Is Appcues or Spekit the best tool for new client onboarding? And is there a better in-app onboarding software that would better fit your needs?

Review sites offer so many options that it’s hard to decide which is best.

You need to consider your priorities and what functionality you’ll need from the tool to get the job done. Then there’s also the price that needs to match your budget. Right?

In this post, we’ll discuss exactly that – what the perfect tool for new client onboarding should deliver and which will be the best choice for your company’s needs.

Let’s dive in!

TL;DR

• New client onboarding involves introducing the company and product to the client, answering their questions, and guiding them along the way.
• The onboarding process is crucial for SaaS companies because it determines whether a customer stays or leaves.
• Onboarding tools can help you create a great first impression and ensure a smooth onboarding process. They allow you to create interactive walkthroughs and personalize customer journeys based on segmentation, as well as ask customers for feedback via microsurveys.
• Appcues and Spekit are user onboarding tools that allow you to build interactive walkthroughs and product tours for new customers.
• Both are good tools in the SaaS market, but they are not the right fit for everyone. For example, Appcues lacks certain transition actions like driven actions, scroll position, etc and their lowest plan is very limited.
• When it comes to Spekit, there are many bugs and performance issues when using the tool. It’s also missing advanced analytics.
• Appcues and Spekit have a better alternative. Consider using Userpilot if you want to get the most out of your investment. This code-free tool allows you to create interactive and personalized onboarding experiences for new customers using a variety of UI patterns. Moreover, you will be able to use powerful segmentation and analytics features to better understand and serve your customers.

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What is new client onboarding?

New client onboarding is a process that involves welcoming new clients, answering their questions, and ensuring they understand what your company offers. It’s usually delivered by Customer Success Managers for high-touch “white glove”client onboarding and may be automated for lower-ACV prosumer customers e.g. in SaaS.

Either way, it’s the time when your company establishes the relationship with your new client/customer, so it’s critical to get things right.

New clients might feel stressed about the onboarding time, wondering about the amount of time it will take them to truly understand and adopt your service/product, and feeling buyer’s remorse – whether they made the right choice and that you’re worth their time and money.

On the flip side, your customer success agents don’t know what the cooperation with the new client will be like, what are the client’s goals, and if it will be really possible to meet their expectations.

Let’s dive deeper into why new client onboarding is important, and how to get it right!

Why should you care about new client onboarding?

The new client onboarding phase is like the first date you may have with a new “romantic interest” – it’s a make-or-break few hours that determine if the next date is going to happen. Likewise, client onboarding may not last long, but it sets the stage for your whole relationship with that client.

Here’s why it’s so critical:

• The onboarding stage is a deciding factor for a lot of your clients whether to continue business with your company or not. According to Hubspot, 63% of customers consider the onboarding process when making a purchase.
• And no wonder – as the first interactions with your team, and whether there’s a lot of friction in the onboarding process or not – determine how your client perceives your company’s service level.
• Based on that, they would probably recommend your product/service to their friends or…not. So client onboarding also affects your Word of Mouth (WOM)
• This means that a bad client onboarding experience will likely leave you with poor reviews. And reviews on review sites like G2 or Capterra are an important deciding factor for most prospects considering your tool.
• Last but not least – the client onboarding phase affects the churn likelihood of your clients. If the goals are not set right in the onboarding phase, the expectations are not managed, and your client does not feel like they are reaching success – they will be more likely to feel disappointed in your product and churn.

Why do you need tools for new client onboarding?

Wondering why you even need a new client onboarding tool? There are several reasons why you may need one:

Let’s face it: you can’t provide a premium onboarding service to every client by hand, especially if you’re growing rapidly, and you’re selling to several client sectors.

And yet – considering what we discussed in the ‘importance of client onboarding’ – you really cannot afford to drop the ball on your ‘smaller’ users. So what can you do? To conduct new client onboarding well and reduce the friction for your new clients, you need the right onboarding tools

Here’s what the right new client onboarding tool that will allow you to do:

• Provide personalized onboarding flows that will be self-serve – will reduce the time your CSMs will need to spend with your clients explaining every feature of your product.
• Segment your users by company size, role, use case, and Job-to-be-done – to make sure you can deliver the right onboarding experiences to the right person, at the right time.
• Easily conduct surveys to understand your users’ goals, motivations, expectations, JTBDs, and desired outcomes.
• Track user journeys with simple user analytics and react to any problems as they arise.
• Provide self-serve support materials right inside your product, in a resource hub.

Your new client onboarding tools will allow you to do all the above synchronously, without having to deploy an army of CSMs on every single client.

Tool’s must-have features for new client onboarding?

Before picking your new client onboarding tool, you should check if it has most of the must-have features of a good onboarding tool:

Here’s what to look for before picking your client onboarding solution:

• Great segmentation capabilities – so you can segment your new clients by size, job to be done, role, use case, etc. – but also by in-app behavior.
• Ability to create no-code microsurveys – so you can easily collect additional information about your new clients that will help you customize their onboarding flows and experience.
• Features for creating no-code in-app experiences for onboarding: onboarding flows, checklists, tooltips, and modals.
• The option to create in-app resource centers for your new clients with multimedia content hubs – including help docs, knowledge base articles, video tutorials, as well onboarding flows. The knowledge hub should be available in-app and searchable by KWs.
• User analytics to monitor new client behavior inside your product, and catch customers that are failing to achieve their goals early – to offer them more personalized “human” support.

Appcues for new client onboarding

Appcues is another no-code user onboarding platform that helps non-technical teams track and analyze product usage. You can publish in-app onboarding tours, announcements, and launch surveys.

Unlike Userpilot, the functionality is limited if you are using the basic plans.

Appcues used to provide onboarding templates, which made it easy to use the tool. However, it provided a predefined way of thinking about onboarding all while having a higher price tag than other onboarding software. As of the time of writing (end of 2022), Appcues has removed its onboarding templates – without really replacing them with another solution.

Appcues allows you to design flows that make onboarding processes a breeze. These flows are what you use to create product tours and other in-app communication with users.

Here’s what you’ll get when you start using Appcues:

• Access to an easy-to-use UI that anyone on the team can handle for building in-app flows without coding.
• Building a product tour in Appcues is relatively easy. You just need to open their chrome extension on top of your application and start building your in-app experiences with a WYSIWYG editor. You simply select a UI pattern and customize it ‘live’, or point to the elements you want to e.g. append your tooltips to.
• Previously it was even easier – you chose one of its templates, they would basically create the product tour for you, and you just needed to customize each step. This limited the options for customizing but it was useful for beginners. We don’t know if Appcues plans to bring their templates back.
• You can also create checklists with Appcues (NOT available on the Essentials plan) and prompt users to take action. These are ok but have limited functionality (can’t trigger JS functions, or add gamification elements) compared to alternatives, such as Userpilot.
• Track UI engagement with Events explorer which allows you to tag elements without coding.
• Build custom user segments (up to 5 on the Essentials plan) based on user properties, flows, interactions, or events you set up in the events explorer.

Pros of Appcues?

Let’s look at some key advantages of Appcues:

• It makes it easy to build product tours with a user-friendly UI and predefined templates that can save you time.
• Can be used on web apps and mobile apps too.
• It integrates with most user analytics tools: Heap, Segment, Amplitude, and Mixpanel. This compensates a bit for the lack of in-depth analytics but means you need multiple subscriptions.
• You can use predefined flows or build your own using a good range of UI patterns.
• Allows basic segmentation and event-based flow triggering.
• It’s easy to build in-app surveys using modals or the integrated NPS tool.

Cons of Appcues?

But as any tool, Appcues is not without its flows – and at this price point, we think you may really want to consider some options that offer the same or more advanced functionality, but at a lower price tag:

• Appcues lacks certain transition actions like driven actions, scroll position, or page change, which would make product tours more interactive.
• It heavily limits the functionality available in the lowest (Essentials) plan. If you need checklists, more than 10 events, or more than 5 user segments, you’ll need to upgrade to the Growth plan (starting at $879/mo payable annually, which means you need to fork out more than $10,500 to start using Appcues for more use cases.
• Appcues doesn’t have a resource center feature, meaning you can’t use it to offer self-service support to your users.

What users say about Appcues?

What do Appcues users share about their experience? Overall users feel positive about Appcues.

Here’s an example summarizing some key points about its features and the value it offers. You can find more reviews on G2 or Capterra.

The best part of Appcues is the guided tour features which they call flaws. Especially on a team with limited resources, it allows you to improve your activation and engagement overnight by using this feature to guide your users around your product. What I love even more is the design and UX features are modern unlike other tour tools we’ve researched, and the software is easy-to-use with the need for a developer after the initial installation. – Raeann F.

However, there are some points that could be improved:

As with all software, you will run into irritating limitations. Appcues does collect a lot of data that could automatically be turned into user attributes (like the first log-in or visits per month) but they don’t do that. Jumping between the build mode and the studio can also become very confusing at times. – Ville T.

Is Appcues the right fit for your business?

There are good and bad when it comes to using Appcues but to sum it up, here’s why you might need an alternative:

1. You need to build complex user flows and target them to specific user segments. In this case, you will need more than basic segmentation.
2. You want to track product usage properly and don’t want to be limited by Appcues’s event explorer.
3. You want to take full advantage of all onboarding functionalities (like a checklist) without paying a premium crazy price for them.

Appcues pricing

All things considered, Appcues does not offer the best value for money compared to some Appcues alternatives – at $249 per month. If your product has 2,500 active users, the costs for different plans are:

• Essentials: $249/month (Up to 3 user licenses)
• Growth: $879/month (Up to 10 user licenses)
• Enterprise: Custom (Unlimited user licenses)

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Appcues!

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Spekit for new client onboarding

Compared to the other solutions on the market, Spekit is a digital adoption platform that focuses on employee onboarding rather than user onboarding. Their technology is excellent for using targeted feature adoption flows to quickly familiarize new employees with internal capabilities.

Spekit prides itself on the robustness of its internal database system.

Employees and managers can easily add to, update, and search for information, so everyone is aware of internal best practices. This database can also assist new employees to get up to speed quickly, as they can use the database rather than bugging other employees when they have questions.

Spekit is not a truly user onboarding tool. It’s built to streamline employee onboarding by guiding new employees through 3rd party tools and processes using no-code, step-by-step walkthroughs.

Here’s how Spekit helps with employee onboarding:

• Spekit’s step-by-step walkthroughs help you build flows for guidance. You can create individual onboarding journeys for different teams. However, the variety of UI patterns is limited to tooltips and modals.
• Spekit allows you to record your flows and edit them, or save them as a draft. You can confirm the positioning of steps looks good, make necessary edits to the texts, and delete steps that are not necessary.
• With spotlights, you can push changes, new resources, or updates to your team the moment they need it – directly within their workflows.
• You can use a single flow to guide employees across multiple tools.

All in all, Spekit has good functionality for employee onboarding but is lacking in collecting user sentiment throughout the onboarding process, as it doesn’t support surveys.

Pros of Spekit

Spekit is a useful tool for your employee onboarding needs. Here are the main advantages to consider if you’re still deciding:

• It’s easy to use and easy to install in any web-based application.
• You can create versatile knowledge bases with different formats for different teams.
• Your new employees have answers to their questions in one place. So instead of interrupting other employees’ work, they can easily find what they are looking for with Spekit.
• You can collect a data dictionary that will be available to your users across different apps.

Cons of Spekit

The main downside that comes with Spekit is the absence of feedback collection and more advanced analytics. Here are the main cons of the tool:

• There are some limitations to user onboarding flows as Spekit only offers tooltips and modals as part of their flows UI patterns.
• There are many bugs and performance issues when using the tool. The UI is also fairly tricky to navigate as the tool is on the right-hand side.
• As the tool is missing some advanced analytics, it’s hard to find friction points and solve any issues with user experience.

What users say about Spekit?

On the whole, users feel positive about Spekit – here are some examples summarizing some key points about its features and the value it offers. You can find more reviews on G2 or Capterra.

The in-app guidance using field speks and the ability to view step by step instructions side by side using the sidebar dock have been a game changer for our organization!
The only downside I can think of is the use of the extension. I’ve had to “nag” users over and over again to get them to download it and discover all the magic that comes with it. – Samantha L.

The plug in is intuitive, easy to use and makes finding answers/solutions easy and efficient. For months we had tons of valuable resources and collateral that went untouched because reps didn’t know it existed. Now they have it right at their fingertips.
Our only pitfall was the flows piece. We aren’t able to leverage as easily as we would like.
-Administrator in Information Technology and Services/mid-market.

Most complaints about Spekit are about the upside bar positioning and some implementation issues.

” Great Idea! A bit tougher on the implementation side. ” I like the idea of this platform. It’s essential to train folks where they work. The sales team was very responsive throughout the pre-sales process. Unfortunately, our experience with implementation was nowhere as easy as we thought it would be. The slack integration was inadvertently set up internally before the full implementation. This caused an issue (which is understandable), but it took 4+ weeks for Spekit to determine the root cause. This has still not been addressed, unfortunately. Because of the difficulties with implementation/embedding into our environment, we are focused on one value proposition only: the slack Q&A creation process. We’ve needed to purchase other software that will better meet our needs. – Executive Sponsor in Information Technology and Services / Enterprise

Some users think it still has room for improvement.

“Nice, but needs work“. Customizable content, but we don’t have the capacity for someone to always manage that. Button position is very inconvenient, even though I know I can move it around. Don’t need the sidebar. I would also like to toggle off the buttons near things I have already learned so that I am not always interrupting work flows to click out of a window that I have mistakenly opened. – User in Airlines/Aviation / Mid-market

While other people think it’s overpriced.

“It’s cool, but overpriced in my opinion.” Extremely flexible. Lets us do things we wouldn’t be able to otherwise and is pretty easy to use. It looks a little funny on the screen. Kind of clutters up the screen. It looks a little funny and is too expensive in my opinion. – Administrator in Newspapers

Is Spekit the right fit for your business?

Spekit is a great tool when it comes to employee onboarding but has limited usability. Here are three main reasons why you might consider an alternative.

1. If you have 1000+ employees, paying 20 $ per user monthly can be a bit costly.
2. Spekit focuses on employee onboarding but in most cases, you will need another tool that will provide you with in-depth analytics. There are other tools that are truly no-code.
3. Spekit has a fairly tricky UI to navigate as users have encountered performance issues when using the tool.
4. If you want to create more contextual onboarding with different segments, you might want to consider an alternative tool.

Spekit pricing

Spekit charges 20 $ per person monthly so it’s more suitable for small to midsize businesses. It also doesn’t provide a free trial or a freemium version of its features.

Some features such as seismic integration, knowledge checks and knowledge check analytics are sold as add-ons that come with an extra fee.

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Is there a better alternative for new client onboarding?

Appcues and Spekit are good tools for new client onboarding. We’ve seen how they compare to each other and what you can achieve with them. Call us biased, but if you’re looking for something better, Userpilot offers more value for your money than these tools.

Userpilot for new client onboarding

Userpilot is a powerful product adoption platform that enables you to quickly build personalized, flexible, contextually relevant in-app experiences targeted to different user segments – all without writing a line of code.

Userpilot was built specifically for SaaS product teams that want to improve their user onboarding experience and boost user activation.

You can build a huge variety of user onboarding experiences and in-app guidance flows without needing to code.

Here’s what you’ll get when you start using Userpilot:

• Forget about coding in-app experiences: Userpilot is a no-code solution and only requires your dev to install a line of javascript inside your app and for you to download a chrome extension that opens up the visual builder.
• Build in-app flows using the largest range of UI patterns (modals, slideouts, tooltips, hotspots, banners) and in-app onboarding experiences (checklists, microsurveys, NPS surveys, in-app resource center)
• Get access to a built-in NPS tool for collecting and analyzing user sentiment so you can improve your onboarding process based on real data.
• Create and track combinations of in-app events like clicks, hovers and form fills, and then analyze all these interactions under your own custom events, which can be built without code or API calls.
• Use advanced product analytics and in-app flows analytics to identify where users need help and create granular user segments to trigger in-app experiences contextually (segment based on user identification data, in-app engagement, custom events, clicks, hovers, form fills, user feedback responses, NPS scores and more)
• Enhance the onboarding experience with in-app help by launching a Resource Center directly inside your app. Add in-app guides, and video tutorials, and give users access to search the knowledge base or reach out to support. Self-service has never been easier.

The best user onboarding is contextual and it happens right where the users need it, inside your app. There isn’t a better user onboarding tool out there that offers more value for the money than Userpilot.

Schedule a demo with our team and get ready to build the best onboarding experiences your users have seen.

Pros of Userpilot

Userpilot has a number of advantages, especially for mid-market SaaS companies looking for a robust but at the same time very easy-to-use, a no-code tool for user onboarding, product adoption, and simplified product analytics. Let’s have a look at the pros of using Userpilot:

• No-code builder – Userpilot comes with an easy-to-use Chrome Extension builder.
• Multiple UI patterns – choose from a range of options to build customized flows: modals,
• slideouts, banners, tooltips, hotspots, and checklists are all at your disposal.
• UI patterns are not limited by plan – you get access to all of them on every single plan, meaning you get value even with the Traction plan (this is the entry-level one).
• Engaging walkthroughs and onboarding flows- build interactive walkthroughs targeted to distinct user segments.
• In-app help – build a resource center offering self-service support to your users, customize it with your branding, and select from a range of help options to boost user satisfaction (i.e. videos, in-app flows, chat, and more).
• Experimentation – built-in A/B testing for flows lets you explore and quickly iterate based on direct user behavior.
• Powerful feedback options- integrated NPS surveys with analytics and response tagging unlock insight into how your users feel.
• Advanced analytics and segmentation- analyze product usage and in-app flow engagement and build user segments using the data.
• Event tracking and feature tags- tag UI engagement (clicks, form fills, hovers) and group them into one custom event to track what really matters.
• More value with integrations- unlock value faster with built-in integrations with popular tools like Segment, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Intercom, Heap, and more.

Cons of Userpilot

Userpilot has a number of advantages, especially for mid-market SaaS companies looking for a robust but at the same time very easy-to-use, a no-code tool for user onboarding, product adoption, and simplified product analytics. Let’s have a look at the pros of using Userpilot:

• No-code builder – Userpilot comes with an easy-to-use Chrome Extension builder.
• Multiple UI patterns – choose from a range of options to build customized flows: modals,
• slideouts, banners, tooltips, hotspots, and checklists are all at your disposal.
• UI patterns are not limited by plan – you get access to all of them on every single plan, meaning you get value even with the Traction plan (this is the entry-level one).
• Engaging walkthroughs and onboarding flows- build interactive walkthroughs targeted to distinct user segments.
• In-app help – build a resource center offering self-service support to your users, customize it with your branding, and select from a range of help options to boost user satisfaction (i.e. videos, in-app flows, chat, and more).
• Experimentation – built-in A/B testing for flows lets you explore and quickly iterate based on direct user behavior.
• Powerful feedback options- integrated NPS surveys with analytics and response tagging unlock insight into how your users feel.
• Advanced analytics and segmentation- analyze product usage and in-app flow engagement and build user segments using the data.
• Event tracking and feature tags- tag UI engagement (clicks, form fills, hovers) and group them into one custom event to track what really matters.
• More value with integrations- unlock value faster with built-in integrations with popular tools like Segment, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Intercom, Heap, and more.

What users say about Userpilot

Let’s check what real users like about Userpilot.

Userpilot is an incredible, user-friendly software that allows us to create unforgettable experiences for our clients! From basic to complex experiences, we have been able to do them all with ease! I would highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to provide their clients or users with the best product tour experience. The possibilities of what you can create are endless! – Tayla G.

Userpilot is simple to set up, use, and does not require any dev – which means instant publishing. This is critical for us as a SaaS company that releases new features frequently; we need the ability to inform our customers of changes quickly, and doing this in our platform through Userpilot allows us to reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right place. There have been many awesome extra features we’ve discovered since coming on board, and it’s been great to see new features released frequently. The tool itself is intuitive and reliable. Having used similar products previously that were clunky and buggy this has really made us happy with our decision to move to Userpilot. – Melina K.

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Userpilot 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 between Appcues and Spekit.

Both tools come with advantages and disadvantages so there isn’t one that is the best. The winner will depend on your product and current needs. If you want the best value for money, we recommend trying an alternative.

Want to see how Userpilot can help with new client onboarding? Book a demo below.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Appcues!

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