Seeking a Gainsight Competitor? Here are My Recommendations as a CS Lead

As a Director of Customer Success at Userpilot, I’ve had the opportunity to try out various Gainsight competitor tools to help CS teams work more effectively.

Since 2018, we’ve evolved from building a product engagement tool for startups to a comprehensive suite of tools for product-led growth, suitable for both startup and enterprise clients.

When I talk to customer success support leaders, Gainsight is the leading name that comes up time and again. It’s powerful, but often feels overwhelming for day-to-day product work.

Gainsight is designed for large teams, but small businesses and startups may feel overwhelmed by its advanced features and high cost. So I have compiled a list of Gainsight alternatives that cater to the way PMs work.

Why do teams look for a Gainsight alternative?

I’ve browsed the web to find input from actual Gainsight users, and the tool comes with a few genuine challenges.

• Complex usability: I’ve found several instances where users have talked about Gainsight’s steep learning curve.
• Performance efficiency: Users have reported that it not only takes time to learn, but the load times are slow.
• Expensive but not cross-functional: Gainsight is a premium tool for product engagement, but it lacks cross-functional capabilities. Users have reported that Gainsight isn’t accessible enough, even for the premium price they pay.
• Lack of pricing transparency: The price is already premium, and to unlock additional key features, the user must pay more. Despite this, the implementation takes months. This raises a significant question regarding the software’s ROI and payback period. Lack of pricing transparency is clearly a deal breaker in the SaaS industry, where businesses operate on razor-thin margins.

For fast-moving CS teams, a one-stop shop with CS features that track all key metrics is essential, eliminating the need for multiple tools.

What do I look for in a Gainsight competitor (and what Userpilot offers)?

Many customers with larger ACVs, broader use cases, and larger teams began onboarding. With this growth, we had to up the game of customer success teams and their processes.

This time last year, our Net Retention Revenue (NRR) was hovering around 98%; today, it stands at 99.9%.

The growth in NRR is a product of focusing on customer success. We learnt a lot about product engagement and customer support in this process.

Having witnessed this growth firsthand, I have a solid understanding of customer success support tools.

Here’s what I think makes a great customer success software:

#1 Automation features

The whole point of having a customer support solution in the form of software is to free up customer success teams and enable them to have high-touch interactions with customers of all sizes.

At Userpilot, we focus on innovative automation features, such as targeted push notifications, that make the customer journey frictionless, while also making it easier to access customer data within the dashboard.

Creating push notifications in Userpilot that are triggered based on user behaviors.

You can guide users based on their behavior using in-app messages. With this guidance, you can control customer activation and product adoption.

Userpilot helps you spot at-risk accounts and proactively reach out to them, directly impacting the customer satisfaction score.

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#2 Simplicity and ease of use

I want my team to focus on building strong customer relationships, rather than relying solely on the tools at their disposal. No-code tools are appealing for such teams.

At Userpilot, your CS team can access all the advanced analytics of your customer data in a single, easy-to-understand, and intuitive interface.

#3 Actionable analytics

If customer engagement is your priority, understanding product analytics is essential for your customer success teams.

At Userpilot, we track:

1. User behavior
2. Funnel drop-offs
3. Feature adoption
4. Product usage metrics
5. User engagement metrics

Mixpanel and Heap are fantastic tools for product analytics, but lack features to create in-app experiences. That’s where Userpilot comes in. Our analytics dashboard helps you to track user journey, identify bottlenecks (including rage clicks), and act on those insights.

You can use those insights to improve the product experience. When your data isn’t fragmented, you can pinpoint the exact numbers that impact customer retention.

#4 Onboarding capabilities

User onboarding experience is crucial for putting the customer on the path to their goals. Gainsight does this in its own way, but users have reported that it is overly complex to use.

At Userpilot, we use interactive user guides and onboarding tooltips. We’ve seen firsthand that a well-designed user onboarding flow can impact time to value, especially for smaller teams.

#5 Integrated feedback collection

Gathering feedback from your existing users about your platform is crucial for future sales. With Userpilot, you can collect user feedback in the form of NPS surveys and in-app feedback. You can also avoid the time-consuming process of automating surveys.

This automation of collecting feedback using surveys can be triggered based on behavior and app engagement. The data, like customer pain points and feature requests, can be accessed and analyzed within the dashboard. No more switching tools.

#6 Pricing transparency

Customers want to know precisely what they are paying for, no surprises. When your pricing is transparent, end-users find it easy to make a decision. Transparent pricing also helps reduce churn, making adoption easier.

One thing I noticed while researching for this post was that people find a mismatch between their requirements and Gainsight’s costs.

Top 5 Gainsight alternatives

To make your decision-making process easier, I’ve compared the top customer success management tools to help you choose the best one and reap the benefits.

Gainsight users have reported that, while the product is good enough, the steep learning curve makes the customer success software difficult to use effectively.

#1 Userpilot

Userpilot lets product teams set up in-app onboarding messages using tooltips, checklists, and collect user feedback without any help from engineering teams. It’s a no-code solution for the customer success team to consolidate customer data with an intuitive user interface.

Userpilot is a robust platform that’s best for omnichannel engagement. You can engage with users in-app (web), email, and mobile app as well.

Why Userpilot is the best Gainsight competitor?

• For user feedback, you can create regular surveys and an NPS survey.
• You can have reports for onboarding flows, user journey, surveys, and more.
• For customer onboarding, you can create UI patterns, a checklist, and a resource center.
• Session recording is a type of user feedback collection that directly decreases support tickets. Because you can see where users are getting stuck and can help them with exactly that, proactively.

Gainsight is heavy and typically relies on admins and IT support, whereas Userpilot puts advanced analytics directly in the hands of PMs, enabling quicker changes and feedback cycles. Additionally, Userpilot costs, on average, just $9,000 per year.

G2 review: 4/5 ⭐️

Userpilot shines in enabling product teams to create onboarding flows, tooltips, modals, and checklists without engineering support. This empowers me to experiment with user experiences quickly and iterate based on data. The ability to launch NPS surveys and gather user feedback inside the product is a great bonus. It helps close the loop between product changes and customer sentiment. – Laura A (Product Manager)

#2 ChurnZero

ChurnZero is a customer success platform that focuses on tracking customers’ product usage, automating workflows, and facilitating targeted engagement.

How is ChurnZero a better Gainsight competitor?

The company gets out of your way. With ChurnZero, you can have faster onboarding, more flexible customization options, and it surfaces at-risk accounts. ChurnZero costs $40,980 per year to understand how customers use the product, enabling better sales and retention.

What you get from ChurnZero:

• Real-time usage monitoring and usage trends, allowing you to observe usage trend patterns yourself.
• Integration with Salesforce and Outlook. But manual work is required to match account data and product metrics.
• You have access to a custom dashboard and real-time alerts for accounts or user segments.

G2 review: 5/5 ⭐️

The level of detail it provides from users, events, dates, attributes, everything you need to track the usage trends and find opportunities to improve the engagement. The access to surveys responses that allows to understand better where strengths and gaps might be. – Alejandra C. (Sr. Client Relationship Owner – Loyalty)

#3 Totango

Totango offers a modular customer success platform that helps teams automate workflows for customer success, track customer journeys, and visualize health scores.

How is Totango a better Gainsight competitor?

The system makes onboarding quicker, it’s easier to set up, and the learning curve isn’t that steep. On average, users spend $66,150 on Totago to gain a deeper understanding of customer data.

Totango’s key features:

• Manage data and reporting in a simple-to-use dashboard.
• Also beneficial for PMs & CS teams to collaborate on customer outcomes.
• Totango earned the “fastest implementation” badge in the industry on G2.
• Journey mapping and customer segmentation functionality without a time-consuming setup.

G2 review: 4.5/5 ⭐️

Totango is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. It allows us to build and access reports quickly, which makes tracking customer activity and managing our workflows much more efficient. The interface is intuitive, and it doesn’t require heavy training to get value from the platform. – Aurelia F. (Director of Customer Success [EMEA])

#4 Vitally

Vitally is a customer success software that offers more features to enable data-driven decision-making and account management. You can minimize churn blind spots by showing multiple health scores on the dashboard.

How is Vitally a better Gainsight competitor?

Vitally has designed a system that’s easy to deploy. It’s ideal if you don’t want to spend months configuring other tools before gaining any insight into how your customers use your product through the customer portal. On average, subscribers spend $35,000 annually for professional services from Vitally.

Vitally’s key features:

• One solution, to view product usage, CS metrics, and feedback.
• Flexible integration and automation suit teams.
• Create custom views and dashboards.

G2 Review: 5/5 ⭐️

It felt like there were two options: a clunky monster like Gainsight or nothing aka DIY. We’d been spending a kajillion dollars on a Gainsight account we never ever used or even properly configured. Vitally was SO nimble, so easy to deploy, so intuitive to use, and has nearly all the functionality I need. – Diana S. (Manager of Customer Education)

#5 Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a majorly a product analytics tool designed to track user behaviors and feature engagement. However, it lacks many features that many tools offer in this niche.

How is Mixpanel a better Gainsight competitor?

If your primary need is to track product analytics, measure user interaction, and run experiments based on that data to increase customer lifetime value, Mixpanel is the right choice for you and is far less complicated than Gainsight. On average, you’d spend $37,166 per year to use the community platform that helps PMs reduce churn rates.

Top Mixpanel features:

• Preferred solution for product usage tracking and measuring adoption.
• Helps PMs decide which feature to build scrap based on real data.
• Real-time dashboard and customizable reports functionality.

G2 Review: 4/5 ⭐️

At 10 Minute School, we rely on Mixpanel for our product analytics and event tracking, and it has proven to be an invaluable tool. The platform excels in providing deep insights into user behavior, which is critical for improving our educational offerings. – Uttam D. (Senior Business Intelligence Analyst)

Conclusion

We explored why teams seek Gainsight alternatives and five top options that offer better usability, pricing transparency, and faster implementation. From Userpilot’s no-code approach to Vitally’s intuitive interface, each addresses Gainsight’s core complexity challenges.

Ready to find the right fit? Start with free trials of the alternatives that best match your needs and budget. Take the first step toward streamlined customer success operations. Book your demo with Userpilot today.

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