Appcues vs Pendo: An Honest Comparison + A Better Alternative14 min read

If you’re a product team evaluating user onboarding solutions, chances are you’ve found yourself asking, “Appcues or Pendo?” These two platforms are pioneers in the product adoption space, which explains why they often top the list for many businesses.

But how do these platforms truly stack up against each other? In this article, we’ll dive into the strengths and limitations of both, highlighting key differentiators to help you make an informed decision.

Appcues vs. Pendo: At a glance

Appcues and Pendo are both digital platforms that enable non-technical teams to onboard users and enhance product adoption.

If you’re looking for intuitive onboarding software with extensive in-app engagement features and somewhat functional user surveys, Appcues is an excellent fit.

On the other hand, Pendo is your tool if you are looking for a full-stack product experience platform that offers robust analytics features such as paths, funnels, and session replays on top of engagement capabilities.

Appcues vs. Pendo: User engagement layer

User engagement features are a must-have for any product adoption platform. Appcues and Pendo come with extensive capabilities to onboard, educate, and engage users. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Appcues features for user engagement

As already mentioned, Appcues shines when it comes to in-app engagement functionalities.

First, you get a wide selection of UI patterns like hotspots, modals, slideouts, and tooltips to design onboarding experiences. You can either use them as standalone in-app messages to announce new features and provide contextual guidance or combine them into product tours.

Appcues provides decent no-code customization options for these UI patterns. However, you’ll have to use CSS for advanced customization.

You can leverage Appcues’s event triggering and automatically launch specific in-app flows based on a user’s real-time actions. Keep in mind that event-based triggering is only included in the Enterprise plan or available as an add-on in the Growth plan.

Finally, Appcues has a self-service support feature called “Launchpads” that can be used to provide users with one-click access to all Appcues flows they’ve already interacted with. In other words, they serve as an in-app help center that users can turn to when they get stuck.

However, unlike traditional help centers, launchpads lack categorization and search functionalities. Also, you can’t add other resources, such as articles, FAQs, and video tutorials.

Pendo features for user engagement

You can use banners, light boxes, and tooltips to design in-app guides.

If you’re not looking to design in-app flows from scratch, Pendo also offers customizable pre-built templates. Advanced customization is available as an add-on on most plans.

Pendo lets your support team build an in-app help center to organize all knowledge base articles, in-app tutorials, checklists, and other support resources. You can even include a feedback widget and roadmap to collect feedback from users. Plus, it allows you to tailor the resource center’s content for different user segments.

Checklists are available as a part of Pendo’s resource center and guide users to activation events. They’re particularly useful for giving new users a clear idea of the steps they should take to start accomplishing their goals with your product. Pendo doesn’t offer the option to create standalone checklists, though.

Appcues vs. Pendo: Product analytics tools

Product analytics features are an integral part of any digital adoption platform and offer an in-depth understanding of in-app activity and product usage. Plus, they let you stay on top of users’ changing needs and pain points.

Here’s what Appcues and Pendo offer:

• Appcues – You can monitor and analyze the performance of flows and checklists. However, there aren’t too many options to monitor product usage outside of Appcues experiences.
• Pendo – It provides an in-depth glance into user sessions with session replays and event auto-capture. You also get various reports, including funnel charts and cohort analysis, and can create custom dashboards to track relevant metrics.

Appcues for product analytics

Appcues has a very basic analytics suit, it only provides analytics related to flows, checklists, and other content created with it.

Here are some features for analyzing the performance of your Appcues-authored content:

• User segmentation – You can choose from four pre-defined user segments—Explorers, Beginners, Regulars, and Champions—or create groups from scratch. Appcues lets you divide users into different groups based on in-app activity, online behavior, persona, and lifecycle stage.
• Flow analytics – You can track the performance of Appcues flows, including total views and completion rates.

• Goal tracking – With Appcues, you can set up and monitor specific goals to evaluate the effectiveness of your in-app flows. For instance, it’s possible to set goals related to activation events to understand how good your Appcues flows are at driving user activation.
• Checklist analytics – You can track how many users viewed, completed, and skipped Appcues checklists. It can help you optimize the timing and content of checklists to improve engagement.
• Event tracking – If you want to track user actions outside Appcues flows, you’ll have to set up custom events. It requires coding knowledge and can be challenging for non-technical users.

Pendo for product analytics

Pendo’s product analytics tools offer product teams detailed insights into user behavior and needs. Key features include:

• Session replay – You can visualize and playback user sessions to get a full breakdown of how users interact with your product. This feature isn’t available in the Free and Base plans, though.
• Autocapture – Besides tracking custom events, Pendo also comes with automatic feature tagging. It ensures that you capture and analyze every user action, even if you don’t create custom events for certain features.
• Custom dashboards – You can customize the dashboard widget to keep an eye on the metrics and reports that matter the most.

• Funnel charts – You can create multi-step funnels to understand how users move from one stage to the next in their journeys. Pendo’s funnel charts let you analyze conversion rates at each step and identify drop-off points.
• Cohort analysis – Pendo’s cohort analysis report offers a closer look into user retention and churn.
• Paths – You can use Pendo’s no-code path builder to visualize and assess user paths and identify areas of friction.

Appcues vs. Pendo: Customer feedback collection

Collecting user feedback is the key to identifying gaps in the user experience and improving your product.

Let’s find out what Appcues and Pendo offer in this regard.

Appcues features for user feedback

The user feedback capabilities are limited to Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys. You can customize pre-built NPS survey templates and segment users based on their responses. Then, you can launch personalized in-app experiences for each segment.

For instance, you can encourage Promoters to review your app and ask Detractors to share qualitative feedback.

Keep in mind that Appcues doesn’t let you create standalone surveys. Instead, all NPS surveys are embedded into modals.

Pendo features for user feedback

Pendo’s user feedback features are more extensive than those of Appcues. For starters, you can conduct NPS surveys both in-app and via email. You can also use in-app prompts to collect qualitative feedback and even conduct polls.

Plus, Pendo integrates with tools like Salesforce and Zendesk and lets you consolidate feedback collected across different platforms. You even have the option to test different product ideas and ask users about their experience.

The best part is that Pendo uses AI algorithms to extract actionable insights from survey data. You can also choose to create custom feedback views where you only see responses from specific user segments or product areas.

Feature idea validation at scale is also feasible with Pendo Validate. With it, you can create idea tests, display them to customer segments, and collect quantitative user feedback to understand if they strike a chord with them.

Pendo vs. Appcues: Integrations

Third-party integrations enhance a product growth platform’s capabilities. Here’s what Appcues and Pendo offer in this context:

Pendo integrations

Pendo supports integration with several commonly used third-party solutions, including CRMs, analytics tools, and project management software. Two-way integrations include:

• Fulcrum
• Segment
• Workato
• Zendesk

You can also feed data from HubSpot and Salesforce to Pendo to improve user segmentation. Plus, you can send data from Pendo to platforms like ChurnZero, Confluence, Gainsight, Jira, and more.

Appcues integrations

Appcues offers an impressive suite of third-party integrations through APIs and webhooks. From Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Google Analytics to Jira, Marketo, and Salesforce, you can connect Appcues with almost any tool in your tech stack.

You can overcome many of Appcues’s limitations, such as a lack of in-depth analytics, with these integrations. When it comes to third-party integrations, Appcues wins the race with its spectrum of two-way integrations.

Pendo vs. Appcues: Pricing

Before we jump in to discuss the pricing plans of each tool, Pendo is much more expensive than Appcues

Pendo pricing

Pendo offers a forever-free plan that comes with retroactive analytics, retention reporting, in-app guides, roadmaps, and NPS surveys. However, it’s limited to 500 monthly active users (MAUs). For more functionalities, you can choose from the following paid plans:

• Base – You get in-app guides, one Launchpad, product analytics, and one third-party integration. NPS surveys and session replays are available as an add-on.
• Core – It has everything in Base, plus session replays. NPS surveys are available as an add-on.
• Pulse – You get everything in Core plus NPS surveys and product discovery features, such as idea validation and a customer portal.
• Ultimate – This plan offers everything in Pulse, along with Pro edition in-app guides and data synchronization.

Pendo’s pricing information isn’t listed on the website. You’ll have to contact the sales team for a quote.

Appcues pricing

Appcues offer three paid plans, and the total cost depends on MAUs. Pricing tiers include:

• Essentials – Starting at $249 per month (billed annually) for 2500 MAUs, this plan includes 3 team members, 5 audience segments, and 10 tracked events. You also get most UI patterns and one resource center with Appcues branding but no checklists.
• Growth – Starting at 1000$ (billed annually) for 2500 MAUs, this plan includes 10 team members, unlimited resource centers, segments, tracked events, and integrations to 30+ tools. You also get checklists and advanced customization.
• Enterprise – This plan comes with advanced security controls and priority support. Pricing is available on request.

Appcues offers a 14-day free trial for all paid plans. However, it’s worth pointing out that with a starting price of $249 per month, Appcues isn’t the most affordable product growth platform. Plus, with MAU-based pricing, the costs escalate pretty quickly as your user base grows.

Pendo vs. Appcues: Customer support

Pendo’s customer support channels include a help center, Slack channel, and ticketing portal. Premium support includes live chat, video conferencing, and a dedicated technical support engineer. This is only available for paid plans.

With Appcues, the primary customer support channels are email and video conferencing. Growth and Enterprise users also get a 90-day onboarding program and technical implementation manager. Unlike Pendo, you don’t get the option to reach out to support via live chat or tickets.

However, Appcues is known for its focus on customer education. From a curated library of in-app experiences to the Product Adoption Academy, Appcues offers various resources to empower its customers.

Userpilot: A better alternative to Appcues and Pendo

While Appcues and Pendo offer impressive user engagement and analytics features, it’s difficult to label them as “all-in-one.” If you’re looking for a solution that covers all your product adoption needs, Userpilot deserves a shot.

Notable features of Userpilot include:

• Autocapture – Userpilot automatically tracks and captures user actions like clicks, form submissions, and text input changes, meaning you don’t have to manually create custom events.
• Custom dashboards – With Userpilot, you can set up custom analytics dashboards with the reports and KPIs that matter to you. You can even filter the data for specific date ranges, user profiles, and more.
• Analytics reports – Userpilot offers a broad spectrum of analytics reports to help you take a deep dive into user behavior. While funnel analysis lets you identify drop-off points, path analysis helps you identify happy paths for different user personas. You can also uncover patterns in user behavior with trend analysis and analyze churn with cohort analysis.
• In-app surveys – You get a vast library of pre-built survey templates, including NPS, CSAT, and CES surveys. These enable you to collect both quantitative and qualitative feedback.
• Robust resource center – Userpilot lets you build an in-app resource center where you can add links to all support resources, product news, and more. Plus, there’s a search bar to help users easily navigate the help center—something both Pendo and Appcues don’t have.
• User profiles – You can create detailed user profiles, including names, job titles, sign-up dates, total number of sessions, and more. Userpilot also provides insights into each user’s activity, including performed events, visited pages, and survey responses.

Why choose Userpilot over Appcues

Unlike Appcues, Userpilot offers event-based triggers on both Growth and Enterprise plans. The latter’s native analytics and user feedback features are also more extensive.

Plus, you can build a full-fledged in-app resource center to enable self-service support. Starting at $799 per month, Userpilot’s Growth plan offers better value for money than the equivalent plan on Appcues.

Why choose Userpilot over Pendo

In contrast to Pendo, Userpilot is easier to use and comes with a highly customizable editor. You can create standalone onboarding checklists and even trigger in-app flows based on user actions.

Similarly, Userpilot supports standalone survey models and offers more variety in terms of survey templates. The suite of third-party integrations is more extensive and included in the overall pricing, which isn’t the case on Pendo.

Conclusion

Appcues features an intuitive drag-and-drop editor and multiple UI patterns but lacks native analytics. Pendo’s analytics features are more robust, but there’s no option for behavior-based triggering.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use product adoption platform that combines good user engagement features with in-depth product analytics, Userpilot is a better fit.

Schedule a Userpilot demo to see the platform in action.