Best HelpScout Alternatives for SaaS Based On Different Use Cases

Looking for a good user onboarding tool and wondering if HelpScout is the best option for your SaaS company?

There are plenty of HelpScout alternatives on review sites, but they don’t make the choice any easier.

The crux of the issue is – to make the right choice, you need to account for your priorities: your different jobs to be done, your budget, and the size of the company. But don’t worry – we’re coming to help!

In this post, we’ll discuss exactly that – which HelpScout competitor is best depending on the different criteria that different SaaS companies may have.

Let’s dive in!

TL;DR

• HelpScout is a help desk designed to support businesses in their customer service efforts, offering a variety of tools for customer interactions. These tools include a knowledge base, contextual help through beacons, live chat and in-app messaging, and reporting. By using HelpScout, businesses can efficiently manage customer interactions and monitor and resolve any issues. If you need to improve your email support, provide Help Center resources for customers, or engage with them through live chat, HelpScout is a great option. It offers pricing plans that are based on the number of users, starting from $20 per user per month when billed annually. However, if you want to drive adoption and improve your onboarding efforts, this tool might not be the best choice for you.
• Userpilot is a comprehensive digital adoption platform (DAP). It enables product teams to track product usage and user behavior to guide product development and optimize the user experience. In addition, it allows them to gather user feedback and design personalized onboarding experiences to drive product adoption. All of this is possible without coding.
• 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.
• UserGuiding is a product adoption tool that helps companies to create interactive user guides and in-app walkthroughs to onboard, engage, and retain their users. It provides a no-code solution that allows non-technical teams to design and implement in-app experiences without any coding skills. Overall, UserGuiding is a powerful tool that can help companies to streamline their onboarding process, increase user engagement, and drive customer retention.
• Chameleon is a digital adoption platform with a difference: while the other tools discussed are mostly no-code, Chameleon will require some developer involvement. Nevertheless, it’s a powerful and effective tool that works in a similar way to Userpilot and offers similar features: styling, analytics, templates, goals, A/B testing, and checklists. However, it doesn’t offer a resource center, or dedicated NPS, and it’s a lot worse value for money with limited features in the basic plan, which is over $150 more expensive for the same number of MAUs.

What is HelpScout?

HelpScout is a help desk designed to support businesses in their customer service efforts, offering a variety of tools for customer interactions.

These tools include a knowledge base, contextual help through beacons, live chat and in-app messaging, and reporting.

By using HelpScout, businesses can efficiently manage customer interactions and monitor and resolve any issues.

If you need to improve your email support, provide Help Center resources for customers, or engage with them through live chat, HelpScout is a great option. It offers pricing plans that are based on the number of users, starting from $20 per user per month when billed annually.

However, if you want to drive adoption and improve your onboarding efforts, this tool might not be the best choice for you.

HelpScout for user onboarding

While HelpScout does offer some basic features for user onboarding and adoption, such as knowledge bases and customer communication tools like live chat and basic feedback collection, it is not specifically designed to provide a comprehensive solution for user onboarding.

If your business is primarily focused on user onboarding and adoption, you may need to look for a specialized user onboarding tool like Userpilot or a customer success platform that provides more comprehensive solutions for user onboarding, adoption, and engagement.

HelpScout for user analytics

HelpScout is not primarily a user analytics tool. While HelpScout does offer some basic reporting and analytics features that can help businesses gain insights into their customer interactions and support performance, it is not specifically designed to provide comprehensive user analytics.

If you need a tool that can provide detailed user analytics, you may need to look for a specialized user analytics tool like Userpilot or Pendo, which can help you track user behavior and engagement across your entire product or platform.

HelpScout for user feedback

HelpScout offers several features that enable businesses to collect and analyze user feedback.

For example, HelpScout’s customer satisfaction survey allows customers to rate the quality of their support experience. HelpScout also offers Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, which can help businesses measure customer loyalty and identify areas for improvement.

In addition, HelpScout’s reporting and analytics features allow businesses to track and analyze customer feedback data over time, helping them to identify trends and patterns in customer feedback and make data-driven decisions to improve their products and customer support.

While HelpScout provides some user feedback features, it is not specifically designed to be a comprehensive user feedback tool. Businesses looking for a more specialized in-app user feedback tool may need to look at other options such as Userpilot.

HelpScout pricing

HelpScout offers three pricing plans, each with different features and capabilities:

• Standard: The Standard plan is priced at $20 per user per month when billed annually, or $25 per user per month when billed monthly. This plan has some limitations to it such as 2 mailboxes, 1 docs site, and a limit of 25 users. It also comes with in-app messaging with separate pricing if you have more than 2000 unique viewers.
• Plus: The Plus plan is priced at $40 per user per month when billed annually, or $50 per user per month when billed monthly. This plan includes all the features of the Standard plan, plus advanced reporting, automation workflows, and integrations with popular apps like Salesforce and Jira. Add-ons are available
• Company: The Company plan is designed for larger businesses and is billed only annually at $65 per user. This plan includes all the features of the Plus plan, plus personalized onboarding, a dedicated account manager, and enterprise-level security and compliance.

Additionally, HelpScout offers a 15-day free trial, so businesses can test out the platform before committing to a paid plan.

HelpScout reviews

Here are some positive reviews about Help Scout:

HelpScout is great for ticketing that allows additional collaborators, making draft emails to customers, and getting quick and easy service to those customers who inquire. The note option is incredibly useful for small teams that need to collaborate or follow up with a customer when the agents may need additional information or assistance. There is a lot of intuitive UI structure in HelpScout and it’s easy to get a grasp on using as a new employee. – Jess S.

Help Scout’s overall user interface and navigation are extremely straightforward — it’s clear what needs to be taken care of. Compared to other products, the end-user customer experience is also pleasant. – Mike G.

Overall, HelpScout receives many positive reviews for its ease of use for internal and external support.

Overall, negative reviews of Help Scout tend to center around pricing, performance issues, inaccurate reporting, limited integrations, or difficulties with the support team.

Helpscout seems not to be compatible with quite a several CRM tools which can be frustrating when you need to link functions. E.g.Linking Helpscout to a CRM that can send our customers a notification once their ClickUp tickets have been resolved or moved from one stage to the other. – Verified user in financial services.

I do not like that they start free for 3 mailboxes after 2 years they just stop the free you have to pay insane money of 20$ for each user, it’s a bad move for me so I switched to a competitor that has all that I need. – Adele T.

While these issues are not universal, businesses should consider them when evaluating HelpScout as an option for their customer service needs.

Pros of HelpScout

HelpScout’s various tools and features make it easy to provide excellent customer support, while its affordable pricing plans make it accessible to businesses of all sizes. Here are some of the pros of using HelpScout:

• Easy to use and user-friendly interface: HelpScout’s layout and design make it simple to manage and organize customer interactions, which can save you time and reduce confusion.
• Affordable pricing plans, with user-based options: HelpScout offers pricing plans that are based on the number of users, starting from $20 per user per month when billed annually. This makes it a cost-effective option for businesses that need to keep their expenses under control.
• Seamless integrations with popular tools: HelpScout integrates seamlessly with 50+ popular tools. This means businesses can use HelpScout alongside their existing tools and workflows, making it easy to integrate into their existing infrastructure.

Cons of HelpScout

While HelpScout has many pros, like any software platform, there are also some potential drawbacks to consider. Here are some cons to using HelpScout:

• Lacks a straightforward ticketing feature that most alternatives offer.
• The reporting can be limited to what your needs as a growing company may be. Trying to get the reports emailed and importing information to other services can be a challenge. You may need to use several means of documenting and collecting data for your customers based on what they want to hear about and see the data for.
• Merging tickets can also be a bit confusing as it will sometimes change the profile name but the previous email addresses will remain so when you send, things can go to the wrong party.

3 reasons why you might need a HelpScout alternative

Here are three reasons why you might need a HelpScout alternative:

• Need for a more holistic solution: While HelpScout can be a great tool for managing customer support interactions, it may not provide a comprehensive solution for businesses that need to optimize the entire customer journey. For example, if you need a tool that can help you improve user engagement, reduce churn, and drive product adoption, you may need to look for a more holistic solution like Userpilot.
• Need for more advanced features: While HelpScout offers a range of features for customer support and communication, some businesses may require more advanced features to meet their needs. For example, if your business requires advanced reporting and analytics, or if you need features like creating onboarding flows or automation workflows, you may need to look for a HelpScout alternative.
• Pricing: While HelpScout offers affordable pricing plans for businesses with basic needs, the pricing can become more expensive as your business grows and your support needs become more complex. If you need a more affordable or flexible pricing plan, or if you require a solution that offers more value for the money, you may need to look for an alternative that offers more competitive pricing or more features for the price.

HelpScout alternatives and competitors

These are the top alternatives and competitors you may want to consider:

1. Userpilot
2. Appcues
3. Userguiding
4. Chameleon

Let’s have a look at them in more detail.

HelpScout vs Userpilot

Userpilot is a comprehensive digital adoption platform (DAP). It enables product teams to track product usage and user behavior to guide product development and optimize the user experience.

In addition, it allows them to gather user feedback and design personalized onboarding experiences to drive product adoption. All of this is possible without coding.

HelpScout is a great option for many SaaS companies, but in a lot of ways, Userpilot is better than HelpScout. Let’s explore the features of Userpilot, how it’s better than HelpScout and how it may fall short too.

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 user analytics

You can’t drive success, no matter what your goals are, without proper user analytics.

How would you know what needs to be improved?

When it comes to proper user onboarding that drives long-term product adoption, Userpilot has the right analytics to help you succeed.

Let me explain.

I’m not talking about product usage only. Analytics is about collecting customer feedback, tracking in-app behavior but also tracking how users engage with your in-app experiences. Right?

You need all of these for a complete picture of how healthy your product is. And then you need to be able to act on those insights.

That’s where proper user segmentation capabilities come in. And Userpilot has you covered here.

Userpilot has really improved in terms of its analytics functionality in recent years, and now offers the most robust functionality from all the product adoption platforms (including Pendo, which has always taken prime in user analytics).

In short, Userpilot analytics allows you to:

• Track all of your user interactions with your app – without coding – with the powerful feature tagging functionality, you can simply tag your users’ actions (clicks, hovers, form fills) with a no-code, point-and-tag editor on top of your product.
• See all your user clicks, activity trends, etc. in an easy-to-use dashboard – Userpilot also allows you to drill down into feature usage, down to individual user level, as well as company level.
• Analyze your user paths from up to 4 pages at a time, at a glance.
• Create ‘user funnels’ made up of feature tags and tracked events, and see where your users are dropping out of the funnel – and act on these drop-off points instantly with in-app experiences.
• Track feature usage by user segments with heatmaps, directly on the different pages of your product.
• 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 you can build without code or API calls.
• Create custom events that consist of feature tags as well – or combinations of tracked events you’ve passed through the Userpilot track script with features you have tagged with the Chrome Extension.
• The powerful trends overview allows you to filter your events and feature tags’ usage by segments, time period, and even company. This allows you to track and analyze event usage trends and even drill down to the individual users (or companies) who engaged with specific custom events and show them the right in-app experience.
• Apart from product usage data, Userpilot also has built-in analytics for in-app engagement with in-app flows and experiences.
• Analyze how users engage with your checklists or resource center modules, identify trends and A/B test different approaches to improve engagement.
• Last but not least, Userpilot allows you to use all that data to build highly granular user segments and reach users with the right engagement flows at the right time.
• You can even create user segments based on survey responses or NPS scores.

Now, with so much power on your hands – what are you going to do with all this data?

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 microsurveys like the classic PMF survey, or similar ones and mix multi-choice and open-ended types of questions to collect specific insights.
• Use different survey templates from Userpilot’s gallery (including Product Market Fit survey, CES survey, CSAT survey, Feature review survey etc.) and customize them to fit your.
• You can also build surveys from scratch, add different types of question types and use advanced branching logic.
• 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 or CES 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.

Userpilot reviews

Let’s check what real users like about Userpilot.

Userpilot is an incredible, user-friendly software that allows us to create unforgettable experiences for our clients! From basic to complex experiences, we have been able to do them all with ease! I would highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to provide their clients or users with the best product tour experience. The possibilities of what you can create are endless! – Tayla G.

Userpilot is simple to set up, use, and does not require any dev – which means instant publishing. This is critical for us as a SaaS company that releases new features frequently; we need the ability to inform our customers of changes quickly, and doing this in our platform through Userpilot allows us to reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right place. There have been many awesome extra features we’ve discovered since coming on board, and it’s been great to see new features released frequently. The tool itself is intuitive and reliable. Having used similar products previously that were clunky and buggy this has really made us happy with our decision to move to Userpilot. – Melina K.

Userpilot pricing

Userpilot offers great value for money compared to other similar tools on the market. Even its entry-level plan (Starter) provides all the necessary features for product growth. On the Growth and Enterprise plans you get advanced features needed for your growth stage.

The price-to-feature ratio is the best for Userpilot. Other cheaper tools in the market would definitely not fulfill your needs, and others like Pendo would be out of budget. Userpilot sits in that sweet spot. – Saurav S.

The pricing is based on the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) your company has.

Here’s the detailed Userpilot pricing:

• Starter: For up to 2500 users, this plan is $249/mo.
• Growth: Custom pricing based on your needs, this plan is suitable for larger teams and compared to the Starter plan it includes the Resource Center functionality, content localization, Advanced event triggering, webhooks, Hubspot integration, and a dedicated customer Success manager.
• Enterprise: For large-scale businesses, this plan also comes with custom pricing, and it gives you access to everything in Growth plan plus custom roles and permissions, custom data retention, custom contract and SLA, dedicated infrastructure and more.

HelpScout vs 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.

There are many ways how Appcues is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from HelpScout. Let’s explore the features of Appcues, how it’s better than HelpScout and how it may fall short too.

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 user analytics

Appcues user analytics is focused on the Event Explorer functionality and user segments that allow you to track user engagement and group users based on their main stage in the user journey.

Let’s look at each of these functionalities and how they can help. First, let’s explore their Event Explorer:

• Events Explorer makes it easy to view, validate, and visualize events in one place.
• Appcues defines events as user interaction with your features or flows inside your product’s UI and you can set these up with a few clicks.
• The Essential plan includes only 10 events. If you need more, you’ll have to upgrade to the Growth plan ($879/mo annually).
• This can be a little limited when you are trying to analyze product usage.

Now, let’s quickly see how Appcues segmentation can help. Appcues only gives you five user segments included in their Essentials plan, which isn’t a lot. It won’t be long before you need to upgrade the plan for more user segments.

The pre-defined user segments in Appcues (Evaluators, Beginners, Regulars, Champions) are very limiting if you want to access proper user analytics. Even building segments has its own limitations. You can create segments based on:

• User properties (when a survey was completed or when they’ve seen in-app flows)
• Flows interaction (has been completed or not?)
• Checklists (in progress, skipped, completed, not seen)
• Event (based on the ones you set up using event explorer)
• One of the predefined segments (Evaluators, Beginners, Regulars, Champions)

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 microsurveys, 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.

Appcues reviews

What do Appcues users share about their experience? Overall users feel positive about Appcues.

Here’s an example summarizing some key points about its features and the value it offers. You can find more reviews on G2 or Capterra.

The chrome extension works pretty well to create and build flows. Generating these experiences with the benefit of seeing what the look and feel will be like on-the-fly is immensely helpful.

Further, targeting elements is pretty simple, so you won’t have to open up a code editor and dig in to deliver a great experience. It’s a great tool for a number of reasons, but I love the fact that you can deliver specific communication to a specific audience in your application when you need to, without having to leverage a development department. – Verified User

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)

HelpScout vs UserGuiding

UserGuiding is a product adoption tool that helps companies to create interactive user guides and in-app walkthroughs to onboard, engage, and retain their users. It provides a no-code solution that allows non-technical teams to design and implement in-app experiences without any coding skills.

Overall, UserGuiding is a powerful tool that can help companies to streamline their onboarding process, increase user engagement, and drive customer retention.

There are many ways how UserGuiding is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from HelpScout. Let’s explore the features of UserGuiding, how it’s better than HelpScout and how it may fall short too.

UserGuiding for user onboarding

As a no-code onboarding tool, UserGuiding has numerous features that will help you create onboarding flows for your new customers and guide them throughout their journey.

Here’s what you’ll get when you start using UserGuiding:

• Create interactive product walkthroughs without disturbing your developers as it’s completely code-free.
• Build onboarding checklists and drive customers to the activation point by eliminating the guesswork on what the next step should be.
• Create interactive elements, such as product tours, tooltips, and pop-ups, to help keep users engaged and increase the likelihood that they’ll complete the onboarding process.
• Create a resource center to add different educational resources for your users.

Though UserGuiding is a great tool for startups that don’t have much money to invest in an onboarding tool, it has very strict limitations for the Basic plan.

You can only create a maximum of 20 guides and hotspots, 2 onboarding checklists, and 1 resource center. If you want to create unlimited guides with unlimited UI patterns, you should go for the Professional plan which can cost from $299 to $399.

UserGuiding for user analytics

UserGuiding’s analytics feature provides insights into how users are interacting with your onboarding flows and in-app experiences. Here are some of the functionality that UserGuiding’s analytics offers:

• Analyze the performance of your onboarding material in detail. This will allow you to figure out what’s working and what’s not.
• Track how users interact with your app in a given time period and identify product trends.
• Monitor real-time user engagement.

UserGuiding for user feedback

With UserGuiding, you can collect user sentiment data with NPS surveys and microsurveys even when using the Basic plan.

Here’s how you can collect user feedback with UserGuiding:

• Build NPS surveys without writing a single line of code.
• Adjust the thank you page and add a follow-up question to gather qualitative data and understand the reasons behind the scores.
• Customize the button texts, colors, and designs to match your brand.
• Set up custom audiences, segments, timing, and targeting rules to trigger the surveys.

The downside of using UserGuiding for collecting user feedback is that you can’t tag NPS responses to identify trends between scores. You also can’t create long survey forms as they neither support it in their native interface nor have integrations with other 3-rd party tools to do the job.

Considering that, Userpilot undoubtedly offers you more value for money. You can build microsurveys, embed Typeform long surveys, collect and analyze NPS responses, and segment users based on scores and responses so you can trigger more personalized experiences. Get a Userpilot demo here!

UserGuiding reviews

If you check the product review sites, most people like using UserGuiding.

Here are some reviews from real users:

Creating guides/checklists are easy to implement. It does not take a lot of time to make adjustments when you need to make changes.

You can go live with a simple guide or checklist within minutes. I was able to go live within a few days of getting started. – Administrator in Computer Software

UserGuiding pricing

UserGuiding offers a range of pricing plans to suit different business needs. Here is an overview of their current pricing models:

• Basic plan: For a starting price of $99 per month, or $69 per month with an annual contract, the Basic plan provides access to the essential onboarding tools, but it does have some limitations to keep in mind. These include a maximum of 2500 Monthly Active Users, a single team member, a limit of 20 guides and 2 checklists, as well as UserGuiding branding on all UI patterns.
• Professional plan: With a monthly quota of 20,000 MAUs, the Professional plan offers unlimited guides, hotspots, and checklists. The plan starts at $399 per month or $299 per month with annual billing.
• Corporate plan: With custom MAUs, the Corporate plan provides access to all features as well as personalized coaching. The plan starts at a minimum of $699 per month, or $499 per month with an annual contract.

Additionally, they offer a 14-day free trial for all of their plans, allowing users to try out the product before committing to a paid plan.

HelpScout vs Chameleon

Chameleon is a digital adoption platform with a difference: while the other tools discussed are mostly no-code, Chameleon will require some developer involvement.

Nevertheless, it’s a powerful and effective tool that works in a similar way to Userpilot and offers similar features: styling, analytics, templates, goals, A/B testing, and checklists.

However, it doesn’t offer a resource center, or dedicated NPS, and it’s a lot worse value for money with limited features in the basic plan, which is over $150 more expensive for the same number of MAUs.

There are many ways how Chameleon is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from HelpScout. Let’s explore the features of Chameleon, how it’s better than HelpScout and how it may fall short too.

Chameleon for user onboarding

You can build widgets (launchers) and classic guides and tours with Chameleon as the main drivers of user onboarding.

Here’s how Chameleon’s main functionality helps with user onboarding:

• Chameleon’s product tours help you build flows for guidance. You can use several UI patterns for this: modals, banners, tooltips, and hotspots.
• You can customize the styling (font, color, opacity, etc.) of your product tours and even add in some CSS styling if you want advanced branding.
• Launchers are where Chameleon is different compared to its competitors. These are in-app widgets that can open checklists, small help widgets, or notification centers. The downside is that you can’t have one launcher with multiple types of content.
• You can target content to different user segments based on multiple data sources including event triggering.
• Ability to use microsurveys with great customization and question-and-answer types.
• On Growth Plan and higher, you also get access to more functionality like A/B testing, multiple environments, localization (Enterprise plan only), and advanced integrations like Hubspot.

All in all, Chameleon has good functionality for user onboarding but will be very limited on the Startup plan as you only get one Launcher and five microsurveys.

To build contextual and efficient user onboarding you will need more than that. Considering what you get for the money, Userpilot offers much better value.

Chameleon for user analytics

Chameleon doesn’t shine when it comes to user analytics as they don’t really have their own dedicated analytics. But it does offer the minimum data you need.

It also integrates both ways with well-known analytics tools so this might justify the lack of their own reporting.

Here’s what you can expect from Chameleon’s product and user analytics data:

• A/B testing so you can measure the impact of your flows randomly on a sample group of users.
• You can track events using the integration available with popular product analytics tools or by setting up custom events via the API (you will need a developer to set these up).
• You can create user segments based on different user properties (attributes of the user), custom user events, experiences, and flows activity, or Chameleon tags (added manually to specific users).
• Chameleon doesn’t have a dedicated analytics dashboard.

Chameleon relies a lot on their integration with powerful analytics tools so they haven’t really worked on building its own analytics. Due to this, you might find it limited when it comes to analyzing user engagement and targeting in-app experiences unless you also pay for the other tools.

Chameleon for user feedback

Here’s how you can collect user feedback with Chameleon:

• Build different types of microsurveys (limited to 5 on the Startup plan) such as NPS, CSAT, CES, Opt-in, and custom feedback types.
• Personalize the surveys as you wish (you will need help from a developer or may require CSS skills).
• You can select the survey’s frequency and whether you want it to repeat.
• You get access to basic completion reports. Most of the additional data will need to be analyzed in your analytics tools that Chameleon integrates with and sends data to.
• You will see your NPS score in the reports but for the rest of the microsurveys, you will need analytics tools.

It’s great that Chameleon lets you build beautiful microsurveys but it might not be the best tool if you want to analyze the data and most importantly act on it. For example, with Userpilot you can create custom user segments based on survey responses or NPS scores and trigger specific in-app flows for them.

Chameleon reviews

Users appreciate Chameleon’s versatile functionalities. Let’s see what they have to say about it.

I love the variety of formats we can build in Chameleon, from interactive tooltips to progressive tours and launchers! It’s also really easy to track performance of each of these and adjust accordingly. The interface still feels quite clunky whenever I’m in build mode. For instance, I don’t like that I have to use markdown and CSS when formatting text instead of having an inline styling menu to select from. Then there’s also the issue of surveys or tour steps appearing where they’re not supposed to, apparently mistaking an element in another page for the anchor. – Nikki D

Chameleon pricing

Conclusion – which of the HelpScout alternatives is the best?

As you can see, there are many different competitors and alternatives to HelpScout. We’ve discussed a few above – but which one is the best?

The answer is “it depends” – but we strongly believe that if you’re a mid-market SaaS company looking for a great user onboarding and product analytics tool, Userpilot is the best option for you.

Hopefully you found this post helpful. Let us know if you know any other good HelpScout alternatives – and if you need any help with how Userpilot is different, we are always happy to talk!