9 Best Onboarding Platforms for SaaS Companies

9 Best Onboarding Platforms for SaaS Companies cover

How can onboarding software improve the customer onboarding process?

There are a few benefits of investing in a dedicated onboarding system.

For starters, such tools allow you to personalize the onboarding process to lead users with different cases to value along the most direct route. Reducing time to value is essential for user retention and product adoption.

It doesn’t stop there.

Many onboarding tools allow companies to create self-service resources, like knowledge bases or video tutorials, for on-demand after-hours support. This removes friction from the user journey and reduces the load on the support teams.

Moreover, you can use them to collect user feedback to track user sentiment and identify areas for improvement.

Finally, most of the tools enable you to track the performance of your onboarding flows and support resources so you can make data-driven optimization decisions.

In the best platforms, analytics are not limited to onboarding experiences. Instead, they support in-depth user behavior analysis to help you better understand user needs and inform the product development process.

9 Best onboarding tools to use in 2024

Now that you know why having a robust onboarding platform matters for product success, let’s have a look at 9 excellent options currently available on the market.

#1. Userpilot: Best all-in-one tool for customer onboarding

Userpilot is a comprehensive customer onboarding solution. It offers functionality for effective user engagement at all stages of the user journey, from the moment they first sign up for your product until they become loyal customers, and beyond.

Best onboarding platforms: Userpilot
Best onboarding platforms: Userpilot.

Userpilot features

Userpilot enables you to create interactive onboarding flows and customize them to blend seamlessly into your native UI without any coding.

Userpilot’s engagement layer includes:

Onboarding UI patterns in Userpilot.
Kommunicate onboarding walkthrough created in Userpilot
Kommunicate onboarding walkthrough created in Userpilot.
An onboarding checklist created in Userpilot
An onboarding checklist created in Userpilot.

In addition, you can further support your users via the resource center.

Resource center settings in Userpilot
Resource center settings in Userpilot.

Finally, there’s a handy AI writing assistant and automatic localization so that you can easily create microcopy for your onboarding flows and translate it into multiple languages to increase product inclusivity.

Userpilot’s AI writing assistant
Userpilot’s AI writing assistant.

The writing assistant and localization work also with the in-app surveys, which are equally easy to create thanks to the template library and visual editor.

Userpilot survey template library includes industry-standard surveys like NPS, CSAT or PMF
Userpilot survey template library includes industry-standard surveys like NPS.

What sets Userpilot apart from other onboarding platforms is its analytics. Its functionality includes:

Thanks to them, you can analyze user journeys to identify the happy paths to activation and personalize the onboarding experiences for different user personas.

Top path visualization in Userpilot
Top path visualization in Userpilot.

Does Userpilot have any limitations?

It doesn’t support mobile apps and it isn’t suitable for onboarding employees.

Userpilot pricing

Considering its powerful capabilities, Userpilot is very competitively priced.

It offers 3 plans:

  • Starter – from $249 per month.
  • Growth – from $799 per month.
  • Enterprise – custom pricing.

The most popular Growth plan gives you access to all the engagement, feedback, and analytics features.

Userpilot pricing
Userpilot pricing.

Try Userpilot and Take Your Onboarding Experience to the Next Level

#2. Pendo: Best onboarding software for mobile onboarding

Pendo is another strong contender in the digital adoption platform market. It’s one of the best-established platforms, known for its analytics and catering to large enterprise clients.

As Userpilot doesn’t currently support mobile apps, we recommend Pendo as a worthy alternative.

Best onboarding platforms: Pendo
Best onboarding platforms: Pendo.

Pendo features

Pendo onboarding is based on in-app experiences called Guides. There are 5 main guide types:

  • Lightboxes – like Userpilot’s modals, can include various kinds of content, like videos.
  • Banners – like Lightboxes but larger and with limited customization options, so can only be used for maintenance notifications.
  • Tooltips.
  • Polls – microsurveys for feedback collection.
  • Walkthroughs – made up of tooltips, they guide users through the product.

In addition, you can create:

A pop-up modal created in Pendo
A pop-up modal created in Pendo.

When it comes to analytics, Pendo supports:

  • User segmentation.
  • Retroactive analytics (no need to tag events or features to track them).
  • Funnel analysis.
  • Path analytics.
  • Cohort analysis.
  • Pendo AI – to help teams find trends and insights in user behavior data.
  • Session replays – recordings of user interactions with the product UI, available as an add-on.
Pendo path visualization
Path visualization in Pendo.

Pendo pricing

Pendo offers 3 pricing plans:

  • Free.
  • Growth.
  • Portfolio.

While Pendo claims the pricing to be ‘downright simple’, it doesn’t seem to be. For starters, prices for the Growth and Portfolio plans are available upon request only, and many of its features are available as add-ons.

Overall, Pendo is said not to be the cheapest onboarding solution.

Pendo pricing tiers
Pendo pricing tiers.

#3. WalkMe: Best for guided customer onboarding experiences

WalkMe is recognized as an excellent tool for creating guided customer onboarding experiences. It aims to streamline user experiences across applications and support SaaS businesses in their efforts to improve customer satisfaction and speed up product adoption processes.

Its application isn’t limited to customer onboarding. Companies can use it to support digital transformation and staff onboarding, the latter being essential for employee retention and productivity.

Best onboarding platforms: WalkMe
Best onboarding platforms: WalkMe.

WalkMe features

Relevant onboarding features in WalkMe include:

  • Interactive Walk-Thrus (step-by-step guides).
  • ShoutOuts and SmartTips – tooltips, pop-ups, and balloons.
  • Task Lists (checklists).
  • Segmentation and personalization.
  • Surveys.
WalkMe pop-up builder
WalkMe pop-up builder.

Analytics analytics features are fairly limited. They include:

Product usage overview dashboard in WalkMe
Product usage overview dashboard in WalkMe.

WalkMe Pricing

WalkMe offers two pricing plans: WalkMe for employees and WalkMe for customers. Both of them come with custom pricing available upon request.

WalkMe pricing structure
WalkMe pricing structure.

#4. Intercom: Best for personalized customer communication during onboarding

Intercom is a customer support platform that helps businesses build better customer relationships through personalized, messenger-based experiences.

It’s widely used for support, sales, and marketing by enabling live chat on websites, in-app messaging, and automated chatbots to engage with customers in real-time.

Such capabilities can be a massive advantage during onboarding. However, on its own, it may not always be sufficient to support the whole process.

Best onboarding platforms: Intercom
Best onboarding platforms: Intercom.

Intercom features

Here’s an overview of key Intercom features:

  • In-app messaging – modals, tooltips, and banners.
  • Product tours and onboarding checklists.
  • Live Chat and AI-powered chatbot.
  • Email campaigns.
  • User segmentation for targeted messaging.
  • Surveys.
  • Knowledge base.
Intercom checklist
Intercom checklist.

Analytics are available in Intercom as an add-on and allow you to analyze user acquisition, engagement, and retention data. It offers 4 dashboards where you can view data on segments, user attributes, support conversations, and teammate performance.

Dashboarding in Intercom Analytics add-on
Dashboarding in Intercom Analytics add-on.

Intercom Pricing

If you think Intercom functionality matches your needs, you have 3 plans to choose from:

  • Essential – from $39 per seat/month.
  • Advanced – from $99 per seat/month.
  • Expert – from $139 per seat/month.
Intercom pricing plans
Intercom pricing plans.

#5. Appcues: Best for building and optimizing onboarding flows without code

Appcues is a cloud-based platform designed to help businesses improve user onboarding, engagement, and retention through personalized in-app experiences.

It focuses on making it easier for product teams to create and manage in-app tours, tips, announcements, and surveys without needing to write code.

The platform supports both mobile and web apps, but its analytics features are no match for Userpilot or Pendo.

Best onboarding platforms: Appcues
Best onboarding platforms: Appcues.

Appcues features

Appcues features include:

Appcues analytics are limited mostly to event tracking and flow analytics. For example, you can conduct funnel analysis of onboarding flow stages, but not user journey stages.

Apart from that, there’s also segmentation, goal tracking, and experimentation (A/B tests).

Funnel analysis of an onboarding flow in Appcues
Funnel analysis of an onboarding flow in Appcues.

Appcues Pricing

There are 3 Appcues pricing plans:

  • Essentials – from $249 per month.
  • Growth – from $879 per month.
  • Enterprise – custom pricing.
Appcues pricing structure
Appcues pricing structure.

#6. Userlane: Best for interactive user onboarding guides and tutorials

Userlane is a digital adoption platform designed to facilitate seamless onboarding, training, and support for software users, including customers and new team members. Just like WalkMe, it also supports digital transformation projects and change management processes.

It achieves this by offering interactive, step-by-step guides directly within web applications, helping users to navigate complex software environments more easily.

If you’re looking for a solution that will help you enhance the user experience and ensure your users can leverage software to its full potential without extensive training, Userlane may be the tool.

Best onboarding platforms: Userlane
Best onboarding platforms: Userlane.

Userlane features

Userlane offers a range of interactive user onboarding features you’d expect from a tool of this caliber:

When it comes to product analytics, Userlane enables teams to track HEART analytics. This is an acronym for Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task Success, and was originally developed by Google.

Userlane analytics dashboard
Userlane analytics dashboard.

Userlane Pricing

If you were hoping to get Userlane pricing plan details here, then I must disappoint you. Userlane offers only custom pricing and to get it, you need to contact the sales team. This adds friction to the decision-making process.

Userlane pricing is available upon request
Userlane pricing is available upon request.

#7. Chameleon: Best for in-app product tours and onboarding flows

Chameleon is a product adoption platform best known for its highly customizable in-app product tours and onboarding flows.

By focusing on interactive and intuitive in-app guidance, teams can use Chameleon to help their customers navigate through apps more effectively, which improves the user experience and drives product adoption.

Best onboarding platforms: Chameleon
Best onboarding platforms: Chameleon.

Chameleon features

Chameleon offers a wide range of onboarding features that address most use cases:

  • Tooltips (their different styles include Help, Info, Hotspot, Beacon, and Labels).
  • Modals and banners.
  • Tours (Flows, Walkthroughs, Guides, Tutorials).
  • Checklists (triggered from Launchers).
  • Dynamic experience personalization through segmentation and environments.
  • Resource Center.
  • Localization.
  • In-app microsurveys.
A sample onboarding tour in Chameleon
A sample onboarding tour in Chameleon.

Just like Appcues, Chameleon offers basic analytics features, which include:

  • Real-time event tracking for contextual triggering.
  • Experience reporting (from one dashboard).
  • Goals (conversion tracking).
  • A/B testing.

Chameleon Pricing

There are 4 Chameleon pricing plans:

  • Helpbar – free.
  • Startup – from $279 per month.
  • Growth – from $1250 per month.
  • Enterprise – custom pricing.
Chameleon pricing tiers
Chameleon pricing tiers.

Gainsight: Best for customer success and onboarding automation

Gainsight is a company known for its Customer Success (CS) and Product Experience (PX) software, which helps businesses manage customer relationships more effectively.

Customer success teams use Gainsight’s software to track customer health scores, manage accounts, and automate communications. It also provides analytics and insights into customer behavior, helping companies to understand their customers’ needs and preferences more deeply.

Additionally, Gainsight PX, a part of their product offering, focuses on enhancing the product experience by gathering user feedback, conducting A/B testing, and personalizing user journeys.

Best onboarding platforms: Gainsight
Best onboarding platforms: Gainsight.

Gainsight features

Gainsight supports a few relevant features for customer onboarding:

  • In-app guides – walkthroughs, tooltips, banners, modals.
  • Bots – onboarding checklists.
  • Knowledge Center.
  • Surveys and feedback management enable teams to use feedback to inform product development.
  • A/B testing.
Creating onboarding guides in Gainsight
Creating onboarding guides in Gainsight.

Gainsight offers fairly advanced analytics. In addition to the Customer Health Score and Customer 360 which offers a comprehensive, unified view of each customer’s data and interactions with your business, Gainsight supports:

  • Retention analysis.
  • Funnel analysis.
  • Adoption analytics.
  • Path analytics.
  • In-app, email, survey, and knowledge center performance analysis.
Gainsight analytics dashboard
Gainsight analytics dashboard.

Gainsight Pricing

The company offers two pricing plans: Essentials and Enterprise.

Both of them offer the same onboarding functionality – and both come with custom pricing plans. The word is that it costs over $2500 per month, though. If that’s true, it isn’t the most affordable solution in the roundup.

Gainsight pricing plans
Gainsight pricing plans.

ClickUp: Best collaborative employee onboarding software

ClickUp is a cloud-based project management and productivity software that makes a robust solution for new hire onboarding.

Is it the best employee onboarding software?

It is probably not because it isn’t a dedicated onboarding platform and doesn’t offer features like an employee self-service portal that you can find in other HR tools.

However, its highly customizable functionality makes it more than adequate for onboarding new employees, especially if you already use it to manage other workflows in your business.

In addition, hiring managers can use it to support HR processes – for example, as an applicant tracking system or to manage staff development.

Best onboarding platforms: ClickUP
Best onboarding platforms: ClickUp.

ClickUp features

What ClickUp features could you leverage to support the employee onboarding process?

  • ClickUp Forms – to collect all necessary employee details and gather feedback.
  • ClickUp Docs – for document management, e.g. SOPs.
  • Task management – to stay on top of all the new hire onboarding tasks.
  • Automated workflows – to eliminate repetitive tasks.
  • Custom dashboards.
  • Templates – including employee onboarding templates, handbook templates, SOP templates, and HR templates.
ClickUp Forms for gathering feedback
ClickUp Forms for gathering feedback.

ClickUp Pricing

There are 4 ClickUp pricing plans available:

  • Forever Free.
  • Unlimited – from $7 per member/month.
  • Business – from $12 per member/month.
  • Enterprise – custom pricing.
ClickUp Pricing Plans
ClickUp Pricing Plans.

Conclusion

Whether you’re onboarding remote employees or digital app users, a solid onboarding platform can help you automate the process and create experiences tailored to each individual’s unique needs.

What are the next steps for you?

Hopefully, having read our round-up you know which tools to consider and which not. It’s time to analyze their pricing plans in more detail to ensure they include the features you need, look at the online reviews, sign up for free trials, and book demos.

Talking of demos, if you’d like to learn more about Userpilot’s onboarding features, you can get the demo here!

Try Userpilot and Take Your Onboarding Experience to the Next Level

previous post next post

Leave a comment