Appcues vs Userflow: Which is Best for Your SaaS?

Wondering whether Appcues or Userflow is the best option for your SaaS company?

This article is going to dive into the Appcues vs Userflow debate and try to answer a key question: Which is the better tool for user onboarding, as well as other use cases?

In the post below, we’ve covered all the common use cases and done an in-depth analysis of the key features of Appcues and Userflow – as well as compared it to an alternative solution that may be better in some situations.

Let’s get into it!

TL;DR

Let’s explore how Appcues, and Userflow compare when it comes to user onboarding and other common use cases.
- - Appcues is a robust product adoption and user onboarding platform for web and mobile apps. It enables product teams to create, implement, and test personalized in-app onboarding experiences. The platform also helps you announce new product features and collect customer feedback.
  - Userflow is a user onboarding solution centered around building in-app flows and guides quickly and seamlessly. It helps product teams onboard new users, creates guides/checklists, and surveys customers to gather valuable feedback.
If you’re looking for a better option for user onboarding, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to other tools on the list.
Userpilot is a product growth platform that drives user activation, feature adoption, and expansion revenue. It also helps product teams collect user feedback, streamline onboarding, and gather actionable insights from analytics. Get a Userpilot demo for user onboarding and drive your product growth code-free.

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What is Appcues?

Appcues is a robust product adoption and user onboarding platform for web and mobile apps. It enables product teams to create, implement, and test personalized in-app onboarding experiences. The platform also helps you announce new product features and collect customer feedback.

What makes this platform even better is the fact that it offers no-code features that make it suitable for non-technical teams.

What is Userflow?

Userflow is a user onboarding solution centered around building in-app flows and guides quickly and seamlessly. It helps product teams onboard new users, creates guides/checklists, and surveys customers to gather valuable feedback.

Each flow has its own analytics that shows how many views each step of a funnel gets and what percentage of users end up seeing a particular stage. Lastly, the flow builder (Userflow’s main feature) also has versioning capabilities so you can restore your flows to a previous variant.

Appcues vs Userflow for user onboarding

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Appcues vs Userflow in terms of user onboarding. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Appcues or Userflow – is the best option depending on your use case.

Appcues for user onboarding

Onboarding new users seamlessly is one of the primary use cases of Appcues. The platform offers a wide array of features to help you improve user activation, conversion, and retention.

Let’s take a closer look at how Appcues facilitates new user onboarding:

Drag-and-drop builder: Appcues’s no-code builder lets you create personalized onboarding tours and checklists to assist and educate new users. You can customize UI patterns like hotspots, modals, slideouts, and tooltips to guide users.
In-app user guides and product tours: You can use various UI patterns, such as hotspots and tooltips, to introduce new users to product features in a pre-defined sequence. Similarly, you can use checklists to guide users as they explore your app.

Checklists: 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 (you can’t trigger JS functions or add gamification elements) compared to alternatives, such as Userpilot.
Segmentation: You can use one of the pre-defined audience segments or create customer segments based on plan tier, lifecycle stage, and other factors. It’s possible to target individual segments with personalized messaging and journeys.

Measure and improve: You can track in-app flow performance and measure events (limited to 5 on the Essentials plan) to identify areas of improvement.

Test and optimize: The newly introduced A/B testing feature lets you test different onboarding flows. You can compare the performance of different in-app sequences, identify the best-performing ones, and refine onboarding flows.

Userflow for user onboarding

Userflow positions itself as a user onboarding tool, so most of its features are targeted towards that use case. Here are the Userflow features and functionalities that you can use to onboard new users to your product:

Flows: In-app flows are the primary user onboarding feature that Userflow offers. You’ll be able to add steps like speech bubbles, tooltips, modals, or hidden steps used as triggers. You can also select whether a step is mandatory for flow completion and change the size or theme if needed.

Targeting: You can create personalized and contextual onboarding flows with Userflow due to its auto-start settings. You can add trigger conditions like what page users are on, which segment they’re in, when they signed up, which elements they’ve clicked, and which flows they’ve seen.

Checklists: Userflows lets you create checklists with an unlimited number of tasks, trigger them if certain targeting conditions are met, configure whether tasks need to be completed in a specific order, and prevent users from dismissing the checklist if needed.

Appcues vs Userflow for product adoption

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Appcues vs Userflow in terms of product adoption. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Appcues or Userflow – is the best option depending on your use case.

Appcues for product adoption

Appcues packs robust features to skyrocket free-to-paid conversions and drive upsells. Let’s take a closer look at how the platform facilitates product adoption.

No-code builder: The no-code builder on Appcues lets you create onboarding flows that handhold users through your app. You can also use it to publish in-app announcements that draw a user’s attention to new features and upcoming events.

Pre-designed templates: You can choose from many pre-made templates for each UI pattern. It’s easy to create product tours, in-app tutorials and announcements with these templates.
Flow targeting: Appcues lets you segment users into different groups based on in-app activity, online behavior, and lifecycle stage. That makes it easier to customize your messaging and win over each segment, helping you convert trials into paying customers.
Review prompts: Available on Appcues Mobile, this feature lets you nudge users to rate and review your app on various app stores at the right time. It can help drive new sign-ups as well.
Other features, such as event tracking and A/B testing, can also help improve product adoption.

As you can see, Appcues is focused on in-app experiences but is limited by product analytics. Without proper data is hard to understand how your users are adopting your product and where they need help.

You can integrate Appcues with tools like Amplitude, but that comes at an additional cost. If you are looking for a product adoption tool, Appcues might not be the best.

Userflow for product adoption

Flows: In-app flows are the primary user onboarding feature that Userflow offers. You’ll be able to add steps like speech bubbles, tooltips, modals, or hidden steps used as triggers. You can also select whether a step is mandatory for flow completion and change the size or theme if needed.

Targeting: You can create personalized and contextual onboarding flows with Userflow due to its auto-start settings. You can add trigger conditions like what page users are on, which segment they’re in, when they signed up, which elements they’ve clicked, and which flows they’ve seen.

Checklists: Userflows lets you create checklists with an unlimited number of tasks, trigger them if certain targeting conditions are met, configure whether tasks need to be completed in a specific order, and prevent users from dismissing the checklist if needed.

Appcues vs Userflow for customer experience

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Appcues vs Userflow in terms of customer experience. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Appcues or Userflow – is the best option depending on your use case.

Appcues for customer experience

Appcues plays a key role in taking your product’s customer experience (CX) up a notch.

It helps enhance CX in the following ways:

UI patterns like checklists, hotspots, modals, and tooltips let you create guided in-app tours and tutorials and simplify customer onboarding.
A Launchpad lets users access Appcues onboarding flows from a notification dropdown within your product.
NPS surveys help you collect customer feedback and improve your product. However, unlike Userpilot, Appcues only offers NPS surveys.
Other features like user segmentation (for personalization) and event tracking also come in handy.

That said, Appcues alone can’t guarantee a flawless customer experience. It only covers the onboarding aspect of CX. You’ll need to focus on other aspects like customer support and relationship-building to improve the overall UX, and for those you need multiple types of user surveys, on-demand support (using a resource center) and proper analytics, which Appcues lack.

Userflow for customer experience

A good customer experience is imperative to lasting user retention. While Userflow’s lack of product analytics capabilities limits the customer experience insights it can offer, the software does let you add questions.

Question blocks: Userflow lets you add question blocks to steps in the flow builder. Text-based questions are ideal for collecting qualitative feedback on the customer experience while scale or star ratings can be used to create CSAT or CES surveys within your no-code flows.

NPS surveys: Userflow lets you create NPS surveys to see how satisfied users are with their customer experience and are loyal to your brand. Unfortunately, you’ll only be able to add two questions unless you upgrade to the Pro plan which starts at $680/month.

Note: Because Userflow has no unified analytics dashboard, you’ll need to go into the settings of each individual NPS survey to see data like total views, response rate, and the aggregate score from all respondents.

Segmentation: Userflow lets you filter or target users by what language they speak, how much they spend on your product, how long ago they signed up, which features they’ve interacted with, and which segment they’re in so you can offer a personalized customer experience.

Appcues vs Userflow for user feedback

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Appcues vs Userflow in terms of user feedback. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Appcues or Userflow – is the best option depending on your use case.

Appcues for user feedback

Appcues provides a robust suite of tools to collect and analyze your product feedback for mobile apps. However, if you want to collect feedback for your web app, you only have access to an NPS survey.

Mobile app product feedback features include:

Survey prompt asking a user to rate their experience of using a specific feature.
Survey forms asking users about feature improvements or new features they’d like to see in your product.
Collect and analyze NPS survey results to improve in-app experiences.
App Store review prompts to encourage promoters to rate and review your product on leading app stores.

Userflow for user feedback

Product feedback can be used to identify pain points and high-friction areas during onboarding flows or later in the customer experience. Here are the product feedback features that Userflow offers:

Question blocks: Every in-app flow can have a question block added to one of its steps which helps you collect actionable feedback within different product areas. You can also bind responses to user attributes to easily sort through customers or trigger follow-up flows.

Targeted feedback: Since Userflow lets you set conditions for which elements users have interacted with or which flows they’ve seen/completed, you can collect targeted feedback from customers who have already tested specific features and then trigger flows based on their response.

NPS surveys: Auto-start conditions let you create NPS surveys that only trigger after users have interacted with a specific feature or product area. By comparing their survey responses to the ratings of a control group segment, you can test the impact a feature has on the product.

Appcues vs Userflow: Which one you should choose?

To further simplify this selection process, let’s break down the strengths and limitations of each tool. Understanding the distinct advantages and potential drawbacks of Appcues and Userflow will provide you with a detailed roadmap for making a well-informed decision!

Pros and cons of Appcues

Pros of Appcues

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.

Cons of Appcues

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 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.

Pros and cons of Userflow

Pros of Userflow

Userflow has multiple benefits but the most notable is how easy it is to create and edit flows within the software. Userflow’s ease-of-use makes it an attractive solution for product teams, marketers, and even solopreneurs.

Here are the pros of using Userflow:

Flow builder: Userflow’s intuitive drag-and-drop flow builder makes it easy to add new steps, create links between steps, and reorder steps by moving them around. Speech bubbles, tooltips, and modals are the three primary UI elements that you can use when creating steps.
AI assistant: Userflow lets you create in-app AI assistants that can respond to customers in their native language (but will default to English if unsure which language the customer is speaking). Do note that you’ll need to pay an additional $100/month if you exceed 100 monthly messages.
Integrations: Userflow integrates with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, Salesforce, Heap, HubSpot, and more — which makes it easy to integrate Userflow with your existing tech stack so you can sync data between platforms.

Cons of Userflow

Of course, there are some limitations to Userflow since it’s one of the newer onboarding solutions on the market. Let’s take a look at some of the downsides of choosing Userflow as your onboarding tool:

Analytics: This is undoubtedly Userflow’s biggest weakness. It doesn’t have a home dashboard for analytics which means you’ll need to manually go into every flow, checklist, launcher, or resource center to view the analytics for it.

Note: Competitors like Userpilot and Pendo include native analytics dashboards on their entry-level plans.

Reordering: While reordering steps in a flow can be done in a drag-and-drop fashion, the links between steps aren’t automatically severed. This means you’ll need to manually remove cross-step links and reconnect the steps whenever you change their order which can be a hassle.
Limitations: Userflow’s entry-level plan has restrictive limitations like only being able to include two questions in NPS surveys and needing to pay extra if you want to add more than three team members (while competitors on the market like Userpilot usually offer five seats or more).

Userpilot – A better alternative for your SaaS

Userpilot is a product growth platform that drives user activation, feature adoption, and expansion revenue. It also helps product teams collect user feedback, streamline onboarding, and gather actionable insights from analytics.

With Userpilot, you’ll be able to track both product usage and user behavior to get a holistic view of how customers use your product — which will guide future development, improve the user experience, and inform your growth efforts.

Pros of Userpilot

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.

Cons of Userpilot

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.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post helped you decide whether Appcues or Userflow is more appropriate for your company. As you can see – both have many upsides and downsides.

Undeniably, Userpilot provides a better value for money and is a better choice for a mid-market SaaS, especially when it comes to user onboarding and user feedback.

If you’re interested in finding more, book a demo with our team here!

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CONTENTS

TL;DR

Userpilot – A Better Alternative for Your SaaS

What is Appcues?

What is Userflow?