Is Appcues or Userlane the best tool for customer feedback? And is there a better software that would better fit your needs?

With so many alternatives on review sites, it’s a bit tricky to really choose one.

It would be best to consider your priorities and the functionalities you’ll need from the tool to get the job done. Then there’s also the price that needs to match your budget. Right?

In this post, we’ll discuss exactly what the perfect tool for performing customer feedback should deliver and which will be the best choice for your company’s needs.

What is customer feedback?

Customer feedback is important if you want to truly serve your customers and come up with solutions that can solve their pain points.

Here is why customer feedback matters:

• Understand whether customers see value in your product and if it meets their needs.
• Uncover weak spots of your product and bottlenecks that disturb the customer journey.
• Make your customers voices heard and acknowledge them that they are important to you.
• Collect real-time insights on the go as you’re introducing new features or product updates.

Must have features for customer feedback tools

On the lookout to find the best customer feedback tools? We’ve curated a list of the best tools that are trustworthy:

• Userpilot: best customer feedback tool for creating NPS surveys without Userpilot branding and with NPS tagging capability.
• Appcues: best customer feedback tool for creating mobile surveys.
• UserGuiding: best customer feedback tool for creating different types of microsurveys.
• Pendo: best customer feedback tool for feedback analytics.
• Chameleon: best customer feedback tool for contextual in-product feedback.

Let’s dive deeper into how each stacks up for different company sizes, budgets, and jobs to be done!

Appcues for customer feedback

As a product adoption platform, Appcues offers limited features that enable you to collect customer feedback. There is only one type of survey available (Net Promoter Score), and it comes with templates and analytics.

• NPS templates: You can customize pre-built NPS templates using the drag-and-drop builder.
• NPS targeting: Use NPS results to encourage promoters to review your product on app stores or ask detractors for more feedback.

• You could add a survey lookalike on top of a modal, but that means you won’t be collecting and analyzing results easily, defeating the purpose of using a survey for user feedback.

NPS surveys in Appcues

Appcues simplifies the process of creating and implementing in-app NPS surveys. You can set up the survey from Appcues Studio and customize it to match your brand image.

Besides no-code survey design, Appcues also lets you:

• Preview the survey before publishing it in real-time.
• Access, analyze, and import in-depth survey results.
• Segment users based on survey results and target them with personalized messaging.

However, it’s worth noting that when it comes to breaking down NPS survey results, Appcues has a few limitations as it only gives you the score and answers. You can’t tag responses or do more in-depth analysis unless you download a CSV file with all answers and do a manual analysis.

Other platforms like Userpilot do a better job of breaking down responses by score, behavior patterns, and other parameters.

In-app surveys in Appcues

Appcues only lets you create NPS surveys to collect feedback from customers. You can use a workaround and add a microsurvey to a modal, but this won’t be collecting any analytics, and analysis responses will be difficult.

If NPS surveys are enough for you, here’s what Appcues offers:

• NPS: The most commonly used survey option is NPS, which lets you identify loyal users and detractors.

• Survey analytics: You can track, analyze, and visualize NPS survey results. It’s also possible to export the results into a PDF file.
• Target and trigger your NPS survey to specific audiences.

Userlane for customer feedback

Userlane enables teams to collect user feedback and enhance product experiences through basic survey functionality. While their primary focus is on interactions, you can also gather feedback.

However, it might be challenging to track and analyze the data since it is not their core use case.

You might want to consider alternatives like Userpilot and WalkMe for collecting user feedback.

NPS surveys in Userlane

Userlane provides you with the tools to set up and automate your NPS. With it, you can target a specific user group with the survey.

Let’s take a look at some of the features of Userlane that’ll improve your NPS surveys:

• NPS will run in cycles until you deactivate it or until the end date is reached. With Userlane, you activate a single NPS survey displayed in predefined cycles. The NPS survey is hidden from users once they respond to it. These users will be targeted automatically again in the new cycle.
• Automatic reminder system: NPS will remain in the announcement list in the Userlane Assistant if a user has not responded yet. You can set up a reminder with the desired frequency to nudge these users so the NPS pop-up is displayed for them again.

In addition to collecting feedback through NPS surveys, tools like Userpilot can help you target different in-app experiences to address different user segments, either to collect more feedback or offer help.

In-app surveys in Userlane

Product teams use in-app surveys to conduct user research, personalize user experience, assess satisfaction levels, measure customer loyalty, identify new feature ideas, and better understand user behavior.

• With the new emoji-based scale, survey participants can easily provide feedback by selecting one of five emojis representing different sentiments. The leftmost emoji corresponds to the lowest rating and the rightmost to the highest. This user-friendly, easy-to-use system allows quick responses, encouraging engagement and a high participation rate.
• You can translate the survey into other languages by switching the language.
• You can decide who should participate in the survey by setting up a dedicated user segment. Select a page segment to display it on specific pages only. You can also specify the activation date of the survey and how often you want to send reminders to users who haven’t responded to it yet.

There are other comprehensive features that Userlane does not possess, for example, with Userpilot’s heatmaps and event analytics you can gain insights into users’ behavior compared to Userlane. This could reveal that some users don’t engage with the right features for their use cases, which translates into poor survey results.

Pros and cons of Appcues

Are you wondering if Appcues is the right fit for your user onboarding needs or if you should check out other options?

Here are a few reasons why using an Appcues alternative makes sense:

• You want more customizability. Customization options on Appcues are limited to color, size, and style. Advanced customization will require you to work with CSS code. It can be a roadblock when your team members lack technical expertise, leaving you dependent on developers.
• You’re on a budget. With Appcues, you’ll have to pay more to access advanced features like custom CSS, localization, or even simple checklists. If you’re a startup or small business with a limited budget, you might benefit from using a tool like Userpilot that offers more value for money.
• You want to collect detailed customer feedback. Appcues offers limited functionality in terms of surveys. If you want to explore other survey and feedback collection formats apart from NPS, Appcues may not be an ideal choice.

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.

Pros and cons of Userlane

While Userlane is undoubtedly powerful, certain scenarios might necessitate exploring alternatives.

• Extensive Third-party Integrations: While Userlane offers some key integrations if your business heavily relies on a diverse range of third-party tools and you need a seamless, in-depth integration for all of them, you might want to explore platforms like Pendo or Mixpanel that offer broader integration ecosystems.
• Budget Constraints: While Userlane offers a plethora of features suitable for established enterprises or growing companies, it might be beyond the reach of early-stage startups with limited funds. If you’re on a strict budget and looking for a more affordable solution, platforms like UserGuiding, Intercom, or Intro.js might be more aligned with your financial constraints.
• Complex Customization Needs: If your platform requires highly specialized or intricate onboarding experiences that go beyond standard walkthroughs and tooltips, you might find Userlane’s customization options a bit restrictive. In such cases, tools like WalkMe or Appcues, known for their deep customization capabilities, might be a better fit.

Pros of Userlane

Higher productivity, less support effort, and happier users are what Userlane is created for. From a vast spectrum of capabilities to elegantly crafted UI elements that cater to any walkthrough, regardless of its level of customization, Userlane stands out as a robust platform to bolster user engagement and product familiarization.

Let’s dive into the pros of using Userlane:

• Streamlined no-code interface: Userlane boasts a user-friendly dashboard, enabling even those with no coding background to easily design and implement onboarding flows.
• Product adoption analytics: Get a real-time view of digital transformation progress in your organization. Delve deeper into user behaviors across different applications and analyze engagement levels so you can optimize user experiences.
• Dynamic user walkthroughs: Craft compelling and interactive walkthroughs that intuitively guide users through your software, ensuring they grasp every essential feature.
• Versatile in-app communication tools: Whether tooltips, banners, or pop-up modals, Userlane offers many tools to engage users directly within your platform. With Userlane’s customer onboarding solution, you can tailor communications for different user segments, guiding them through the tasks and processes they will most likely need help with.
• Seamless third-party integrations: Integrate Userlane with various analytics tools, CRM platforms, and other essential software to ensure a harmonious workflow and data sharing.
• Granular audience segmentation: Understand your users and their needs better by segmenting them based on behavior, user type, or other customizable metrics. This ensures that your messaging and tours are always relevant and timely.
• Optimized A/B testing capabilities: Refine your onboarding and in-app messaging by A/B testing different approaches, enabling you to continually enhance user experience based on concrete data.
• Thoughtful pacing with walkthrough rate limiting: Ensure users aren’t too quickly bombarded with too much information. With Userlane’s rate limiting, you can pace the introduction of new features or tasks, striking a balance between informing and overwhelming.

Cons of Userlane

As with any tool, weighing its strengths and weaknesses is essential. Here are the notable drawbacks of adopting Userlane:

• Visual Customization Restrictions: One of Userlane’s apparent setbacks lies in its restricted visual customization capabilities. If you have an eye for aesthetic and unique branding elements might find the platform limiting. The lack of diverse templates and somewhat rigid design elements could impede brands from truly reflecting their identity.
• Analytical Ambiguities: In the age of data-driven decision-making, Userlane’s analytical powers — or the lack thereof — stand out. While it offers basic insights, those looking for a deep dive into granular user behavior, funnel analysis, heatmaps, and more might need to bridge the gap with external integrations.
• Integration Quandaries: Speaking of integrations, Userlane might not be the Swiss Army knife of connectivity that some businesses might be hoping for. While essentials like Zendesk, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and Salesforce are on the list, those yearning for a wider array of integration options might need to strategize around these limitations.
• Cost Considerations: Userlane’s pricing structure could be a roadblock, especially for startups and SMEs keen on budget constraints. The initial investment for Userlane might seem daunting, especially considering the added costs of potential integrations and the learning curve associated with maximizing the platform’s potential.

Userpilot – A Better Alternative for Collecting Customer Feedback

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Appcues vs Userlane: Which one fits your budget?

Understanding the cost implications is paramount when selecting the right solution for customer feedback, so here’s a detailed pricing comparison of Appcues and Userlane.

Pricing of Appcues

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.

Pricing of Userlane

Userlane’s pricing plan is structured in a customizable pattern. This means you need to get a custom quote to know the plan that fits your brand’s purpose based on the level of your SaaS and the number of acquired customers.

Userpilot – A better alternative for customer feedback

User feedback is an essential part of listening to the Voice of the Customer (VoC) and making product development or marketing decisions that best suit your customer base. Userpilot has a no-code survey builder, 14 templates to choose from, and advanced analytics for extracting insights.

Here are the Userpilot features you can use to collect customer feedback and analyze it:

• Survey builder: Userpilot’s survey builder lets you edit the content, update the widget’s style/placement, and set page-specific or event-specific triggers to ensure that users see the survey at the most contextual moment — all without writing a single line of code. You can also translate surveys into your audience’s native language.
• Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from with a wide array of different use cases. You can collect qualitative responses on how to improve the user/product experience or quantitative data for customer satisfaction benchmarking such as CSAT and CES scores.
• Advanced analytics: Userpilot’s advanced survey analytics will show you what the most common responses were, what percentage of users selected a specific option, and display open-ended feedback about your product or specific features.

  

• NPS dashboard: Userpilot’s NPS dashboard compiles response data from all NPS surveys so you don’t have to manually go into each survey and check its analytics. You’ll be able to view key metrics like response rates, total views, and NPS history and sort all the data by different segments.

  

• NPS response tags: Userpilot comes with NPS response tags that you can use to categorize qualitative NPS answers for analyzing purposes. You can use these tags to identify common issues among passives and detractors or find satisfaction drivers among promoters.

  

NPS surveys in Userpilot

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a reliable measure of how satisfied customers are and how likely they are to recommend your product to others. Userpilot lets you build NPS surveys, analyze response data, and target specific user groups to gather actionable insights.

Here are the Userpilot features you can use when sending NPS surveys:

• No-code builder: The survey builder lets you edit the content of your NPS surveys, style the widget to your liking, restrict surveys to specific pages/paths, and use AI-powered localization to change the language of your survey.
• Audience targeting: Userpilot’s audience targeting features let you choose which users to include in NPS surveys. You could set this to all users, select only me if you’re still in the testing stage, target a particular segment, or set conditions that must be met for a survey to appear.

  

• Analytics dashboard: Userpilot’s dedicated NPS dashboard shows you all the key data gathered from your surveys. These include how many views your NPS surveys have gotten, the number of responses, the overall response rate, and how the score has been trending over time.

  

• NPS response tags: Userpilot comes with NPS response tags that you can use to categorize qualitative NPS answers for analyzing purposes. You can use these tags to identify common issues among passives and detractors or find satisfaction drivers among promoters.

In-app surveys in Userpilot

In-app surveys are an effective way to collect direct feedback from users without being at the whim of their email inboxes. Userpilot’s built-in functionality lets you create surveys, translate them, and track granular survey analytics that offer additional user insights.

Here are the Userpilot features you can use when building in-app surveys:

• Survey templates: Userpilot’s no-code survey builder has 14 templates to choose from. These include NPS, CSAT, and CES surveys among others for collecting quantitative and qualitative feedback from users. You can add a series of questions to gather valuable insights.
• Survey translation: Userpilot’s AI localization feature lets you translate surveys in a matter of minutes. All you need to do is add the desired locale and leave the rest to Userpilot. You can also make manual tweaks to translations if needed.
• Advanced analytics: Userpilot has detailed analytics that shows what percentage of users chose a specific option, summarizes the most popular choices, and lets you browse through open-ended responses to extract insights from qualitative feedback.

  

Pricing of Userpilot

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 Userpilot?

Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:

I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.

What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.

Source: G2.

Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:

“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”

Source: G2.

Conclusion

This is the end of our thorough comparison between Appcues and Userlane. You should be able to make a confident decision by now. If you’re looking for a solid tool for customer feedback that promises great value for money, give Userpilot a go. Book a demo today!

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