, so you can mix visual learning with interactive guidance, all in one flow.
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