Pendo for In-App Messaging: Features, Pricing, and Review
Looking for an effective In-app messaging tool and wondering if Pendo is the best option for your SaaS company?
With numerous of Pendo alternatives, it can be challenging to make a final decision.
In this article, we’ll delve into precisely that – helping you determine whether Pendo is the ideal choice for your In-app messaging needs. We’ll explore its features, pricing, and offer a comprehensive review to aid in your decision-making process.
Let’s get started!
TL;DR
- Pendo is a good choice for In-app messaging and it comes with features such as self service support, in-app resource center, onboarding checklist, and in-app messaging.
- 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 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 Starter plan, you could be paying $35,000 annually once you reach 10,000 MAUs — which makes it harder to scale.
- If you’re looking for a better option for In-app messaging, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to Pendo.
- Ready to see Userpilot in action? Schedule a demo today to explore its powerful In-app messaging capabilities firsthand.
Looking for A Better Alternative for In-app messaging? Try Userpilot
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 product areas, data explorer, product engagement score, and resource centers are locked to the Starter plan or higher.
Must have features of In-app messaging tools
Overall, the best tool for your business will depend on your specific needs and goals. When choosing an in-app messaging tool, it’s important to consider factors such as:
- Targeting and segmentation: The ability to target messages to specific users or user segments based on behavior, preferences, or other attributes.
- Automation and scheduling: The ability to automate the delivery of messages based on specific triggers or user actions.
- A/B testing: The ability to test different message content, formats, or delivery methods to determine which is most effective.
- Personalization: The ability to personalize messages based on user behavior, goals, or other attributes.
- Analytics and insights: The ability to track message performance, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, and gain insights into user behavior and preferences.
- Different UI patterns: The ability to deliver in-app messages with different patterns: tooltips, modals, pop-ups, or slideouts.
Overall, an in-app messaging tool should provide a robust and flexible platform for delivering targeted and personalized messages to users within your application.
Pendo features for In-app messaging
In-app support includes everything from chatbots to product documentation and the human representatives on your support team that respond to live chat requests. Implementing in-app support elements in your product can reduce the learning curve and cut down on support costs.
Here are three Pendo features you can use to improve in-app support:
- Intercom Integration: Pendo’s integration with Intercom makes it possible to embed a live chat into your in-app resource center so users can get real-time support at any point in their product tour.
- In-App Resource Center: Pendo’s in-app resource center is a great place to store self-support documentation for users. You can also tinker with segmentation settings to tailor the visible content to different groups (e.g. new users) or use analytics to see the most-viewed modules. You can add guides, checklists, and announcements or get feedback from users. The downside is that is missing a search button which can make it hard for users to scroll through several resources to find what they need.
- Support Tooltips: Tooltips are a proactive way to answer questions before users even ask them and deflect recurring support tickets so your representatives have more time to work on complex cases.
Pendo’s self service support
Self-service support is a must-have for any SaaS company.
Here are the best Pendo features to use for self-service support:
- Resource Center: Pendo’s in-app resource center can serve as a self-service portal with different modules for each stage of the user journey. Create a dedicated section for onboarding resources or segment the visible modules so users only see the most relevant guides.
- Tooltips: In addition to educating new users, tooltips can also be used to link to product documentation, onboarding resources, and tutorial videos that will help your customers solve their own problems.
- Live Chat Integrations: When you integrate your Pendo account with either Drift or Intercom, you’ll be able to embed a live chat widget within the in-app resource center. This is very helpful for customers who try to solve a problem themselves but realize they need real-time assistance.
Note: You’ll need to upgrade to the Complete plan or higher to use Pendo integrations and resource centers.
Pendo’s in-app resource center
As an onboarding and product adoption solution, Pendo’s in-app resource center has most of the features you’d expect. Because it’s a native feature rather than an integration, most interactions with the Pendo in-app resource center will also reflect on your analytics dashboard.
Here are a few benefits of using Pendo’s in-app resource center feature:
- Segmentation: Pendo’s in-app resource center has segmentation settings that let you configure which documents a user can see. For instance, you could hide the onboarding module from users who have already completed the onboarding process.
- Analytics: You’ll be able to see the number of visitors your in-app resource center has gotten in the past month or week — as well as which modules are getting the most views or clicks overall.
- Integrations: Pendo is compatible with multiple integrations that let you embed live chats and knowledge bases within the in-app resource center itself. These include tools like Intercom, Drift, Zendesk, Help Scout, and more.
Note: You’ll need to upgrade to the Complete plan or higher to use Pendo integrations and resource centers.
Pendo’s onboarding checklist
Pendo’s checklists can only be created through an in-app resource center (which is locked to the Growth plan). This means that you’ll need to upgrade to a five-figure annual subscription — and even then you won’t be able to create a standalone checklist outside the resource center. 
Here are a few Pendo settings you can use to optimize your onboarding checklists:
- Segmentation: Pendo recommends that onboarding checklists be segmented so that users only see them within the first 30 days of their initial product interaction. This ensures that it won’t clutter the UI of proficient users who no longer need onboarding assistance.
- Analytics: All interaction data for your onboarding checklist can be found under the resource center metrics tab of your Pendo account. You’ll be able to see the total number of views, visitors, and clicks — along with which segment the checklist is visible for.
- Triggers: Because onboarding checklists need to be created within the resource center, this rules out any ability to use event-based triggering or have the checklist pop up in response to a specific user action.
Pendo’s in-app messaging
In-app messaging is one of the most effective ways to engage with active users with the goal of educating, retaining, or upselling them. Most in-app messaging flows are comprised of tooltips, modals, or a combination of the two.
Here are Pendo in-app messaging features you can use to connect with your users:
- Lightboxes: Lightboxes are Pendo’s take on modals. Certain lightboxes can prevent users from interacting with the product until the in-app message has been dismissed, so these intrusive popups should be reserved for important notifications.
- Tooltips: Instead of taking up large swathes of the screen, tooltips are small text snippets that show up next to a button or feature to provide additional context. These can help users discover new features or figure out where to go next after completing a product tour.
- Banners: While not as commonly used as lightboxes and tooltips, Pendo banners are another in-app messaging option that you can use. These show up at the top of the screen and can be used as a less-intrusive alternative to lightboxes as they don’t restrict product interaction.
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 has 50 different integrations to choose from including popular tools like Intercom, Jira, Okta, and HubSpot. Unfortunately, only four of these — Salesforce, Segment, Workato, and Zendesk — are two-way integrations that can share data both ways.
- 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. Note: You’ll need to upgrade to Pendo Portfolio to add more than one product to your account.
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 Growth or Portfolio 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?
Most Pendo users seem to be quite happy with the solution despite a few personalization roadblocks and usability challenges:
I love the ability to see where our users are spending the bulk of their time. I love the ability to measure metrics quantitatively.
Other users were less satisfied with Pendo as a product adoption solution due to the amount of effort it takes to actually use the tool on a regular basis:
I’m giving a 1 so unfortunately I can’t give much love. It’s already my second job using Pendo and I’m not impressed. A/B testing numbers are different between the API export and CSV export in the UI, no 50/50 split between test and control, support is slow, event tracking doesn’t handle aliasing, only 7 days of historical data can be sent with Segment which make backfills impossible, NPS forms are shown in multiple tabs and doesn’t close once it’s been submitted in one of the tab.
Pendo’s pricing
Pricing for most paid Pendo plans (except Starter) is only provided on a quote basis and there are no listed price ranges on the solution’s website. That said, certain reviews have stated that prices start at upwards of $20,000 per year for a single product and more than twice that for higher plans.
Pendo has three paid plans and one free version that is limited to 500 MAUs which makes it accessible to startups but difficult to scale in the long run.
Here are the differences between each Pendo plan:
- Pendo Free: The free version of Pendo can accommodate 500 MAUs and has features like native analytics dashboards, feature tagging, event tracking, segmentation, NPS surveys (with Pendo branding), analytics reports, and in-app guides.
- Growth: Pendo’s Growth plan is designed to be used for a single web or mobile app but can accommodate a custom number of MAUs. It includes features like native analytics dashboards., in-app guides, NPS surveys and response tracking, and customer support.
- Starter: The Starter plan starts at $7,000 per year (or $2,000 per quarter) for 2,000 MAUs and is the cheapest upgrade option available for freemium users. Starter includes features like Product Areas, NPS surveys without Pendo branding, and (limited) NPS analytics. Note: You’ll need to upgrade to the Growth or Portfolio plan to get full NPS analytics.
- Portfolio: Pendo’s Portfolio plan is targeted towards customers who want to use the tool for multiple web and/or mobile apps. Features include guide experiment capabilities, cross-app executive dashboards, cross-app journey reporting, and access to product engagement scores.
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 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 Starter plan, you could be paying $35,000 annually once you reach 10,000 MAUs — which makes it harder to scale.
Userpilot – A better alternative for In-app messaging
In-app support can increase customer satisfaction and retention rates. Userpilot has native in-app support features like resource centers and native tooltips as well as third-party integrations with popular support tools like Intercom to help you cover all your bases.
Here’s an overview of Userpilot’s in-app support capabilities:
- Resource center: Userpilot in-app resource centers let you add flows, checklists, external links, tutorial videos, external knowledge bases, and chat bots. You’ll also be able to view resource center analytics so you can check its performance.
- Native tooltips: In-app support must be proactive — which is why you should insert tooltips that guide users before they even think to open the resource center. Userpilot lets you add native tooltips that appear whenever users hover over an element or click on the info badge.
- Contextual flows: Userpilot’s trigger settings let you create contextual flows that automatically appear when a user reaches a certain page or performs a specific action. This can be used to offer in-app guidance and support whenever users try out a feature for the first time.
- Intercom integration: While Intercom is famous for its live chat embeds, you can do more than that by integrating it with Userpilot. You’ll see which events a user has done within Userpilot and whether or not they’ve completed onboarding to personalize support accordingly.
Userpilot’s self service support
Self-service support helps users solve problems themselves instead of having to reach out to a representative. Userpilot’s no-code resource center makes onboarding guides and product documentation easily accessible to users from within your product.
Here’s how you can use Userpilot to create a self-service customer experience:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s no-code resource center lets you add modules without writing a single line of code. Module options include links, videos, flows, custom JavaScript functions, and checklists. You can also group modules into sections to help users navigate the resource center.
- Module segmentation: Userpilot’s segmentation settings let you hide or show specific modules within your resource center based on audience settings. This makes it possible to create modules for different user segments and hide resources that aren’t relevant to other users.
- Analytics dashboard: The dedicated analytics dashboard helps you see how many unique visitors your resource center gets, how many modules have been clicked, and the overall click rate across your user base. This will make it easier to gauge resource center performance.
Userpilot’s in-app resource center
In-app resource centers help users find answers to their questions without needing to leave your product. Userpilot’s resource centers leverage advanced segmentation to target specific customers or use cases, have detailed analytics, and can be built using the no-code editor.
Here’s a closer look at Userpilot’s resource center editor:
- No-code editor: Userpilot lets you build in-app resource centers without needing to write any code. You can add modules like internal/external links, tutorial videos, in-app flows, custom JavaScript functions, and checklists — or group multiple modules into a single section.
- Targeted modules: Userpilot’s module segmentation features let you show/hide specific resources depending on which segment a user is in. This helps you personalize your in-app resource center and only show the resources that are most relevant to a particular user.
- Analytics dashboard: Userpilot’s resource center analytics can show you key metrics like the total number of visitors, how many modules have been clicked, and changes in the click rate to help you gauge performance. You can also sort data by a specific time period if needed.
Userpilot’s onboarding checklist
Onboarding checklists help new users learn about a product and reduce their time-to-value (TTV). Userpilot checklists can be created using the no-code builder, used to trigger specific actions, and tracked using the analytics dashboard to gauge overall engagement.
Here’s how you can use Userpilot to create an advanced onboarding checklist:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s checklist creator lets you edit the content of checklists, add tasks, style icons, and configure the triggers for when your checklist should appear. You’ll also be able to choose from five widget icons (or upload your own) and recolor the widget to match your UI.
- Smart tasks: Checklist tasks can be set to trigger specific actions upon being completed, such as redirecting a user to a different page, launching an in-app flow, or running a custom JavaScript function. You can also set the conditions for when a task and action will be marked as complete.
- Checklist analytics: The Checklists dashboard shows you all relevant metrics. These include the number of live checklists you have, how many views they’ve gotten, and how many have been completed. You can also sort these analytics by segment or time period to identify trends.
Userpilot checklist data analytics dashboard.
Userpilot’s in-app messaging
In-app messaging enables communication within your product to onboard new users or drive feature adoption among existing customers.
Here are a few ways you can send in-app messages using Userpilot:
- Modals: Userpilot lets you use modals to send unmissable in-app messages to your users. Simply choose from one of the six templates or create a new modal from scratch. You’ll be able to use text, emojis, images, and videos to help your modals get the message across to users.
- Banners: Userpilot banners can be used to send in-app messages that are urgent but don’t need to take up the entire screen. You can also add blocks with text, emojis, images, videos, forms, custom JavaScript functions, and more to style banners to your liking.
- Tooltips: They are the least intrusive form of in-app messaging as they only show up when users hover over an element or click on an info icon. You’ll be able to adjust the height, shape, color, and placement of tooltips to make them native-like.
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:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
- UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
- Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
- Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
- Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
- A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
- Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
- Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
- Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
- Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
- Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.
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.
- Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
- Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.
What do users say about Userpilot?
Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:
I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.
What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.
Source: G2.
Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:
“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”
Source: G2.
Userpilot’s pricing
Userpilot’s transparent pricing ranges from $249/month on the entry-level end to an Enterprise tier for larger companies.
Furthermore, Userpilot’s entry-level plan includes access to all UI patterns and should include everything that most mid-market SaaS businesses need to get started.
Userpilot has three paid plans to choose from:
- Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, user feedback, and customization.
- Growth: The Growth plan starts at $499/month and includes features like resource centers, advanced event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting options, and a dedicated customer success manager.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features from Starter + Growth plus custom roles/permissions, access to premium integrations, priority support, custom contract, SLA, SAML SSO, activity logs, security audit and compliance (SOC 2/GDPR).
Conclusion
There you have it.
It should be easier now to make an informed decision whether Pendo is your go-to option for In-app messaging. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.
If you’re looking for a better alternative to Pendo for In-app messaging, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!
Looking for A Better Alternative for In-app messaging? Try Userpilot
