Looking for an effective User engagement analysis tool and wondering if Pendo is the best option for your SaaS company?

With numerous of Pendo alternatives, it can be challenging to make a final decision.

In this article, we’ll delve into precisely that – helping you determine whether Pendo is the ideal choice for your User engagement analysis needs. We’ll explore its features, pricing, and offer a comprehensive review to aid in your decision-making process.

Let’s get started!

Overview of Pendo for user engagement analysis

• Pendo is a good choice for User engagement analysis and it comes with features such as feature tags, event tracking, behavioral analytics, and survey analytics.
• There are a few obvious instances where you’ll likely need an alternative solution to Pendo — such as these use cases:
  • Over 500 MAUs: If your product has more than 500 MAUs then you’ll need to subscribe to a premium Pendo plan (which tends to be significantly more expensive than other competitors on the market).
  • Real-Time Analytics Needs: Companies that operate in fast-paced work sprints will likely opt for product adoption solutions with real-time analytics since Pendo’s one-hour data lag can data-driven decision-making difficult.
  • Expensive Pricing Model: Pendo is more expensive than most solutions on the market and the subscription cost rises rapidly as your MAUs grow. Even if you’re on the Starter plan, you could be paying $35,000 annually once you reach 10,000 MAUs — which makes it harder to scale.
• If you’re looking for a better option for User engagement analysis, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to Pendo.
• Ready to see Userpilot in action? Schedule a demo today to explore its powerful User engagement analysis capabilities firsthand.

What is Pendo?

Pendo is a product adoption platform that lets teams monitor product usage, analyze user behavior, and publish in-app guides. The no-code solution focuses on increasing user engagement and driving feature discovery.

Additionally, Pendo also lets you survey users, segment customers, and see how many site visitors or MAUs your web app is getting. Certain features like product areas, data explorer, product engagement score, and resource centers are locked to the Starter plan or higher.

Must have features of User engagement analysis tools

Here are some must-have features that you should look for when considering a user engagement tool:

• Have different UI patterns such as checklists, modals, tooltips, banners, and hotspots – so you can build interactive in-app experiences to drive engagement.
• Options to offer in-app support by creating a resource center so you can provide users with easy access to help articles, tutorials, and FAQs.
• Advanced segmentation features that allow you to filter customers based on product usage, in-app behavior, user feedback, etc. – so you can trigger flows or send hyper-personalized messages.
• A/B test for driving engagement that helps you identify what change is necessary to improve user experiences and increase conversion.
• User survey features for you to collect insights on user engagement and satisfaction – so you can improve your product offerings.
• Product analytics feature for engagement data visualization which enables you to track and act on user behavior data.

Pendo features for User engagement analysis

Behavioral analytics focuses on tracking user activity by segment, cohort, or through particular funnels. Pendo has native behavioral analytics capabilities with features like funnel charts, path reports, and retention dashboards to help monitor in-app behavior.

Here are the Pendo features you can use to track user behavior:

• Funnel Charts: Pendo’s funnel reports show you the number of users that enter a funnel, the percentage that completes each stage, and the average completion time. You can also see the overall conversion rate which helps you identify any underperforming user funnels.
• Path Reports: Pendo’s path reports help you visualize the paths that your users take when coming from a certain page. You can share these reports with other people on your team, zoom in on each step to get deeper insights or download the path chart as a CSV file if needed.
• Retention Analysis: The Retention dashboard can show you the percentage of each cohort that’s retained on a month-to-month basis. This will help uncover any behavioral patterns between cohorts and make it possible to perform a correlative analysis as well.

Pendo’s feature tags

Feature tags monitor user activity using CSS selectors and can be used to track interactions or broader adoption rates. Pendo’s feature tagging capabilities can be used without writing code, but more advanced tasks (like adding custom attributes) will require some coding knowledge.

All users are able to tag features (regardless of their subscription tier) once they’ve installed Pendo.

Here’s a breakdown of Pendo’s feature tagging capabilities:

• Visual Tagger: Pendo’s Visual Design Studio lets you tag features without needing to code. Simply enter “Target Mode” and then use your cursor to select the element or feature you’d like to tag.
• Mobile Tagging: Mobile tagging is quite different as you’ll need to go to the Pages section, select the “Manage Page” option, and then select individual features or let Pendo tag all the features on the page.

Note: If some features are marked as ‘untaggable’, then use a code-based workaround through Pendo’s API to fix the issue (but this solution is only available to developers creating native iOS and Android apps).

• Feature-Element Matching: When selecting elements, Pendo will automatically suggest a match for which feature to tag. You can then use the up/down arrow keys on your keyboard to adjust the selection area as needed.
• Tagging Rules: Pendo supports rules like begins with, ends with, and contains. You can also add custom attributes by diving into the settings page (but, unfortunately, Pendo doesn’t automatically detect these custom attributes).

Pendo’s event tracking

In-app events encompass all events that users take after they create an account or install your product. These include events like completing an onboarding tutorial, making their first purchase, trying out a feature, and more.

Here’s a quick overview of Pendo’s event-tracking features:

• No-Code Core Events: The core events feature on Pendo makes it easier to track the events, actions, pages, or features that are responsible for the majority of product adoption. You can use any tagged event, page, or feature to create up to 10 core events per product.
• Event Dashboard: The event tracking dashboard on Pendo shows you the name of each event, which product area it occurred in, and various quantitative data points. Do note that you’ll only be able to use the product areas feature if you upgrade to the $7,000/year Starter plan.
• Mobile Events: Pendo supports mobile event tracking for both iOS and Android operating systems. Examples would be tapping on a particular button, leaving app store reviews, reaching time-on-app milestones, and other mobile event data.

Pendo’s behavioral analytics

Behavioral analytics focuses on tracking user activity by segment, cohort, or through particular funnels. Pendo has native behavioral analytics capabilities with features like funnel charts, path reports, and retention dashboards to help monitor in-app behavior.

Here are the Pendo features you can use to track user behavior:

• Funnel Charts: Pendo’s funnel reports show you the number of users that enter a funnel, the percentage that completes each stage, and the average completion time. You can also see the overall conversion rate which helps you identify any underperforming user funnels.
• Path Reports: Pendo’s path reports help you visualize the paths that your users take when coming from a certain page. You can share these reports with other people on your team, zoom in on each step to get deeper insights or download the path chart as a CSV file if needed.
• Retention Analysis: The Retention dashboard can show you the percentage of each cohort that’s retained on a month-to-month basis. This will help uncover any behavioral patterns between cohorts and make it possible to perform a correlative analysis as well.

Pendo’s survey analytics

Pendo’s survey analytics may not be as comprehensive as its product analytics but if basic feedback collection is all you need then it should be sufficient. Pendo lets you add poll widgets to your home dashboard, track poll response rates, and collect qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Here’s an overview of Pendo’s survey data analysis capabilities:

• Poll Widget: Pendo’s poll widget can be added to the home dashboard to track responses and metrics. Sadly, each widget can only track one poll and it only shows summarized data rather than showing you the full responses.
• Combined Insights: Pendo’s in-app polls let you collect a combination of qualitative and quantitative feedback. Combining these two types of survey data from Pendo polls can help you extract insights and dispel any interpretation bias.
• Response Rate: Every poll displays the overall response rate so you don’t have the manually calculate this metric. While Pendo doesn’t have any built-in A/B testing for polls, you can use the response rate metric to compare polls and see which ones get the most engagement.

What are the pros and cons of Pendo?

Pendo’s pros

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of using Pendo:

• No-Code: Pendo lets you create surveys, in-app guides, and track metrics without needing to write your own code which saves a lot of time (while making product experiments or split-testing a lot easier).
• Custom Themes: Pendo’s themes let you create multiple palettes and ensure that any in-app materials published align with your existing brand palette (however you can only create/customize themes after you’ve installed the Pendo snippet).
• Flexible Dashboards: Pendo has plenty of widgets that you can add to your dashboard including feature adoption, net promoter score, poll results, guide engagement, product stickiness, and MAUs — so you always have your most important metrics within reach.
• Integrations: Pendo has 50 different integrations to choose from including popular tools like Intercom, Jira, Okta, and HubSpot. Unfortunately, only four of these — Salesforce, Segment, Workato, and Zendesk — are two-way integrations that can share data both ways.

• Multi-Platform Analytics: Because Pendo is compatible with mobile applications, you’ll be able to track product analytics for both web apps and mobile apps. This gives you a more holistic view of how users (or specific segments) use your product on different platforms. Note: You’ll need to upgrade to Pendo Portfolio to add more than one product to your account.

Pendo’s cons

While Pendo certainly has quite a few benefits that make it an appealing solution, there are also a few notable drawbacks that you should be aware of before you choose the platform as your product adoption tool:

• Pricing Jumps: While Pendo does offer a free version, it has a limit of 500 MAUs. Upon reaching the MAU limit, you’ll need to upgrade to continue using most of Pendo’s features (and paid plans tend to cost thousands of dollars per month).
• Locked Features: Key features like the data explorer, resource center, and product engagement score are locked behind the Growth or Portfolio plan.
• Data Lag: Pendo’s analytics dashboards only update once per hour. In some cases, this data lag could lead product teams to make the wrong decisions or draw false conclusions from outdated insights.

What do users say about Pendo?

Most Pendo users seem to be quite happy with the solution despite a few personalization roadblocks and usability challenges:

I love the ability to see where our users are spending the bulk of their time. I love the ability to measure metrics quantitatively.

Other users were less satisfied with Pendo as a product adoption solution due to the amount of effort it takes to actually use the tool on a regular basis:

I’m giving a 1 so unfortunately I can’t give much love. It’s already my second job using Pendo and I’m not impressed. A/B testing numbers are different between the API export and CSV export in the UI, no 50/50 split between test and control, support is slow, event tracking doesn’t handle aliasing, only 7 days of historical data can be sent with Segment which make backfills impossible, NPS forms are shown in multiple tabs and doesn’t close once it’s been submitted in one of the tab.

Pendo’s pricing

Pricing for most paid Pendo plans (except Starter) is only provided on a quote basis and there are no listed price ranges on the solution’s website. That said, certain reviews have stated that prices start at upwards of $20,000 per year for a single product and more than twice that for higher plans.

Pendo has three paid plans and one free version that is limited to 500 MAUs which makes it accessible to startups but difficult to scale in the long run.

Here are the differences between each Pendo plan:

• Pendo Free: The free version of Pendo can accommodate 500 MAUs and has features like native analytics dashboards, feature tagging, event tracking, segmentation, NPS surveys (with Pendo branding), analytics reports, and in-app guides.

• Growth: Pendo’s Growth plan is designed to be used for a single web or mobile app but can accommodate a custom number of MAUs. It includes features like native analytics dashboards., in-app guides, NPS surveys and response tracking, and customer support.
• Starter: The Starter plan starts at $7,000 per year (or $2,000 per quarter) for 2,000 MAUs and is the cheapest upgrade option available for freemium users. Starter includes features like Product Areas, NPS surveys without Pendo branding, and (limited) NPS analytics. Note: You’ll need to upgrade to the Growth or Portfolio plan to get full NPS analytics.
• Portfolio: Pendo’s Portfolio plan is targeted towards customers who want to use the tool for multiple web and/or mobile apps. Features include guide experiment capabilities, cross-app executive dashboards, cross-app journey reporting, and access to product engagement scores.

3 Reasons why you might need a Pendo alternative

There are a few obvious instances where you’ll likely need an alternative solution to Pendo — such as these use cases:

• Over 500 MAUs: If your product has more than 500 MAUs then you’ll need to subscribe to a premium Pendo plan (which tends to be significantly more expensive than other competitors on the market).
• Real-Time Analytics Needs: Companies that operate in fast-paced work sprints will likely opt for product adoption solutions with real-time analytics since Pendo’s one-hour data lag can data-driven decision-making difficult.
• Expensive Pricing Model: Pendo is more expensive than most solutions on the market and the subscription cost rises rapidly as your MAUs grow. Even if you’re on the Starter plan, you could be paying $35,000 annually once you reach 10,000 MAUs — which makes it harder to scale.

Userpilot – A better alternative for User engagement analysis

Behavioral analytics make it possible to monitor user activity, group data into cohorts, and extract relevant metrics/insights. Userpilot lets you tag features to see how users interact with them, compare goals by cohort, and create trend reports that track behavioral patterns over time.

Here are some Userpilot features you can use for user behavior tracking:

• No-Code Feature Tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you mark features, buttons, and elements with the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to track user interactions such as clicks, hovers, or inputs to get an accurate behavioral view for specific features.
• Funnel Reports: Funnel reports show you the total number of users that enter a funnel and the percentage of users that complete each step. This can help you track behavioral paths and see which stages most users get stuck on.
• Trends Reports: Generating trends reports will help you visualize the occurrence of key events over time and break down these analytics by device, browser, operating system, country, signup date, or even individual user IDs and email addresses to see granular behavioral analytics.

Userpilot’s feature tags

Tracking feature adoption is essential to identify under-utilized features and push users toward discovering them. Userpilot lets you tag features without writing any code, track adoption through engagement analytics, and visualize feature usage with heatmaps.

Here’s how you can use Userpilot to conduct feature audits and drive feature adoption:

• No-code tagging: Userpilot’s no-code feature tagger lets you add tags through the Chrome extension’s visual builder. You’ll also be able to select whether the tag should track clicks, hovers, or text inputs from users to get contextual data that reflects actual feature usage.

• Feature tags: The advanced feature analytics of Userpilot lets you track feature performance trends, see the top 20 features across your user base, and see granular data for individual features. You’ll also be able to filter your data by segment, company, or time period.
• Usage heatmaps: Userpilot heatmaps show you the features/elements with the most interactions. Heatmaps can be generated on the Features & Events dashboard by clicking on a tagged feature, editing it in the builder, and then clicking the heatmap icon on the bottom toolbar.

Userpilot’s event tracking

Event tracking is essential for tracking feature usage, progress towards product goals, and extracting actionable insights. Userpilot lets you create event tags without writing any code, view all your goals from a single dashboard, and sync event data to your integrations.

Here’s how you can use Userpilot as an event-tracking tool:

• No-code tagging: Userpilot’s no-code tagging capabilities let you set up event tracking for buttons, features, and elements. You can track clicks, hovers, or user inputs. You’ll also be able to group multiple events as a custom event to give you more accurate insights.

• Event goals: The Goals dashboard will let you track how many users have performed a desired action. You can also track users who have completed a specific event and see how that impacts other aspects of their journey down the line, such as feature usage or upsell events.

• Third-party integrations: Userpilot integrates with dedicated analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Heap, and more. This lets you seamlessly stream event data to other tools in your tech stack and get a clearer view of key events across the entire user base.

Userpilot’s behavioral analytics

Behavioral analytics make it possible to monitor user activity, group data into cohorts, and extract relevant metrics/insights. Userpilot lets you tag features to see how users interact with them, compare goals by cohort, and create trend reports that track behavioral patterns over time.

Here are some Userpilot features you can use for user behavior tracking:

• No-Code Feature Tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you mark features, buttons, and elements with the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to track user interactions such as clicks, hovers, or inputs to get an accurate behavioral view for specific features.
• Funnel Reports: Funnel reports show you the total number of users that enter a funnel and the percentage of users that complete each step. This can help you track behavioral paths and see which stages most users get stuck on.
• Trends Reports: Generating trends reports will help you visualize the occurrence of key events over time and break down these analytics by device, browser, operating system, country, signup date, or even individual user IDs and email addresses to see granular behavioral analytics.

Userpilot’s survey analytics

Survey analytics are an essential part of extracting actionable insights from user feedback. Userpilot’s advanced analytics capabilities extend to any surveys you build with it. You’ll be able to see granular analytics for surveys, sort by audience or time period, and view NPS data separately.

Here’s an overview of the Userpilot features you can use during survey data analysis:

• Granular analytics: Each survey you create has its own analytics tab where you’ll be able to see which percentage of respondents chose a particular option, view the most popular choices, and review qualitative responses of users. You can also sort by segment, company, or time period.

• NPS dashboard: The dedicated NPS dashboard compiles survey responses to show you all relevant Net Promoter Score data in one place. This includes total views, NPS score, total responses, overall response rate, the number of qualitative responses, and how NPS is trending over time.

• User responses: Userpilot lets you review the responses of each individual user so you can see how sentiment differs on a customer-to-customer basis. This makes it easier to schedule follow-up interviews or implement suggestions made by users with the highest lifetime value (LTV).

What are the pros and cons of Userpilot?

Userpilot’s pros

As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:

• No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
• UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
• Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
• Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
• Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
• A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
• Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
• Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
• Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
• Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
• Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.

Userpilot’s cons

Of course, no tool is perfect and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:

• Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
• Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
• Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.

What do users say about Userpilot?

Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:

I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.

What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.

Source: G2.

Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:

“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”

Source: G2.

Userpilot’s pricing

Userpilot’s transparent pricing ranges from $249/month on the entry-level end to an Enterprise tier for larger companies.

Furthermore, Userpilot’s entry-level plan includes access to all UI patterns and should include everything that most mid-market SaaS businesses need to get started.

Userpilot has three paid plans to choose from:

• Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, NPS feedback, and customization.
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $749/month and includes features like resource centers, advanced event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting options, and a dedicated customer success manager.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features from Starter + Growth plus custom roles/permissions, access to premium integrations, priority support, custom contract, SLA, SAML SSO, activity logs, security audit, and compliance (SOC 2/GDPR).

Conclusion

There you have it.

It should be easier now to make an informed decision whether Pendo is your go-to option for User engagement analysis. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.

If you’re looking for a better alternative to Pendo for User engagement analysis, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!

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