Product analytics studies user interactions with a product or service, allowing product teams to monitor, evaluate, and assess data related to customer engagement and behavior. This information is used by teams to optimize their product or service to improve user experience.

Appcues for product analytics

Besides creating onboarding journeys, Appcues also helps you monitor product adoption and user behavior. The best part here is that you don’t need any coding experience to set up product analytics on Appcues.

Note that since Appcues doesn’t focus on analytics, the features it offers are limited. If you need access to cohorts, retention analysis, funnels, paths or trends, you will need a different tool.

Appcues offers the following features for tracking product usage analytics:

• Click-to-track: Available in Appcues Builder – the Chrome Extension, this feature lets you define and track new events by using feature tags, such as when a user fills a form field or hovers over a menu. It gives you insight into how users are engaging with your product’s UI.

• Events Explorer: Available in Appcues Studio – the main dashboard, Events Explorer lets you validate and visualize various events, making it easier to measure product adoption and user engagement over a given period.

• Appcues also offers integrations with analytic tools like Amplitude if you need more data tracking.
• You can also track flow engagement analytics using Appcues, but this will only tell you how well your in-app guides are performing and how users engage with them.

Keep in mind that Appcues’s element detection algorithm isn’t the most powerful. Platforms like Userpilot do a better job at tracking user engagement for specific in-app elements, on top of offering more advanced analytics features like funnels, trends and cohort analysis.

Appcues pros

As a first-comer in the no-code product adoption landscape, Appcues offers several valuable features. It’s suitable for mid-market SaaS businesses looking for a simple, easy-to-use tool that enhances user onboarding, retention, and the overall customer experience.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of Appcues:

• Intuitive UI and UX: Appcues offers a straightforward interface that’s easy to navigate and use. Users with non-technical backgrounds can design captivating in-app flows and onboarding journeys with its simple drag-and-drop builder. You can tailor user journeys with various UI patterns, from modals and hotspots to tooltips, slideouts, and banners.
• Simple setup: You can get started with Appcues in minutes by adding the SDK to your app’s source code or integrating Appcues with Segment or Google Tag Manager. Then, add a Chrome extension to launch the Appcues Builder in a few quick clicks and start creating in-app flows.
• Feedback options: Create Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys to collect actionable user feedback. You can even check and analyze NPS analytics on your Appcues dashboard.
• Mobile onboarding: Besides web apps, you can use Appcues to create end-to-end experiences for mobile apps. It supports various mobile environments, including Native Android, Native iOS, React Native, Flutter, and Iconic.
• Extensive integrations: Appcues integrates with 20+ email automation, CRM, and analytics tools, including Heap, Zapier, HubSpot, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager. Many of these include two-way integrations.

Appcues cons

Appcues comes with a ton of useful features you’d expect from a leading product adoption platform, but it does have a few shortcomings.

Let’s look at a few drawbacks of Appcues:

• Poor element detection: The Appcues algorithm occasionally struggles to detect in-app elements, unlike some of its competitors like Userpilot. It’s particularly limiting when you want to add tooltips to individual options in a dropdown menu.
• Limited customization capabilities: While Appcues lets you customize pre-designed templates, you’re limited to basic options like font style, size, color, and padding. Advanced customization requires working with CSS code, which can be challenging for non-technical teams.
• Basic analytics: Appcues provides insights into product usage and customer behavior. However, you can’t access in-depth analytics without connecting to a third-party tool like Amplitude or Google Analytics.
• Limited survey options: Appcues lacks variety in feedback collection and survey options and doesn’t offer integrations with other platforms like Google Forms and Typeform. You can only build NPS surveys. This is in contrast to some of its competitors, like Userpilot, which offers an extensive library of customizable survey templates.
• Higher pricing: Starting at $249 per month, the Appcues Essential tier has several constraints, such as limited UI patterns and no custom CSS support. Moreover, localization support is only available in the Enterprise tier. If your app is multilingual, you’ll have to shell out a ton of money to make the most of Appcues.
• No live chat: While Appcues offers educational resources and a help center (Help Docs), customer support is limited to email and phone.

Appcues pricing

Pricing for Appcues starts at $249 per month, with the platform offering three distinct tiers – Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise.

The total cost can vary depending on the number of monthly active users (MAU). For instance, the Essential plan starts at $249 per month for 2500 MAU but jumps to $299 for 5000 MAU.

Here’s a detailed glimpse of the different pricing tiers:

• Essentials: It’s the basic tier that starts at $249 per month. It includes 3 user licenses and lets you add up to 5 audience segments. Some UI patterns, such as checklists, launchpads, and custom CSS support, aren’t available. Customer support is only available through email.
• Growth: This tier starts at $879 per month (for 2500 monthly active users) and includes 10 user licenses. You can target unlimited audience segments and use the full spectrum of UI patterns. Additionally, you can access the Premium Integrations package, which includes integrations with Slack, Salesforce, Marketo, and Zendesk.
• Enterprise: This is the most feature-packed tier and includes robust security controls like role-based access and activity logs. It’s also the only tier that comes with multi-account and localization support. Besides email and phone support, you also get a dedicated Customer Success Manager and Technical Implementation Manager. Pricing is available on request.

All three plans come with a 14-day free trial, where you can test unlimited flows and track up to 5 events. You can extend the trial by another 14 days by installing the Appcues SDK in your app. Additionally, you don’t need a credit card to sign up for the free trial.

Keep in mind that the above pricing plans are applicable to web apps. Pricing for Appcues Mobile is available on request.

It’s also worth noting that Appcues is pricier than some of the other product adoption tools available in the market, including Userpilot. For instance, Userpilot’s basic tier (Starter) lets you add up to 10 audience segments and includes the complete set of UI patterns.

Product Fruits for product analytics

Product analytics tools are a game changer when it comes to accelerating your product’s growth. They provide a clear view of your users’ actions within your product and the reasons behind them. However, if you’re seeking top-notch user analytics, Product Fruits might not be your first choice.

That being said, Product Fruits does offer some basic user analytics:

• User Behavior Tracking: Product Fruits provides insights into how your users navigate your product. While it may not delve as deeply as more advanced analytics tools, it still offers valuable insights.
• Performance Metrics: If you want to gauge the success of your onboarding process, Product Fruits offers basic metrics such as completion rates and time spent.

• A/B Testing: To boost user engagement, reduce bounce rates, and increase conversion rates effectively, Product Fruits supports A/B testing. For A/B testing of Product Fruits tours or hints, Google Optimize is the recommended tool. Unlike Userpilot, Product Fruits does not offer in-app A/B testing.

If you’re looking for advanced product analytics, consider checking out Userpilot. This tool goes the extra mile, offering in-depth user segmentation, goal tracking, and A/B testing. The insights it provides can make a significant difference in understanding user behavior and fine-tuning your onboarding process.

Product Fruits pros

Product Fruits offers many benefits with its easy-to-use, no-code platform. It is one of the good solutions for companies looking for affordable user onboarding, product adoption, and product analytics.

So, what does Product Fruits bring to the table? Let’s explore its promising pros:

• Guided Product Tours: It guides users to learn about your app through step-by-step tours for new features.
• Newsfeed: Enhance your users’ connectivity by sharing updates about your product. Additionally, you can set specific newsfeed items which will be displayed in the knowledge base.
• Feedback Through Screenshots and Videos: This feature allows users to send screenshots or videos directly within the app to provide feedback.
• Tooltips: These are brief hints added to different parts of the application to guide users and prevent confusion
• Life Ring Button: A comprehensive support hub that combines all guidance and support resources in one location. This allows users to conveniently access onboarding flows, support documents, and tutorials, no matter what page they’re on.
• Custom Events: Trigger actions based on what users do in your app for more personal interaction.
• Segmentation: Create unique experiences for different types of users and show tailored content to separate user groups.
• Analytics: Gain valuable insights into user behavior, identify improvement areas, and address pain points effectively.
• AI Writer: This feature instantly generates your onboarding copy. However, it is only available in higher-tier plans.

Product Fruits cons

While Product Fruits does have its merits, it’s not without its share of issues. Let’s see some potential drawbacks that might have you considering alternatives.

• Absence of A/B Testing: Product Fruits lacks A/B testing, a vital feature for refining your product tours based on user responses and data-backed insights.
• Basic Analytics: Product Fruits does not offer in-depth analytics as its competitors like Userpilot. This makes it difficult to evaluate user interaction and the success of your onboarding
• Insufficient Segmentation Options: The segmentation options here are only based on user attributes. This means you can’t highlight particular app functions or experiences based on a user’s past actions in your app, which can limit the customization of their experience.
• Missing Event-Based Triggering: The absence of real-time triggers may limit timely content delivery. This could affect the success of all in-app flows, such as product tours, tooltips, walkthroughs, modals, etc.
• Complex Tour Configuration: Configuring tours with specific conditions, especially when tuning CSS selectors, can be challenging and time-consuming.
• Limited Integrations: This tool links up with analytic tools, which is great. However, it doesn’t go beyond that. You won’t be able to bring in your resource center materials or link up your CRM unless you’re a Hubspot user.

Product Fruits pricing

The platform offers two distinct plans. Each of these plans is tailored to accommodate the number of users you have. Here’s a detailed breakdown of each plan:

• Core: $89/month for 1,500 users. This package includes features like tours & walkthroughs, a knowledge base, and basic integrations. Notably, the onboarding checklist is limited to three items, and there’s also a Life Ring Button for support and announcements feature.
• Boost: $149/month for 1,500 users. This package contains everything in the Core plan, with added benefits such as custom event triggers, advanced integrations, and an AI writer. It also includes features like NPS & Surveys, and access management, ensuring a smoother user experience.
• Enterprise: This plan is custom-priced according to your needs. It’s meant for larger organizations requiring features like SAML SSO, custom terms & conditions, SLA, and bespoke features and integrations.

Core plan is reasonably priced but may not provide the depth of features that a growing company might require. Hence, the Boost plan offers more comprehensive user onboarding and engagement tools. The customizable Enterprise plan is a more appropriate choice for organizations with specific requirements.

You can easily subscribe to any pricing plan without a credit card. Plus, there’s a 14-day free trial on offer. Opting for the yearly plan can be cost-effective, saving $20 on any plan.

Baremetrics for product analytics

Baremetrics doesn’t offer features specifically designed for in-depth product analytics. Its main focus is on subscription analytics. Therefore, if you’re looking for a product analytics tool, you might be better off using Userpilot.

Baremetrics pros

Baremetrics has a number of advantages, especially for SaaS companies and Startups who are interested in investing in subscription analytics software. One click, and you get hundreds of valuable metrics and business insights! Let’s look at the pros of using Baremetrics:

• Subscription analytics: Baremetrics specializes in subscription analytics, making it valuable for SaaS businesses with subscription-based revenue models. A subscription analytics dashboard can offer deeper insights than manual analytics efforts and save startups money in the long run.
• Revenue insights: It provides a clear overview of revenue metrics, including MRR, ARR, and churn rates. These metrics track all recurring revenue normalized to a monthly or yearly amount.
• Churn analysis: Understand why customers cancel subscriptions through the Baremetrics cancellation insights feature. While every company will have some subscription cancellations, a higher churn rate makes it harder to achieve sustainable business growth. Baremetrics tracks user churn, revenue churn, and net revenue churn, giving you a complete picture of the financial impact of canceled subscriptions.
• User-friendly interface: Its intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate and understand metrics without technical expertise.
• Seamless integrations to payment platforms: Baremetrics integrates with your favorite payment providers and platforms like Shopify, Google Play, Stripe, Recurly, etc.
• Forecasting: With historical data and trends at your fingertips, you can create accurate revenue forecasts to assist in business planning.
• Comparison of your customer segments in dashboards: Choose between any of your custom segments on any dashboard and get instant historical comparisons. Baremetrics allows you to perform simple health checks to see how different groups of customers are growing.

Baremetrics cons

While Baremetrics poses a great advantage for subscription-based companies and SaaS startups, there are still some limitations when it comes to analytics functionality and general product adoption. Below are the cons of using Baremetrics:

• Limited non-subscription metrics: While great for subscription-based businesses, it might not be as comprehensive for non-subscription revenue models.
• Steep pricing plan: The pricing plans might be a little steep for smaller businesses or startups with a tight budget.
• It’s not a full customer experience tool: While it offers insights into user behavior, it’s not a dedicated tool for managing all aspects of your brand’s customer experience.
• The steeper learning curve for non-analysts: If you aren’t familiar with financial analytics, you might require time to understand the metrics, interpret trends, and translate insights into actionable strategies.

Baremetrics pricing

Baremetrics has 4 different plans for SaaS companies looking to scale their subscription-based business model. These plans range from a core suite of metrics to many modules that can supercharge your SaaS growth, reduce churn, recover failed charges, and plan for the future.

Here’s a brief overview of the features of each plan and their price tags:

Note: Each pricing plan value depends on your current MRR. So, we are using the $0K value as a benchmark to review the different plans.

• Metrics plan: $108/mo. Features include—smart dashboards, benchmarks, export data, data enrichment, segmentation, analytics API, automated email reports, trial Insights, Slack tools, Intercom Integration, etc.
• Recover plan: $58/mo. The pros of this plan include—Automated Email reminders to delinquent customers, recovery of more than your entire Baremetrics cost or next month is on them, customizable credit card forms, in-app banners and screen takeovers to prompt payment, easy to grab, custom recover link, and more.
• Cancellation insights plan: $108/mo. Features include customizing your reasons for cancellation, recovering more than your entire Baremetrics cost or next month is on us, personalized email questionnaires, in-app popups to collect cancellation feedback, automated follow-up emails, etc.
• Forecast+ plan: With this plan, you can see intelligent MRR projections with configurable options. It is included with metrics. So what are the features? Connect to Quickbooks Online or Xero, generate financial models like P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement, forecast MRR, ARR, Customer growth, and more.

Better alternative to Appcues, Product Fruits, and Baremetrics

We have discussed Appcues, Product Fruits, and Baremetrics for product analytics with their pros, cons, and pricing. Let’s take a look at a better alternative – Userpilot.

Userpilot for product analytics

Product analytics lets you collect and analyze data about how users interact with your product so you can extract actionable insights. Userpilot lets you look at granular product analytics, such as which features have the highest adoption rates, and big-picture insights like trend reports.

Here are Userpilot’s top product analytics features:

• Feature tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you view how many times a feature has been used and by how many users to measure its adoption. Users on the Starter plan can add up to 15 feature tags while those on the Growth or Enterprise tier can create unlimited tags.

• Trends and funnels: Userpilot’s trends and funnels report lets you extract actionable insights from big data. You’ll be able to see which stage of an onboarding/conversion funnel most users drop out on and create trend reports with detailed breakdowns by user or time period.

• Saved reports: The saved reports analytics dashboard shows you all the reports you’ve created and lets you filter, export, or delete any reports in a single click. In addition to adding filters or sorting by report type, you can also edit or duplicate reports to help you review analytics.

• Analytics integrations: Userpilot integrates with some of the most popular analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Analytics, and more. This makes it possible to sync product analytics both ways between the tools in your tech stack (two-way integration is only available for Hubspot at the time of writing, more to come).

Userpilot 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 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.

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

In conclusion, as we’ve explored Appcues, Product Fruits, and Baremetrics for product analytics, it becomes evident that there is a diverse landscape of solutions available to cater to your specific needs. Each of these tools brings its own set of features, advantages, and unique capabilities to the table. Whether you’re seeking enhanced functionality, cost-effectiveness, or a different approach to tackling your tasks, our guide has showcased a range of options.

Ultimately, the choice of the best alternative depends on your individual requirements and preferences. We hope that our exploration of these tools has provided you with valuable insights to help you make an informed decision.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Appcues!

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