Pendo Resource Center: Limitations and Better Alternatives
Curious about the Pendo Resource Center? This article breaks it down, showing its features, limitations, and available alternatives.
Resource Centers are great for providing self-service support. If built well, a good Resource Center will reduce the load on your support and digital product teams. It will even enhance product engagement because the customer will encounter less friction with your product.
Let’s examine Pendo to see if its solution can serve the purpose of a modern Resource Center.
Overview of Pendo resource center
- Pendo aims to help its customers create product experiences, among other things.
- The Pendo Resource Center is used to provide on-demand support to your users, just as every other resource center that you would implement in-app.
- The Resource Center is not available on Pendo’s free plan. Only Pro and Enterprise subscribers have access to it.
- Pendo’s Resource Center has modules for announcements, onboarding, and user guidance (help articles, FAQs, checklists, etc.).
- Pendo doesn’t come with Live Chat and Knowledge Base options. You will need third-party integrations if you want these. And it will charge extra costs.
- The Resource Center on Pendo has several limitations, including the lack of video modules, limited segmentation options, lack of localization, etc.
- Userpilot is a good Pendo alternative for integrating a web app Resource Center inside your product. It comes with in-depth analytics, video modules, segmentation, and automated translation. In addition, Userpilot lets you add as many modules as you wish.
- Unlike Pendo, Userpilot’s Resource Center can be accessed on the Growth plan and above, starting at $749 per month.
- Get a Userpilot demo and start offering self-service support in-app without having to code a Resource Center.
What is Pendo?
Pendo is a digital adoption software that enables its customers to create product experiences for the end-users.
Some things you can use Pendo to accomplish include user onboarding, product engagement analytics, and in-app support, among others. Resource Centers are part of the in-app support solution, and that’s what we’ll be examining in this article.
What is Pendo Resource Center?
A Resource Center is an in-app feature that enables users to access on-demand help without contacting human support.
Resource Centers typically include help docs, articles, tutorial videos, and any content format that provides the customer with the help they need.
The Resource Center functionality on Pendo (formerly the guide center) helps customers build Resource Centers on their apps without coding.
Here’s what it looks like:
Is the Pendo Resource Center feature available on the free plan?
The short answer is no.
Pendo Resource Center is considered part of the Guides feature, which is only available to Pro or Enterprise customers. This design is probably why you can only add Guides to the Resource Centers (more on that in the next section).
Pendo’s Pro and Enterprise plans are pretty expensive and probably not suitable for small to mid-sized companies, considering they start from $8000/year (based on online reviews).
Overview of Pendo Resource Center
The Pendo Resource Center comes with modules for different content types that customers would like to make available to their users. Let’s go over these modules and what each represents.
- Guides List. This module contains the different types of Guides you’ll want to create for end users. Help articles and FAQs fall under this category.
- Onboarding module. This is much like the Pendo Guides above. The only difference is that this module is specifically designed for onboarding new users. As you create
- Announcements. Want to send short notifications to users? This feature helps you do just that. The messages are delivered through the Resource Center, and users will get notification indicators for messages they haven’t opened. However, this feature might not be best for the notifications you want users to see immediately since they’ll have to go to your Resource Center to access the message.
- Feedback. As the name suggests, this module enables users to send and prioritize feedback.
- Code Sandbox. Don’t see the module that fits into what you’re looking to create? This feature is for you. The code sandbox allows users to custom code desired modules using HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.
- Integrations modules. This section shows supported third-party tools you can attach to your Pendo account and create desired experiences.
To summarize, you have four different modules for grouping content: Guides List, Onboarding, Announcements, and the Code Sandbox. The Announcement feature won’t be used often, so it’s more or less three functional categories left.
Limitation of Pendo Resource Center modules
The previous section covered some limitations to Pendo’s Resource Center modules. Let’s examine them in more detail.
Modules configuration
As mentioned earlier, Pendo comes with predefined modules where you can group your content. These include Guides, Onboarding, Code Sandbox (the option to custom-code a module), and Announcements Module.
Guides and onboarding modules are pretty much the same things, and you can only add preset Guides. If you want other modules outside the list, you’ll have to code it yourself.
You can rename all of the modules on Pendo into a more user-friendly title without disrupting the internal naming convention.
But it doesn’t change the fact that you have only three separate modules to group your content. This is quite limited for the price you have to pay.
If you have an average amount of Resource Center content grouped under just these categories, it will mean the customer has to scroll endlessly to find what they want.
Adding more modules
The Pendo Resource Center page doesn’t have an option for Knowledge Base or Live Chat, but these options can be enabled, depending on the integrations you add.
If the options don’t come with your integrations, you may need to custom-code them. Keep in mind that integrations will attract extra costs, as stated earlier.
Targeting and segmentation
Targeting and segmentation are powerful tools for personalizing the user experience, and you want to make use of them at every chance you get.
Pendo allows its users to set the desired target audience for each module by choosing a predefined segment. However, this process may not be intuitive, as users must navigate away from the Resource Center builder to create a segment if none are available. Plus, there are limited segmentation filters.
Brand personalization
For brand personalization, Pendo offers the following:
- Badge icon: This is set to a circle, but you can add your custom image.
- Badge color: The default color is Pendo’s pink. However, users can change the colors to fit their brand image.
- Alert badge: Appears when the end-user has an unread notification. It’s a nice UI move to ensure users don’t miss announcements.
The bottom right corner is the default badge location, but this can be adjusted as desired.
Resource Center localization
There are typically two types of businesses: the ones with localization teams and those without localization teams – which are the majority.
Pendo only supports manual translation using an imported XLIFF file where you need to have translators on the team.
Missing features from Pendo Resource Center
Resource Centers exist to provide true self-service support that makes life easier for you and your customers, but Pendo lacks key vital features. Let’s go over them.
Missing content types and modules
The fact that Pendo makes you pay for the functionality of a basic Resource Center—chat and knowledge base integrations—makes us think they don’t consider these important or are overpricing it.
Like, what’s a Resource Center without these two integrations?
The limited content types and modules are also making Pendo’s Resource Center, not a true Resource Center.
No search functionality
A Resource Center allows teams to empower end-users with answers and contextual guidance on demand.
To enable this you need a search functionality that allows the customer to find answers right within it to increase stickiness and usage. But Pendo’s Resource Center doesn’t serve this purpose.
Yes, it does have a search option, but it only allows you to search the content inside the Resource Center itself. This is limiting.
Userpilot’s Resource Center is different. It’s built with a search functionally that includes searching both the Resource Center content and other external knowledge bases.
The search functionality is available with the following search engine providers too:
- Zendesk
- HubSpot
This Userpilot’s Resource Center functionality will no doubt provide a richer user experience for your customers.
No video modules
Have you struggled to understand a particular feature despite reading help articles on it, then watched a video, and everything became clear?
It’s a common experience as videos tend to explain stuff better. That’s not to mention the fact that most people naturally prefer videos to reading content.
Sadly, Pendo doesn’t provide this functionality.
Again, Userpilot is different here. You can embed videos from various streaming providers such as Witsia, Vimeo, Youtube, SendSpark, Vidyard, etc., and have them played directly in-app, without making the users switch between tabs when trying to watch and implement a tutorial at the same time.
Limited resource center analytics
Understanding the performance of the Resource Center over time is crucial for teams to do enhancements and reorganize in a way that better serves their end-users.
Pendo only has certain resource center analytics features as follows:
- Resource center metrics including views, visitors, and usage for comparative insights into which modules are used or not used;
- Top Stats chart highlighting the overall usage of your resource center;
- The modules table with usage and configuration details for all of the modules and any guides in those modules.
If you need more insights into your resource center’s performance such as individual post analytics, search term popularity, etc., Userpilot is a better choice!
Improve Your Self Serve Support with Actionable Analytics
Better Pendo alternative for building in-app resource centers: Userpilot
To recap, Pendo is a great product, but its Resource Center is limited in the following areas:
- There are only three modules you can nest content under. This means your end users have to spend extra time scrolling to find the information they seek.
- The Pendo Resource Center only allows you to search content in the Resource Center itself. Users will have to search elsewhere to find extra information when they need it.
- Pendo doesn’t provide automated translations, so you’ll need to hire a localization team.
- The feature doesn’t include video modules or analytics.
To add to these limitations, Pendo customers will have to be on the Pro or Enterprise plans to access the Resource Center feature. While the pricing for these plans is not clearly stated on their website, online reviews show that they’re quite expensive.
If you want a Resource Center that doesn’t have these limitations, then Userpilot is your plug. You’ll find the Resource Center feature included in the Growth plan and above!
Offer different types of help modules
One advantage Userpilot has over Pendo is the ability to add everything you need without paying extra fees.
While Pendo only enables help content nesting under three main module types, Userpilot allows you to group content under as many categories as you wish, granting users a more frictionless experience.
Advanced resource center settings to deliver targeted support
Userpilot also lets you set target audience groups, but the app has more in-depth segmentation options.
For instance, you can set modules to be triggered on specific user paths. You can also add specific conditions based on user attributes, app engagement, custom events, etc.
Provide on-demand help for your users with AI localization
But Userpilot supports both manual and automated translation.
Userpilot’s automated translation service gives teams without translators the full ability to translate their Resource center content back and forth between 32 different languages with a click of a button.
Advanced resource center personalization
How does Userpilot compare in terms of personalization?
Userpilot’s Resource Center lets you do anything Pendo could with a few extras:
- You can add different badge icons if you so desire (Pendo lets you stick to just one).
- You can add icons to every module, creating more engaging and personalized experiences that match your brand’s personality.
Actionable resource center analytics to improve self-serve content
In addition to analytics features that Pendo offers, you can also find in Userpilot the following analytics functions for your resource center:
- Content Analytics: On this page, you’ll find comprehensive analytics for your resource center, detailing the number of clicks on each module and the timestamp of the last click. You can review analytics across three tabs: Home, Help, and News.
- Post Analytics with user data such as clicks, target users, etc., and information for internal tracking like Updated By – The user name of the team member who has last updated the post.
- Search Analytics: In this tab, you’ll discover the searches users conduct. You’ll see a list of titles users have searched for, along with the number of searches for each title. This data helps in customizing content to meet user needs. Additionally, you’ll determine whether the last search event delivered any results.
Conclusion
Now you know what to expect from Pendo Resource Center without filling out a demo request form or signing up for any of the plans.
We’ve also gone over its limitations, so you’ll see what you’re getting into. In addition to that, this article has shown you a viable alternative to Pendo.
So which of the SaaS tools will you choose? We can’t select for you, but based on the price and functionalities we’ve compared, Userpilot seems like the software that will provide a better bang for your buck.
Get a Userpilot demo to get started building a Resource Center for your tool.
Userpilot – A Better Alternative for Building In-App Resource Centers
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