Appcues vs Apty vs Userpilot – Which Is Best For Your SaaS?

Deciding between Appcues, Apty, and Userpilot? We know that choosing the best product adoption platform for your SaaS is difficult. So we decided to write a more in-depth comparison of the three tools – going into more detail about the tools’ features, use cases, pros, and cons – than what you’ll find on review sites.

Whether you’re looking mainly to improve your user onboarding or product analytics, collect user feedback or NPS – you’ll find out how Appcues performs vs Apty vs Userpilot – and which one is the best choice for you!

Let’s dig in!

TL;DR

• Choosing the best tool for SaaS product growth is not an easy task so here we review the best tools in the market so you can make the right choice.
• Appcues is a code-free user onboarding platform that allows you to create product tours to simplify the onboarding process. You can also build and trigger NPS surveys to collect user feedback.
• Apty enables you to create checklists to guide users and interactive walkthroughs to simplify the onboarding process, as well as segment users to create personalized flows for them.
• Userpilot is a powerful product adoption platform that enables you to quickly build personalized and contextual in-app experiences targeted to different user experiences – all without writing a line of code. It also offers a wide range of UI patterns you can choose from, such as tooltips, modals, banners, checklists, hotspots, etc.
• However, each tool has its pros and cons at the same time.
• For example, Appcues has a user-friendly UI and predefined templates that can save you time. But it doesn’t have a resource center feature and their lowest plans are heavily limited.
• When it comes to Apty, it’s really good for creating onboarding flows but the main drawback is the absence of in-app user feedback.
• Userpilot offers a wide range of UI patterns so you can create hyper-personalized onboarding flows and those UI patterns are not limited by plan – you get access to all of them on every single plan. But the tool won’t run on mobile devices/applications and it doesn’t offer employee onboarding functionality.
• To get the best value for your money, consider trying Userpilot.

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What is Appcues?

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.

What is Appcues best for?

Typically, SaaS Product Managers consider Appcues> for the following reasons: they want to improve their user onboarding, they need product adoption, and would also be able to measure their user feedback. How does Appcues> perform when it comes to these top-three use cases? Let’s examine it all, and then compare it to the other tools we’re discussing in this post.

Appcues for user onboarding

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.

Appcues for product adoption

When it comes to driving product adoption, Appcues offers the main functionality as its competitors but highly restricts it when using its lower plan. This makes it quite pricey if you need checklists for example, which are quite an essential tool for getting users to engage and adopt your product.

Here’s how Appcues can help drive adoption:

• Building a product tour in Appcues is relatively easy. You can choose from a range of UI patterns and use a friendly Chrome extension builder. If you want to style the modals or tooltips in your tour to match your native UI, you might need to resort to CSS.
• Welcome screens are an integral part of Appcues product tour templates. You can mostly customize them as you please by adding or removing elements, micro surveys, etc.
• The flows option offers 4 main onboarding elements (modal group, tooltip group, slideout group, and hotspot group) and only 1 action – navigating to a different page.
• You can get access to building checklists but only on the more expensive plans.
• Unlike its alternatives, Appcues doesn’t offer the possibility of building an in-app resource center.

Appcues for user feedback

Can you use Appcues to collect user feedback? Of course.

Collecting data is not hard, analyzing and acting on it is where it gets tricky. What’s the purpose of having data if you can’t act on it?

If you want to track your NPS score over time and collect user feedback with short micro surveys, you can do that with Appcues. But to analyze the feedback data in-depth, you’ll have to use other tools.

In a nutshell, Appcues allows you to:

• Build and trigger NPS surveys in-app without coding.
• Edit the NPS survey questions.
• Target the survey at a specific user segment (or choose one of the predefined segments) and adjust the survey display frequency.
• Collect user feedback with short surveys built on top of modals: add numerical scale, open-ended questions, or radio button questions.
• On the flip side: you can’t tag your NPS/survey responses in-app and use these tags to segment your audience by them.
• You can’t analyze the responses in-app. You can only download a CSV report to start analyzing your data – and we all know how time-consuming that is.

Based on the above, when it comes to user feedback, Appcues is not the ideal tool, as it lacks the ability to segment users based on survey responses.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Appcues!

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What is Apty?

Apty’s digital adoption platform aims to make product adoption a snap with engaging onboarding flows and product tours. It does this with a mix of on-screen guidance, interactive walkthroughs, and in-app messaging.

This platform is great for engaging users on your platform to increase product adoption, feature adoption, and conversions.

What is Apty best for?

Like Appcues, Apty is typically considered for user onboarding, product adoption, and user feedback. Let’s examine Apty for these use cases before we compare it to Userpilot.

Apty for user onboarding

Here’s how Apty can help with user onboarding:

• Enables you to create checklists to guide users and interactive walkthroughs that simplify the onboarding process.
• It also allows you to segment users and design tailored onboarding experiences based on the role, location, and other characteristics to deliver the promised value fast.
• The goal-tracking feature allows you to set custom goals and monitor how users navigate through them. For example, you can set user activation and set it as one of your onboarding milestones to analyze progress. Then you can segment users who haven’t reached the goal and implement a number of strategies to activate them.
• Combine tooltips and create interactive walkthroughs to shorten the learning curve and, subsequently the time to value.

Apty for product adoption

Here’s how Apty can help with product adoption:

• Apty allows you to create interactive walkthroughs to help new and advanced users discover new features
• It lets you segment your users by feature usage and then target the experiences only to the ones that haven’t adopted a certain area of your product yet.
• Apty allows you to use tooltips to point out hidden features to your users.

Apty for user feedback

Apty allows you to enable timely user feedback so you can be contextual, reduce churn and improve the overall customer experience.

Here is what Apty’s user feedback feature offers:

• Trigger in-app surveys to prompt customers to submit ratings based on their experience.
• Embed surveys to in-app announcements to collect feedback from end users.
• See the average ratings and the number of users who completed the surveys.
• Get detailed feedback analytics inside the Apty Admin Console.

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What is Userpilot?

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.

What is Userpilot best for?

Userpilot is used for similar use cases as Apty and Appcues. Let’s see how Userpilot compares to the tools we discussed before it comes to user onboarding, product adoption, and user feedback.

Userpilot for user onboarding

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.

Userpilot for product adoption

Product adoption describes the process of getting users to the point where they are experiencing value from your product.

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

It’s a great option for enterprise users too since it’s SOC 2 Type II certified and offers robust features for large-scale usage.

Here are some of Userpilot’s product adoption features that you may find helpful:

• A broad range of UI patterns to build fully customizable, contextual, and interactive in-app flows: modals, slideouts, tooltips, hotspots, driven actions, banners, and more. And – most importantly – you are not limited by plan when it comes to how many UI patterns or designs you can build.
• Advanced in-app checklists with built-in gamification elements like progress bars or ”automatically marked complete” tasks: checklists also come with analytics so you can track who is interacting with them and how.
• Fully interactive walkthroughs walk users through engaging and adopting specific features of your app.
• The self-service in-app resource center lets users search your knowledge base directly inside the app, access chat, and support but also launch guides and tutorials when they get stuck.
• User feedback tools allow you to collect insights to improve the product and the user experience, thus leading to a higher product adoption rate. You can also collect NPS data and tag responses to uncover patterns into what makes users stick, or build micro surveys for more granular data. Then you can use all the feedback collected to build user segments based on the answers and personalize the path to higher product adoption for each segment.

Want to see Userpilot in action? Get a demo and improve product adoption with contextual and personalized in-app flows that actually help users.

Userpilot for user feedback

There are two types of feedback you should be focusing on collecting to better understand the health of your product and users.

First, you have user sentiment which looks at user satisfaction and effort scores or loyalty (using NPS surveys). Then you may also want to collect feedback on the functionality of the product or specific features.

You can do all these with Userpilot. In short, you can:

• Collect and track (NPS) in-app with a built-in NPS widget that allows you to fully customize the survey look and feel, and set the trigger frequency and specific targeting.
• Analyze NPS scores, tag responses, and use the data to create specific user segments.
• Build and trigger in-app micro surveys like the classic PMF survey, or similar ones and mix multi-choice and open-ended types of questions to collect specific insights.
• Be in charge of who gets which survey type and when with advanced segmentation capabilities, and of course, you can use the answers to segment your audience.

The advantage of using Userpilot for collecting feedback over other survey tools is that you can better control who sees the surveys but also you can instantly use the data collected to segment your user base and trigger the right experience for them.

For instance, if your users give you a low NPS score because they think you’re missing a critical feature (that you actually have already), you can push an interactive walkthrough guiding them to find and explore this feature.

Tired of bad Digital Adoption tools? Try Userpilot for your SaaS for free!

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So Which tool should you choose? Appcues vs Apty vs Userpilot – final thoughts

As you can see, both Appcues, Apty, and Userpilot cater to most of the use cases Product Managers typically look for in their SaaS companies. There are some differences between the tools when it comes to how those use cases are executed in each, of course.

So if you’re still on the fence – there are two more factors that can make a difference for you – the tools’ pricing, and their reviews. Let’s have a look at both below!

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)

Apty pricing

Apty offers a free trial and custom quotes based on business needs.

• Free trial: Up to 45 days, includes 2-3 flows, works on a single domain.
• Custom pricing: Intelligent analytics, complex flow creation, multilingual support, available on multiple domains.

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).

What do users say about Appcues vs Apty vs Userpilot?

Now let’s see what pros and cons each tool has.

Appcues reviews

Apty reviews

Userpilot reviews

The final countdown: Pros & Cons of Appcues, Apty, and Userpilot

Appcues pros

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.

Appcues cons

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.

Apty pros

Apty is a robust tool for your onboarding and adoption needs. Here are the main pros to consider if you’re still deciding:

• Apty is excellent for product adoption, training, and onboarding. The tool makes it easy to develop workflows which makes development turnaround very fast-paced. In addition, it’s very simplistic to use since Apty lives in the browser as an extension.
• You can either build different user segments inside the product, or you can integrate your Apty account with other tools and import your data.
• Can be used on 3rd party tools, meaning you can use it for employee onboarding too.

Apty cons

While Apty is a great tool, the main downsides are the cost and restrictions you get with it. Here are the main cons of the tool:

• Apty offers tooltips and checklists for building product experience flows, but unlike other similar tools, it lacks some important UI patterns such as modals, hotspots, banners, and slideouts.
• One of the biggest disadvantages of Apty is the absence of in-app customer feedback collection. In-app surveys help you collect user insights at scale and improve the product to match user expectations. Without feedback and user input, you are missing out on a lot.
• Doesn’t offer self-service support like a help center where users can access multiple guides and tutorials or contact support. It does provide guides that are similar but more restricted.

Userpilot pros

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.

Userpilot cons

There are, however, some downsides to Userpilot as well:

• Browser/web app only – Userpilot won’t run on mobile devices/applications.
• Doesn’t support employee onboarding- The tool is better suited for customer onboarding than for employee onboarding as you can’t build in-app guides on third-party tools.
• Missing integrations – doesn’t have built-in integrations with some tools, but it has webhooks, and Hubspot and Zapier are coming soon.
• Not appropriate for small startups on a shoestring budget (<$100)- Userpilot is a powerful, mid-market to the enterprise-level tool. So $249 a month might be too expensive for really small startups.

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Conclusion

In this post, we’ve discussed how Appcues, Apty, and Userpilot compare when it comes to user onboarding, product adoption, and user feedback.

We’ve discussed their features for each use case, pricing, and reviews, as well as the pros and cons.

Obviously, we’re a little biased, but we think that Userpilot offers the best value for money, and is unrivaled especially when it comes to user onboarding. get a free demo to unlock its full potential.