Pendo Tooltips: An In-Depth Review and Alternative

Our SaaS Product Metrics benchmark puts the average core feature adoption rate at 24.5%. Pendo reports that 80% of clicks in the average product focus on just 6% of features.

Both figures point to the same problem:

Most users aren’t adopting the features that could help them get more value from a product. In my experience, one reason for this is that users don’t know these features exist or how to use them. That’s where tooltips come in. They highlight new or key features, explain what they do, and guide users on how to use them.

So, how well do Pendo tooltips perform? In this article, I discuss the use cases, weigh the pros and cons, and explain whether (and when) to consider an alternative.

What are Pendo tooltips?

Pendo tooltips are brief informational messages that appear next to buttons or other elements in your product. They help users understand what an element does without leaving the page.

Here’s an example:

In the example, the tooltip appears next to a badge. They can also appear when users click a button or hover over a specific area of your web app.

Common use cases of Pendo tooltips

There are three main use cases for Pendo tooltips:

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

I discuss each in detail below.

Creating user onboarding programs

During onboarding, some customers only need a quick explanation to understand a feature. Others need more guidance to complete a task. Pendo tooltips let you support both needs:

• For quick explanations: Launch a single-step tooltip that explains what a button or feature does as a new user encounters it.
• For step-by-step guidance: Use multi-step tooltips to walk users through a task when they need more hands-on help.

Either way, customers learn as they use your product, without pulling them away from what they’re doing.

Offering contextual help

Pendo tooltips provide on-the-spot support, so your customers don’t always need to contact support. Use them to nudge customers to the next step or relevant tutorials in your resource center, regardless of where they are in the customer journey.

For example, you can show a Pendo tooltip that briefly explains an unfamiliar feature, then add a “learn more” link like below.

And when customers find answers on their own, they don’t overload your support team with basic questions.

Announcing new features

Pendo tooltips aren’t just for onboarding new users. You can also use them in secondary onboarding flows to introduce new features to existing customers.

For example, you can use a Pendo tooltip to announce new features and show customers how they work, like below.

This enables your CS team to point existing users to features they haven’t tried, without a release email.

Pros of Pendo tooltips

• No-code tooltip creation: You create, edit, publish, and unpublish Pendo tooltips whenever your team needs to update its in-app guidance. This makes it easy for your support team to roll out tooltips to manage recurring customer questions and friction points.
• Mobile app support: Pendo supports tooltips in mobile apps and web applications. This gives you another way to guide customers using your mobile app. Recently, they added image support on mobile as well. Now you can add visual explanations alongside text. However, keep in mind that mobile and desktop tooltips look and behave differently.
• Third-party platform support: Pendo can also launch guides on third-party platforms. This opens up opportunities beyond customer onboarding. For example, you can use tooltips to help employees navigate internal tools during onboarding.

Cons of Pendo tooltips

• Limited customization without code: Pendo lets you apply themes across guides to match your product’s branding without writing code. However, if you want to go beyond those themes and create custom tooltip layouts or make more advanced edits, you’ll need coding skills. Some advanced editing capabilities also require Guides Pro. This can limit how much your support and success teams can customize in-app guidance without developer help.
• Some localization workflows require manual work: Pendo gives you several ways to translate guides. You can translate content directly in Pendo, translate entire guides at once, use integrations for automated translation, or export and import XLIFF files. However, the XLIFF workflow requires you to export each guide’s text, translate it, and import it again. If you edit the guide afterward, you’ll need to repeat the process. Pendo also offers AI-powered localization.
• Plan gating: A wide range of features that enable you to do more with Pendo tooltips are gated behind more expensive plans. A/B experiments, guide logic/branching, task lists, embedded guides, AI localization, and AI guide creation all require Guides Pro.

Pendo pricing

Pendo pricing is based on a Monthly Active Users (MAU)-led model. So, costs depend on how many active users you track and which features you need.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the plans:

• Free: Includes product analytics and in-app guides for up to 500 MAUs. You will also get Pendo-branded roadmaps and NPS surveys.
• Base: Includes product analytics and in-app guides, with custom MAU limits.
• Core: Adds session replay to the analytics and in-app guidance features in Base.
• Ultimate: Includes session replay, sentiment surveys, journey orchestration, Listen, and Data Sync alongside in-app guides.

Pendo doesn’t publish prices for its paid plans. However, Vendr’s data from 589 purchases puts the median contract at $48,598/year.

So, what are real users saying?

Andre S., Customer Exp and Ops Manager, called Pendo Guides a “game changer.”

On the flip side, he also highlighted the need to upgrade to get more out of the platform. A Reddit conversation escalates the concerns:

So, if your customer support or success team only needs tooltips and in-app guidance, Pendo might be “pricey.” In this case, an alternative like Userpilot makes sense.

Userpilot tooltips vs. Pendo tooltips

Userpilot and Pendo both offer useful in-app guidance, but they have different strengths.

• Userpilot makes it easier to create and manage tooltips with native element-level guidance, no-code styling, and built-in product analytics.

• Pendo has the edge in advanced capabilities, including mobile tooltips, delivery controls, and bulk AI translation.

Of the two, Pendo is costlier. Vendr reports a higher median annual cost ($48,598) than Userpilot ($18,000). Beyond cost, there is another concern: Pendo’s complexity. Shelterluv’s experience explains this. Their Director of Customer Solutions, Matthew Brown, shares:

One of the biggest feedback the team had about Pendo was like, we just don’t know how to use it. And it’s hard to figure out. We don’t have the time to just like, sit and read through everything to figure out how to use it

They eventually switched to Userpilot. And currently, they use Userpilot for more than just in-app messaging. Think flow analytics, segmentation, and onboarding checklists.

Had a similar experience with Pendo and want to switch? Book a demo today to see the difference firsthand.

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Disclaimer: 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 November 8, 2026.