Customers who actively connect with your brand are more likely to stay loyal, spend more, and become advocates. But how do you track and strengthen these connections? That’s where customer engagement software comes in.

The right platform will equip you with the tools to interact effectively, gather valuable feedback, and build lasting customer relationships.

How I chose the best customer engagement software

My evaluation process combined thorough feature analysis, a careful review of user feedback, and insights from industry reports. For each tool, I aimed to answer seven qualifying questions:

1. Ease of use and implementation: How easy is it to get started and integrate the software with your existing tools?
2. Features and functionality: Does the platform offer core engagement features, such as in-app flows, engagement tracking, and customer support?
3. Integrations with other tools: Does it integrate with CRM, marketing automation, and other essential business applications?
4. Customization options: Can you tailor the platform to match your brand identity and specific needs?
5. Pricing: Is the pricing model transparent, and does it offer a free trial or a freemium version?
6. Customer support: Does the vendor provide reliable and responsive customer support?
7. Scalability and security: Can the platform grow with your business and protect your data?

The 10 best customer engagement software solutions

Here, you’ll find a quick overview, core features, and pricing information for each solution.

1. Userpilot

Userpilot tops the list because it’s an all-in-one tool that provides engagement solutions for every stage of the customer journey.

You can use this platform to create customer segments, personalize onboarding flows, deliver targeted in-app messages, collect direct customer feedback, and track in-app analytics to make iterative changes.

Best for: SaaS product teams who want a powerful but easy-to-use platform to improve onboarding, increase product adoption, and drive user engagement.

How Userpilot increases customer loyalty + reduces churn

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a real life example of how Userpilot helps SaaS companies boost engagement:

Before coming to Userpilot, Attention Insight struggled to engage new users and drive activation. The heatmap tool is your classic example of a product-led software: one-click free trial and easy-to-use interface, so what was the issue?

It turned out users didn’t quite understand how the key features worked. So, using Userpilot, the team at Attention Insight revamped their onboarding strategy to include a resource center, interactive walkthrough, an onboarding checklist, and other UI patterns that point new users in the right direction.

Additionally, Userpilot’s analytics helped them spot and address friction points in the onboarding flow. The result? A 47% increase in activation within a few months.

In the CMO’s words:

“Userpilot offered us the most content creation possibilities combined with the most extensive analytics for an affordable price.”

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Userpilot’s top features:

• In-app flows: As in the example from Attention Insight, Userpilot allows you to create interactive walkthroughs and branched customer experiences using a variety of UI elements like modals, slideouts, tooltips, driven actions, hotspots, and banners. The best part? All these are available starting from the entry-level Starter plan.

• Session replays (new!): Userpilot lets you automatically capture user sessions and analyze their interactions with your product. For example, you can label key events like clicks on a new feature and use that data to track adoption, usage, and retention rates.

• User analytics: The custom analytics dashboard provides a centralized view of customer data, allowing you to segment, filter, and analyze user behavior. You can export data in bulk or drill down into specific segments to understand user journeys and identify trends.

• Feature engagement tracking: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you understand how users interact with your product over time. Besides tracking individual features, you can create custom events that group multiple features for clearer insights.

• Trends and funnels: These features help you analyze key events like feature usage or completion rates. You can segment users and add filters to narrow the data for more granular insights. For example, you could track the completion rate of your onboarding checklist and then filter by users who signed up within the last month to identify areas for improvement in that particular segment.

• Self-service support: Userpilot empowers you to build and customize in-app resource center code-free. You can include feedback widgets to collect feedback passively, checklists to walk users through specific processes, or integrations with knowledge bases to leverage existing documentation.

Userpilot pricing

Userpilot offers transparent and flexible pricing plans to suit different needs. The Starter begins at $249/month, with a 14-day free trial for users to try the product without any financial commitment.

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2. Intercom

Intercom is an AI-powered customer service tool that equips teams to engage customers through omnichannel support and activity-driven automation.

Best for: Sales and marketing teams who need customer engagement software to proactively interact with leads and customers, provide real-time support, and build stronger customer relationships.

Intercom’s top features:

• Fin AI agent: This chatbot uses natural language processing to understand customer inquiries and provide relevant responses. It’s optionally available on all Intercom plans but costs $0.99 per resolution.
• Omnichannel and multilingual support: Intercom provides a unified inbox to help you manage customer interactions across in-app messaging, email, social media, and other connected digital channels. Its multilingual capabilities also make it easier to provide support to a global audience, whether that’s through a chatbot or human agents.
• In-app guidance: Although primarily a support solution, Intercom has features like Checklists, Product Tours, and Mobile Carousels for creating onboarding flows. Unlike Userpilot, these features come as an add-on that costs at least an extra $99/month.

Intercom pricing

Intercom offers a 14-day free trial with the paid plans starting at $29 per seat/month.

3. Pendo

Pendo is an experience management platform that equips cross-functional teams to create onboarding flows, analyze user journeys, and improve adoption across web and mobile apps.

Best for: Product managers and UX researchers who want to gain in-depth insights into customer behavior, track product usage, and gather feedback to inform product development and optimization.

Pendo’s top features:

• In-app guidance: Pendo enables teams to deploy contextual guidance using tooltips, checklists, lightboxes, and other UI elements. You can customize the appearance and behavior of these guides and target them to specific user segments based on demographics, behavior, or other criteria.
• Customer feedback: In addition to its dedicated NPS feature, Pendo allows you to build in-app polls, multiple-choice surveys, and other survey types code-free. Once the survey results are in, you can use AI-powered analytics to generate rapid insights such as sentiment analysis, key themes, and actionable recommendations.
• Dashboard widgets: This feature is a vital part of Pendo’s analytics tools. It lets you track key engagement metrics like feature adoption, interaction with in-app guides, and product engagement scores, all within customizable dashboards. Pendo also provides advanced filters and segmentation options for granular analysis.

Pendo pricing

The platform has a basic free version that allows you to create in-app guides and track analytics for up to 500 monthly active users. Pricing for the paid plans is not public.

4. Appcues

Appcues is one of my favorites because it pairs multichannel engagement with highly customizable design options. The platform also integrates with many popular analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms for a unified view of the customer journey.

Best for: Companies that want to improve user onboarding and feature adoption with user-friendly, no-code, interactive in-app guides and walkthroughs.

Appcues’ top features:

• UI patterns: Appcues provides UI patterns like tooltips, modals, banners, and slide-outs for customer communication. You can set behavior-based triggers to deliver announcements or support where customers need it the most.
• Multichannel engagement: Appcues allows you to create flows that connect push notifications, in-app experiences, and emails in any desired order. This is especially useful for improving onboarding completion rates, re-engaging inactive users, or driving account expansion.
• Feedback surveys: Like most customer engagement software, Appcues provides features to create and analyze in-app surveys. However, it’s worth noting that the feedback options are limited compared to tools like Pendo and Userpilot. For example, Appcues doesn’t have advanced capabilities like free-form qualitative feedback, sentiment analysis, and detailed trend reporting.

Appcues pricing

The pricing starts at $250 per month for 1000 monthly tracked users. Appcues doesn’t have a freemium version, but you can try the product for 14 days without pay.

5. Zendesk

Zendesk is an AI-driven customer service tool similar to Intercom in many ways.

Here’s the main difference in my experience: Intercom leans towards conversational, engagement-focused features, while Zendesk is primarily structured as a robust ticketing system.

Best for: Support teams looking for comprehensive customer engagement software to manage incoming requests, provide support across multiple channels, and track customer satisfaction.

Zendesk’s top features:

• Automated messaging and live chat: Zendesk bots allow you to address recurring customer issues easily while your support team focuses on more complex complaints that require human assistance. The platform also offers a centralized workplace where agents can view all user interactions and provide tailored support.
• Self-serve support: Zendesk goes beyond traditional knowledge bases to incorporate generative AI capabilities that let you save time. For example, instead of writing entire help articles, you could come up with a few bullet points and ask the AI to expand on them.
• Customization and integrations: With Zendesk, your customer-facing teams don’t have to stick to a one-size-fits-all solution. The platform allows you to customize your workflows, ticket forms, and analytics dashboards to fit your specific needs. In addition, the Zendesk marketplace lets you use pre-built connectors and APIs to connect with a wide range of third-party tools for an even more enhanced support experience.

Zendesk pricing

Zendesk has a startup program that allows qualifying early-stage startups with less than 50 employees to enjoy the platform free for six months. The paid plan starts at $19 per agent/month.

6. Salesforce

Salesforce prides itself on being the leading CRM platform by market share. The platform combines customer data and insights across every touchpoint to help businesses deliver personalized customer experiences.

Best for: Large enterprises seeking a centralized platform to manage all aspects of customer relationships, from sales and marketing to service and support, with extensive customization and integration capabilities.

Salesforce’s top features:

• Customer 360: Salesforce leverages integrations with apps like MuleSoft, Slack, and Tableau to provide a comprehensive 360-degree view of the customer experience. This integration can help you understand customers better and deliver more personalized experiences.
• Engagement automation: The platform provides AI-powered automation to simplify marketing, sales, and customer service processes. For example, you could automate lead follow-ups, email campaigns, and case management to free up employee time.
• Data management and analytics: What’s a customer engagement tool without analytics features? Salesforce allows you to create custom dashboards and analyze customer data to make intelligent forecasts. For example, your marketing team could analyze engagement with email campaigns, website activity, and social media interactions to predict churn among specific customer cohorts.

Salesforce pricing

Salesforce offers several product categories, each with unique pricing, but I’ll focus on the service cloud since it’s more relevant to this article. Pricing for this package starts at $25 per user/month:

7. Adobe Experience Cloud

Salesforce may lead the CRM market, but Adobe Experience Cloud is a strong contender with standout features like personalized content delivery, advanced analytics, and seamless integration across marketing and advertising channels.

Best for: Large enterprises that require a comprehensive suite of tools to manage the entire customer journey, from acquisition and engagement to retention and advocacy, with a strong focus on data-driven personalization and optimization.

Adobe Experience Cloud’s top features:

• Personalized content delivery: Adobe Experience Cloud excels at delivering highly personalized customer experiences across various digital touchpoints. This includes tailoring website content, email campaigns, and mobile app interactions based on individual customer preferences and behaviors.
• Advanced analytics tools: From content analytics to product analytics and user journey tracking, Adobe’s suite of analytics provides detailed insights into the customer experience and enables you to optimize for increased engagement.
• Customer profiles: The platform allows you to build and enrich customer profiles at the individual and company levels. It also provides an AI feature called Adobe Customer AI to help you predict customers at risk of churn based on historical data.

Adobe Experience Cloud pricing

Adobe offers custom pricing for each package based on a customer’s unique needs.

8. Help Scout

Help Scout empowers companies to provide exceptional customer support through a simple and intuitive platform. Designed to grow with your business, it offers features that facilitate efficient team collaboration, knowledge sharing, and customer interaction management.

Best for: Customer service teams who prioritize personalized, human-centric customer interactions and want a platform to improve overall customer service operations.

Help Scout’s top features:

• Shared inboxes: This feature lets your support agents collaborate by managing customer issues from a single, centralized location. You can use automated flows to speed up repetitive tasks and route support requests to the appropriate agent.
• Proactive messaging: Help Scout provides modals and banners for contextual guidance and in-app announcements. The proactive messaging functionality also includes tools to build NPS and microsurveys for collecting quick customer feedback.
• Self-service: Help Scout allows you to build a help center for on-demand customer support, but that’s not even the best part. What I love more is how you can incorporate an AI self-service assistant to search your help docs and deliver relevant support based on a customer’s query.

Help Scout pricing

Help Scout offers a free plan limited to 50 contacts per month (a contact, in this case, is someone who interacts with your support team or the AI assistant). The paid plans start at $50/month.

9. Braze

Braze is a customer engagement software with advanced journey analytics and personalization features designed to maximize customer lifetime value.

Best for: Marketing teams at larger companies who need a sophisticated, multi-channel platform to orchestrate complex customer journeys and deliver personalized experiences across all touchpoints.

Braze’s top features:

• Journey orchestration: Blaze provides no-code tools to ideate and craft data-driven customer journeys. The platform has a generative AI functionality to help kickstart ideas when you run out of creative juice.
• Cross-channel messaging: From SMS to email and in-app messaging, Braze empowers you to deliver multichannel messages that help you meet customers where they are.
• Testing and experimentation: Braze allows you to test your content, design, and timing to see which resonates better with customers. You can also experiment with different messaging channels and customer engagement strategies if unsure of where to focus your energy.

Braze pricing

Braze custom pricing based on customer needs. However, you can take a 14-day free trial to explore the platform.

10. HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive inbound marketing, sales, and customer service platform designed to put the customer at the center of every interaction. Its engagement features scale customer success and support operations by building meaningful customer relationships.

Best for: Businesses seeking an all-in-one CRM and customer engagement solution with a wide range of features to manage the entire customer lifecycle.

HubSpot’s top features:

• Engagement automation: HubSpot offers conversational tools such as chatbots, help desk automation, and knowledge base functionality to boost customer engagement strategies at scale.
• Smart CRM: This feature provides a complete view of user data, including health scores, product engagement rates, communication preferences, and support tickets. This allows you to identify your power users and replicate their behaviors to the rest of your user base.
• Robust integrations: Expand HubSpot’s functionality by integrating with hundreds of third-party tools like Userpilot, Salesforce, and Slack. For example, the Userpilot-Hubspot integration can help you score leads based on the behavioral data you tracked in Userpilot.

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot has a basic free version, and its customer service hub starts at $90 per seat/month.

What’s the best customer engagement software for your SaaS?

So, which tool should you choose? It all depends on your needs and budget. However, I’d recommend Userpilot if you’re looking for an all-in-one product growth solution with an intuitive UI and transparent pricing.

Here’s a quick summary of all the tools:

Empower your customers: Make the right software choice today

Each customer engagement software has its unique strengths and weaknesses. The key is to choose a platform that aligns with your specific goals, whether that’s improving adoption, delivering cross-platform experiences, or boosting customer support. And, of course, don’t forget to take advantage of free trials or freemium versions to have a feel of a platform before committing.

Ready to take action? Try Userpilot today if your goal is to drive adoption, build personalized in-app communication, and make data-driven product improvements.

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