When it comes to product engagement, providing guidance that’s accessible but not intrusive is a delicate balance.

Pendo tooltips are one method of contextually engaging users from within the product itself.

This article will go over how it works and alternatives to consider!

Overview of Pendo tooltips

• Tooltips are a core functionality of the Pendo Engage adoption platform.
• Pendo tooltips are small popups that appear next to elements in your product interface to offer contextual help.
• Pendo tooltips can be used when creating onboarding flows, offering timely guidance, or announcing new features.
• The pros of Pendo tooltips are their no-code functionality, mobile compatibility, and deployment options on third-party software.
• The cons of Pendo tooltips are the need to use code for in-depth customization and the lack of event-based flow triggering.
• Pendo pricing starts at $7,000/year for its Starter plan and caps customers at 500 MAUs on the free version.
• Userpilot is an attractive Pendo alternative due to its advanced analytics, codeless customization, and different types of tooltips.
• The pros of Userpilot are its completely codeless in-depth customization, the ability to set behavioral triggers, and a variety of UI patterns (e.g. modals, banners, slideouts, etc.) alongside tooltips.
• The cons of Userpilot are the lack of a free version and the fact that it exclusively supports web-based applications.
• To create tooltips with Userpilot, you need to customize the design to match your brand, optimize your product copy with our AI writing assistant, and select your target audience with the help of segmentation.
• Sign up for a free Userpilot demo today to experience our features and compare them to Pendo or other alternatives!

What are Pendo tooltips?

Pendo tooltips are one of the core functionalities of Pendo Engage, which is a digital adoption software for web and mobile apps.

In essence, Pendo tooltips are informational blurbs that appear next to a specific element within your product and provide in-app guidance.

Common use cases of Pendo tooltips

There are three main use cases for Pendo tooltips, including:

• Creating user onboarding flows.
• Offering contextual help.
• Announcing new features.

We’ll go over each of these in greater detail in the sections below!

Create user onboarding programs

Pendo tooltips can either be used as stand-alone in-app messages for new customers or be incorporated into interactive onboarding tours.

Tooltip guides convey important information during the onboarding process that removes friction and reduces the odds of new users getting stuck at any particular stage.

They are especially useful if you want to provide new information to the user without disrupting their actions.

Offer contextual help

Pendo tooltips can also be used to direct a user’s attention towards help resources at the moments in their journey when they need it most.

To achieve this, you can either use Pendo tooltips to build in-app guides that offer contextual help or redirect people toward assets within a resource center.

By taking this proactive approach, your support team will have fewer tickets to deal with!

Announce new features

In addition to new user onboarding, Pendo tooltips can also be used in secondary onboarding flows, such as announcing new features.

Using tooltips, you can drive new feature discovery and adoption for existing users, effectively increasing your product stickiness.

Tooltips are mainly used for minor feature releases, whereas larger product updates are best communicated through modals or, as they are called in Pendo, “lightboxes”.

Pros of Pendo tooltips

• No-code tooltips. You can create Pendo tooltips without having to write a single line of code or wait for developer support. Similarly, you’ll be able to edit and publish/unpublish these tooltips at any time without any coding.
• Mobile compatibility. Pendo’s tooltips work on mobile apps in addition to web-based applications. This helps you provide a consistent, omnichannel experience for all users regardless of which platform they’re on.
• Third-party platforms. Because Pendo can be launched on third-party platforms (in addition to your own product), it’s possible to use Pendo tooltips for employee onboarding.

Cons of Pendo tooltips

• Coded customization. Although creating basic tooltips with Pendo doesn’t require any coding, for more in-depth customization, you would need coding skills. This means that you’ll still need assistance from developers if you want to create a branded experience.
• Triggering limitations. Pendo allows you to trigger tooltips based on the page URL, device type, and other basic attributes, but it doesn’t support behavioral triggering. That’s because Pendo lacks real-time analytics, data is synched every hour instead. This limits the contextual applications of tooltips.

Pendo pricing

Pendo users can choose between the free version or one of three paid plans.

Here’s an overview of Pendo’s plans:

• Free. The free version of Pendo provides access to product analytics and lets you create in-app guides. However, its usefulness is limited by the fact that you can only have up to 500 monthly active users before needing to switch to a paid plan (starting at $7,000/year).
• Starter. The entry-level Starter plan starts at $7,000/year and increases your monthly active user limit to 2.000 MAUs. It also provides access to NPS functionality which isn’t available on the free version of Pendo.

• Growth. Pendo’s Growth plan uses quote-based pricing and provides access to sentiment analytics along with other features that aren’t available on the Starter tier. This plan is primarily targeted towards organizations with a single product.
• Portfolio. Finally, the Portfolio plan is Pendo’s highest tier aimed at organizations trying to manage multiple products across their portfolio. It includes exclusive features like cross-app reporting and portfolio summaries.

Userpilot tooltips: A better alternative for product teams

While Pendo tooltips are a good entry point to in-app guidance, they have limitations and may not be the best option out there for every business. Pendo alternatives such as Userpilot may be better suited for some companies.

Userpilot is a product growth platform for product teams. Its key features include advanced analytics, robust in-app communication, and customizable guidance functionality.

Userpilot has two different types of tooltips: standard and native.

Standard tooltips are attached to an element on a specific page and are triggered based on in-app events.

In contrast, native tooltips are embedded in the element itself and are triggered when the users click or hover over the sign.

This is perfect for navigation bars, menus, or buttons that appear across your entire product rather than on a single page.

Pros of Userpilot tooltips

• No-code customization. Everything from basic edits to high-level customization can be done completely code-free within Userpilot. This means that even complex changes to how your tooltips or flows look are possible without the need for developer assistance.
• Behavioral triggers. Unlike Pendo, Userpilot supports the triggering of tooltips based on in-app events and real-time user behavior. This ensures that tooltips appear at the most relevant moments in the user journey.
• Complementary UI patterns. Userpilot has a variety of UI patterns that can work alongside tooltips to create a more flexible in-app messaging experience. These include banners, modals, slideouts, and hotspots that you can use in combination with tooltips.

Cons of Userpilot tooltips

• Pricing. Userpilot doesn’t offer a freemium version like Pendo does. Furthermore, entry-level pricing may also be expensive for small businesses since our target segment is mid-market and enterprise SaaS companies.
• Web-only. Userpilot focuses on web-based applications which means it doesn’t have mobile compatibility like Pendo. However, the single-platform focus leads to fewer bugs and features that are tailored specifically to web-based SaaS products.

How to create tooltips with Userpilot?

If you want to provide additional context with a tooltip guide created in Userpilot, the three sections below will walk you through the exact steps.

In a nutshell, it all comes down to customizing the tooltip’s design, using AI to improve copy, and targeting tooltips towards the right audience.

Customize the tooltip design to match your brand

Userpilot’s no-code styling settings help you make the tooltip design consistent with your brand and product interface.

You can even change the font, select a background color, add emojis, or embed images/videos to create a richer tooltip experience for users.

Fine-tune your in-app messaging with AI

To create the best product copy, you should stay on top of trends and combine human copy with AI-powered optimization.

Userpilot has an integrated AI writing assistant that can rephrase, shorten, clarify, and improve readability for all your in-app messages.

Choose the target users for your tooltip

In addition to the design and content of your tooltips, it’s also essential to target the right users.

Userpilot lets you select a pre-defined segment to show a tooltip, leading to a more personalized experience. These segments can be created based on attributes such as location, device type, company, user persona, past feedback, etc.

You can also set behavioral triggers to determine the conditions for when a tooltip should appear.

Userpilot pricing

We use transparent pricing while offering plans for mid-market and enterprise SaaS companies.

Here’s an overview of the three Userpilot plans you can choose from:

• Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, NPS feedback, and customization.
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $749/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

As you can see, Pendo tooltips are a good starting point for bootstrapped companies in need of a simple, freemium tool.

However, those planning to scale beyond 500 MAUs and have more control over their tooltip customization, would be best served by alternatives like Userpilot.

If you’re ready to test the power of tooltips on your own product, it’s time to get a free Userpilot demo today!

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