Looking to track how users interact with your product? Pendo promises to help you do that, with event tracking baked into its analytics layer.
But how good is it, really?
In this guide, we’ll break down how Pendo handles event tracking, what features you get (and don’t), how much it’ll cost you, and suggest a better alternative.
If you’re considering Pendo to understand user behavior and trigger personalized in-app experiences, this review is for you.
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What is Pendo?
Pendo is a product adoption platform that lets teams monitor product usage, analyze user behavior, and publish in-app guides. The no-code solution focuses on increasing user engagement and driving feature discovery.
Additionally, Pendo also lets you survey users, segment customers, and see how many site visitors or MAUs your web app is getting. Certain features like Data Explorer and Product Engagement Score (PES) are locked to Base or higher, while Resource Centers require any paid plan (Base or above).
Pendo for event tracking
Pendo collects user interaction data automatically once the script is installed, including page views, clicks, focus events, and guide activity. But before you can analyze anything in dashboards or segments, you need to label that data by tagging Pages, Features, or sending Track Events. That tagging layer is what defines how data gets surfaced in reports.
- Tagging required to use events in reports: You have to define Pages and Features using the Visual Design Studio before event data shows up in analytics.
- Track Events require dev work and aren’t retroactive: For backend or custom actions, you’ll need developers to push events to Pendo via its Track Events API, and you won’t get historical data for those.
- Retroactive reporting on tagged UI events: If you tag a button or page today, Pendo can surface historical usage from raw logs, so you’re not starting from scratch.
- Sampling on high-volume apps: In large environments, Pendo might sample raw events for performance reasons, which can lead to gaps.
Pendo’s behavioral analytics
Pendo offers a robust set of behavioral analytics tools to help product and growth teams understand how users interact with their app, notably Data Explorer.
This is Pendo’s ad hoc query tool. It lets you drill into event-level data by filtering and slicing based on user properties, segments, or time ranges. Think of it like a flexible report builder, but only as powerful as the events you’ve tagged.
- Flexible query builder: You can select events like Feature clicks, Page views, Track Events, and Guide views, and apply filters based on event types, Product Areas, and Apps.
- Segmentation and grouping: Data Explorer allows you to segment data by metadata and event properties while also applying formulas in reports.
- Custom measurements: You can define how to measure each event group, with options like Total events, Visitor event average, Account event average, and more.
- Visualization and sharing: After building a report, you can analyze the results, customize the chart, and share your findings with others.
Pendo’s user journey mapping
A journey map is a document that visualizes the steps users (or user personas) take to reach a certain goal, such as completing onboarding or upgrading to a paid plan. Pendo’s “Funnels” feature is the primary journey mapping function available on the platform.
Here are the benefits of using Pendo’s journey mapping capabilities:
- Navigational patterns: Pendo’s funnel analytics can show you the paths that most of your users take so you can plan your in-app guidance flows accordingly or identify any neglected product areas.
- Behavioral insights: The ability to see areas where users stop, start, or fail to complete specific tasks can help you spot areas that need improvement. These insights are especially helpful when trying to reduce friction or improve your customer effort score (CES).
- Cross-app journeys: Tracking how users navigate your product portfolio can uncover upsell or cross-sell opportunities that you had not previously considered. Do note that this feature is only available from the Pendo Base plan.
Pendo’s user segmentation
Pendo’s analytics-heavy focus has led to extensive segmentation capabilities within the solution.
Here are a few segmentation rules you can use when configuring in-app guides, filtering analytics, or collecting feedback from users:
- Guide targeting: You can use Pendo segmentation rules to segment users based on product usage, metadata, and visitor/account IDs. Contrary to some descriptions, you can also segment based on poll or survey response data collected via Guides, then fire personalized in-app flows (e.g., upsell popups for positive responders).
- Survey segmentation: You can use Pendo segmentation rules to segment users based on their responses to recent polls. You could then target that segment with personalized in-app flows (e.g., showing upsell popups to customers who left positive poll responses). (Note: contrary to some claims, poll-based segmentation is supported.)
- Segmented feedback: If you get the separate Pendo Feedback product (charged on a per-seat basis), then you’ll be able to filter feedback based on which segment respondents are in, how much they spend on your product, and other user tags on their account.
What are the pros and cons of Pendo?
✅ Pendo’s pros
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of using Pendo:
- No-code: Pendo lets you create surveys, in-app guides, and track metrics without needing to write your own code, which saves a lot of time (while making product experiments or split-testing a lot easier).
- Custom themes: Pendo’s themes let you create multiple palettes and ensure that any in-app materials published align with your existing brand palette (however, you can only create/customize themes after you’ve installed the Pendo snippet).
- Flexible dashboards: Pendo has plenty of widgets that you can add to your dashboard, including feature adoption, net promoter score, poll results, guide engagement, product stickiness, and MAUs — so you always have your most important metrics within reach.
- Integrations: Pendo offers a broad ecosystem of integrations, dozens of native connectors from tools like Intercom, Jira, Okta, and HubSpot, and supports bi-directional data sync with platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Workato, and Zendesk, letting you both enrich Pendo with external CRM/support metadata and push product-usage insights back into those systems.
- Multi-platform analytics: Because Pendo is compatible with mobile applications, you’ll be able to track product analytics for both web apps and mobile apps. This gives you a more holistic view of how users (or specific segments) use your product on different platforms.
❌ Pendo’s cons
While Pendo certainly has quite a few benefits that make it an appealing solution, there are also a few notable drawbacks that you should be aware of before you choose the platform as your product adoption tool:
- Pricing jumps: While Pendo does offer a free version, it has a limit of 500 MAUs. Upon reaching the MAU limit, you’ll need to upgrade to continue using most of Pendo’s features (and paid plans tend to cost thousands of dollars per month).
- Locked features: Key features like the data explorer, resource center, and product engagement score are locked behind the Base or Core plan.
- Data lag: Pendo’s analytics dashboards only update once per hour. In some cases, this data lag could lead product teams to make the wrong decisions or draw false conclusions from outdated insights.
What do users say about Pendo?
Many users find Pendo useful for surfacing insights and guiding product decisions, especially when paired with strong support:
“Simple and easy to use analytics with great integration options allow us to get the data we need to make decisions… Our Technical Account Manager has become a core part of our team.”
– Robert R., VP Product
However, many point out challenges around survey data handling, tagging, and UI consistency:
“Survey data extraction is limited… Implementing tags is very manual… These limitations reduce overall reporting efficiency.”
– Kacey S.
💸 Pendo’s pricing
Pendo’s pricing is mostly a black box. Apart from the Free plan, nothing is listed publicly, and you’ll have to talk to sales and hope for a fair quote. According to Vendr, customers pay anywhere from $15,900 to $140,000+ per year, depending on usage and features.
That’s a huge range—and not great if you’re trying to budget with any level of confidence.
Here’s how their plans break down:
- Free: Limited to 500 MAUs. You get basic analytics, in-app guides, and roadmaps. Decent for testing, but you’ll outgrow it fast.
- Base: Adds basic support, a single Resource Center, limited dashboards, one integration, and some customization. Still pretty barebones for a paid plan.
- Core: Unlocks session replays, A/B testing, and frustration signals like rage clicks. Good step up, but the value depends on your usage volume.
- Pulse: Focused on user feedback: NPS, idea validation, Jira integration, and feedback automation. You’ll need this if you want serious Voice of Customer tools.
- Ultimate: Full-scale analytics and orchestration. Includes advanced guide controls, system-wide data sync, and unlimited resource centers.
The bottom line? Pendo can get powerful—but it’ll cost you. And without transparent pricing, it’s tough to know if you’re getting a good deal or overpaying for features you don’t need.
🟡 3 Reasons why you might need a Pendo alternative
There are a few obvious instances where you’ll likely need an alternative solution to Pendo, such as these use cases:
- Over 500 MAUs: If your product has more than 500 MAUs, then you’ll need to subscribe to a premium Pendo plan (which tends to be significantly more expensive than other competitors on the market).
- Real-time analytics needs: Companies that operate in fast-paced work sprints will likely opt for product adoption solutions with real-time analytics since Pendo’s one-hour data lag can make data-driven decision-making difficult.
- Expensive pricing model: Pendo is more expensive than most solutions on the market, and the subscription cost rises rapidly as your MAUs grow. Even if you’re on the Base plan, you could be paying up to $35,000 annually once you reach 10,000 MAUs, which makes it harder to scale.
Try Userpilot – A More Flexible and Intuitive Option for Event Tracking
Userpilot – A better alternative for event tracking
Looking for a better way to track user behavior? That’s exactly why we built a flexible, no-code event tracking system inside Userpilot, so you don’t need a developer every time you want to answer a product question.
✅ Autocapture for web apps: We automatically track clicks, text inputs, hovers, and more the moment our script is installed, no need to define events manually. And yes, it works retroactively from the moment the script is added.
✅ Mobile event tracking via SDK: Our mobile SDK lets you track in-app actions, screen views, and flows on iOS and Android, giving you parity across platforms, not just web.
✅ Group events to track progress: You can bundle multiple events into one custom event (e.g., “onboarding completed”) to track workflows that span several steps. Unlike Pendo, it does not currently support reusable grouped events, you’d need to analyze individual events separately or create custom filters each time.
Here’s how we stack against Pendo:
Userpilot’s behavioral analytics
We built Userpilot’s behavioral analytics to give product teams a clear, actionable view of how users interact with their product, across both web and mobile. No fluff. Just the insights you need to make smarter decisions.
Here’s what’s under the hood:
- User & company profiles: You can see event history, device type, location, last seen date, session replays, and which flows they’ve experienced, whether they’re using your web app or mobile app. This helps you debug issues, understand usage patterns, or spot expansion opportunities, all from one place.
- Session replay: Our session replay shows exactly how users navigate your product, i.e., clicks, scrolls, rage clicks, dead clicks, errors, all captured automatically. You can filter replays by segment, company, or event triggered (e.g., “clicked Upgrade button”) to investigate drop-offs or support tickets without guessing. It’s like watching over your users’ shoulders, without invading their privacy.
- Funnel, path, retention, and trend reports: We offer all the core behavioral reports Pendo has, plus one they don’t:
- Funnels show where users drop off between steps (e.g., signup → completed onboarding → activated core feature).
- Paths visualize what users do before or after a key action.
- Retention tracks how often users come back after a milestone.
- Trend (the one Pendo doesn’t have) helps you track patterns over time – ideal for spotting feature adoption growth or usage declines.
All reports come with advanced filters, date range comparisons, and custom formulas, so you can build cohort-based metrics, slice data by persona, or create your success definitions.
Userpilot’s user journey mapping
User journey mapping helps you visualize all the interactions between users and your product as they try to achieve a particular goal. Userpilot’s detailed user analytics and funnel/trend reports help you track customers as they progress through different stages of their journey.
Here are the Userpilot features you can use for user journey mapping:
- User analytics: The Users dashboard provides detailed analytics of your entire customer base. You’ll be able to sort by segment, company, or time period and add multiple filters to help you narrow results. You can also perform bulk actions and export user data in a CSV format.
User analytics insights by segment.
- Funnel reports: These reports help you visualize the user journey map by showing which stage, page, or action most users get stuck on. You’ll also be able to view breakdowns so you can see how the user journey changes depending on which OS, browser, or device type a user is on.
- Trend reports: Userpilot’s trend reports offer behavioral insights such as how often users perform a specific action, the number of unique users who take that action, and where in the user journey these actions occur. You can also create custom metrics and build your own charts.
What are the pros and cons of Userpilot?
✅ Userpilot’s pros
As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:
- All-in-one product growth tool: Userpilot combines onboarding, product analytics, session replays, in-app surveys, and native mobile – all in one platform. No need to stitch five tools together.
- Powerful no-code builder: Create flows, tooltips, banners, carousels, and checklists directly in your app using a Chrome extension. What you see is what your users get.
- Transparent, scale-up-friendly pricing: Clear pricing tiers that don’t require talking to sales just to get a number.
- Enterprise-ready security: SOC 2 Type II certified, with role-based access controls and audit logs for peace of mind.
🟡 Userpilot’s cons
Of course, no tool is perfect, and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:
- Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
- Not ideal for very early-stage startups: Pricing may still be too steep for tiny teams or MVPs.
- No email or push messaging: Focused on in-app experiences only, outbound communication (like email) isn’t part of the platform (yet). We have push notifications for mobile apps, though.
What do users say about Userpilot?
Userpilot users consistently highlight its ease of use, responsive support, and rich analytics capabilities.
The no-code aspect of Userpilot makes it incredibly easy to set up tracking and analyzing customer behavior. Sometimes we set them up during a meeting and by the end of that meeting we catch up on the data already.
– Adam Sixtus G., Customer Success Manager
Strong analytics and flexible segmentation are also often called out as standout features:
Strong analytics within Userpilot to track flow completion and feature adoption… the addition of surveys, reports, dashboards, and session replay is incredibly valuable.
– Ryan T.
Userpilot’s pricing
Userpilot offers transparent, scalable pricing to suit the needs of growing SaaS companies and large enterprises alike. It has three pricing tiers:
- Starter – $299/month (billed annually): The entry-level Starter plan is available exclusively through annual billing. It includes all core features such as segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, NPS feedback, and UI customization. It also provides full access to all UI patterns, making it ideal for most mid-market SaaS businesses looking to drive product adoption.
- Growth – Starting at $799/month: The Growth plan adds more advanced capabilities, including resource centers, event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting, and a dedicated Customer Success Manager.
- Enterprise – Custom pricing: Designed for large organizations, the Enterprise plan includes everything in Starter and Growth, plus advanced features like custom roles and permissions, premium integrations, SAML SSO, SLAs, priority support, activity logs, and compliance with SOC 2 and GDPR standards.
So, is Pendo right for event tracking?
Pendo can get the job done, but for many teams, it’s more work than it’s worth.
That’s why companies like Cuvama made the switch to Userpilot. They ditched Pendo’s complex setup and now use our platform to build flows, track events, and analyze behavior, without engineering help.
With Pendo, I could not do, or at least I didn’t know how to easily do, specific flows for specific companies.
– Leyre Iniguez, Customer Experience Lead
If you want faster setup, deeper insights, and better value, book a Userpilot demo and see it for yourself.
Userpilot strives to provide accurate information to help businesses determine the best solution for their particular needs. Due to the dynamic nature of the industry, the features offered by Userpilot and others often change over time. The statements made in this article are accurate to the best of Userpilot’s knowledge as of its publication/most recent update on May 9, 2025.
More Intuitive. More Transparency. Try Userpilot.
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