Pendo vs Userlane: Which is Best for Your SaaS?

Pendo vs Uselane: Which is Best for Your SaaS?

Wondering whether Pendo or Userlane is the best option for your SaaS company?

This article is going to dive into the Pendo vs Userlane debate and try to answer a key question: Which is the better tool for user onboarding, as well as other use cases?

In the post below, we’ve covered all the common use cases and done an in-depth analysis of the key features of Pendo and Userlane – as well as compared it to an alternative solution that may be better in some situations.

Let’s get into it!

TL;DR

  • Let’s explore how Pendo, and Userlane compare when it comes to user onboarding and other common use cases.
      • 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.
      • Userlane is a no-code digital adoption platform used to measure how employees use applications, identify areas for improvement, and offer real-time guidance directly within any application.
  • If you’re looking for a better option for user onboarding, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to other tools on the list.
  • Userpilot is a product growth platform that drives user activation, feature adoption, and expansion revenue. It also helps product teams collect user feedback, streamline onboarding, and gather actionable insights from analytics. Get a Userpilot demo for user onboarding and drive your product growth code-free.

Userpilot – A Better Alternative for your SaaS

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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 product areas, data explorer, product engagement score, and resource centers are locked to the Starter plan or higher.

What is Userlane?

Userlane is a no-code digital adoption platform used to measure how employees use applications, identify areas for improvement, and offer real-time guidance directly within any application.

In addition, it allows you to get a real-time view of digital transformation progress in your organization. You can now delve deeper into user behaviors across different applications and analyze engagement levels so you can optimize user experiences.

Pendo vs Userlane for user onboarding

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Pendo vs Userlane in terms of user onboarding. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Pendo or Userlane – is the best option depending on your use case.

Pendo for user onboarding

Pendo is a product adoption platform that has the usual onboarding features that are commonly included with similar solutions. However, those using Pendo Free will need to note that they’ll need to find a new onboarding solution once they cross 500 MAUs or upgrade to the paid version.

There are a few ways you can use Pendo to improve your new user onboarding flows:

  • Guide Layouts: Pendo has layout templates for lightboxes, banners, and tooltips that you can use to build onboarding flows for new users.
  • Flow Triggers: Pendo’s guide activation options let you trigger an onboarding flow when new users land on a particular URL, use a specific device type, interact with a tagged element, or match the target segment.
  • Localization Settings: Localization settings can stop an onboarding flow from triggering if it hasn’t been translated into the user’s chosen language. Because Pendo has no AI-powered localization features, you’ll need to upload language CSVs manually for this to work.
  • Onboarding Module: You can add the onboarding module to your in-app resource center in two clicks then change the color, text style, and progress icon to align it with your product’s brand palette.

Userlane for user onboarding

Teams use Userlane to ditch the stress of manual onboarding. The platform allows you to build a customized and interactive onboarding dashboard for each software, promoting an easy software onboarding experience every time.

Here are some ways Userlane helps with onboarding:

  • Digital adoption solution: Userlane has a digital adoption solution that provides on-screen, step-by-step guidance to your users. This way, users can navigate your software with ease. You can also create an interactive in-app guide that walks users through tasks, so there’s no steep learning curve or need for external training materials.
  • User-specific communication: User onboarding isn’t one-size-fits-all. Everyone’s needs are different. You can customize and improve their walkthroughs and communication based on the user’s behavior and software. Personalized communication makes it easy to remember how to use the features and get help.
  • Comprehensive Analytics: Userlane has two applications for user analytics: HEART and Content analytics. HEART is Userlane’s premiere model to monitor software adoption across enterprise apps. The model shows if an application delivers the expected value. And highlights areas teams can improve and optimize. Content Analytics adds a layer of interactivity for guided learning within the platform. This feature allows teams to create guides, tips, and Pop-Ups and host NPS surveys.

Pendo vs Userlane for product adoption

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Pendo vs Userlane in terms of product adoption. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Pendo or Userlane – is the best option depending on your use case.

Pendo for product adoption

Because product adoption is the primary use case for the Pendo platform, most of its features contribute towards onboarding users, tracking adoption analytics, monitoring usage patterns, or measuring churn rates.

Pendo’s product adoption features include:

  • Product Analytics: Pendo analytics can show you patterns in user behavior, underutilized areas of your product, and other usage data. Pendo divides its analytics into funnels, paths, and retention — the latter of which is capable of tracking cohort churn over time (months or weeks).
  • Feature Engagement: Pendo’s dashboard widgets let you see feature engagement from multiple lenses to ensure you get the full picture. You’ll be able to view the features that generate the majority of click volume and track features used by accounts/visitors.
  • Build guides to drive engagement: Pendo has layout templates for lightboxes, banners, and tooltips that you can use to build onboarding flows for new users.
  • Feedback Collection: Pendo can gather user feedback through polls, input fields, and NPS surveys. Its NPS surveys can be delivered both in-app and via email while giving the option to include follow-up questions that provide qualitative feedback.

Note: Pendo in-app resource centers can only be created if you’re on the Growth or Portfolio plan.

Userlane for product adoption

Teams use Userlane to ditch the stress of manual onboarding. The platform allows you to build a customized and interactive onboarding dashboard for each software, promoting an easy software onboarding experience every time.

Here are some ways Userlane helps with onboarding:

  • Digital adoption solution: Userlane has a digital adoption solution that provides on-screen, step-by-step guidance to your users. This way, users can navigate your software with ease. You can also create an interactive in-app guide that walks users through tasks, so there’s no steep learning curve or need for external training materials.
  • User-specific communication: User onboarding isn’t one-size-fits-all. Everyone’s needs are different. You can customize and improve their walkthroughs and communication based on the user’s behavior and software. Personalized communication makes it easy to remember how to use the features and get help.
  • Comprehensive Analytics: Userlane has two applications for user analytics: HEART and Content analytics. HEART is Userlane’s premiere model to monitor software adoption across enterprise apps. The model shows if an application delivers the expected value. And highlights areas teams can improve and optimize. Content Analytics adds a layer of interactivity for guided learning within the platform. This feature allows teams to create guides, tips, and Pop-Ups and host NPS surveys.

Pendo vs Userlane for customer experience

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Pendo vs Userlane in terms of customer experience. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Pendo or Userlane – is the best option depending on your use case.

Pendo for customer experience

Customer experience is the sum of touchpoints across your customer support, customer success, marketing, and sales teams but the product experience also plays a key role. Pendo lets you survey, poll, and collect feedback from users on the customer experience through multiple features.

Here are the Pendo features that can be used to gather customer experience insights:

  • Polling Features: Using Pendo to poll specific segments can guide your customer experience optimization (CXO) efforts. You’ll also be able to add polling widgets to your home dashboard so you can view responses, response rates, and other poll-related data points.
  • NPS Surveys: Pendo NPS surveys can collect both quantitative and qualitative data by combining rating scales with follow-up (open-ended) questions. You can view all NPS survey analytics from the NPS section on your sidebar or the NPS widget on your home dashboard. Note: All NPS surveys have Pendo branding on them unless you upgrade to the Starter plan, which costs $7,000/year.
  • Segmentation: Pendo segmentation settings like you create different flows, guides, and onboarding journeys for each user. You can segment users based on the type of device they’re on, what operating system it’s running on, which browser they’re using, or when they joined.
  • Path Analytics: Pendo’s path analytics dashboard shows you the paths users take to get to a specific page or when coming from a specific page. These insights help you identify the areas where you need to reduce friction and add contextual UI patterns.
  • Feedback Module: You can add a feedback module to your in-app resource center in two clicks to get direct insights from users on how to improve the customer experience.

Userlane for customer experience

Userlane is not designed as a customer experience platform. However, it helps create different user segments for each customer depending on their preferences and specific needs.

Using a specialized tool is always going to cost less money and time. That’s why we recommend Userpilot for customer experience—since it’s probably the most cost-efficient product management tool to apply all these tactics (and you don’t need to code).

Pendo vs Userlane for user feedback

In this section of the article, we’re really going to compare Pendo vs Userlane in terms of user feedback. That way, we’ll be able to figure out which tool – Pendo or Userlane – is the best option depending on your use case.

Pendo for user feedback

Product feedback can provide targeted data on the product as a whole or specific features. These will offer insight into which features are easiest/hardest to use, which ones make your product sticky, and which changes to make to keep your largest customers satisfied.

Here are the Pendo features that you can utilize to collect product feedback:

  • Customer Effort Score (CES) Polls: CES polls created with Pendo can provide insights on which areas of your product are easiest to use. These CES polls can also target specific segments to see if new users are struggling with a feature that power users have no problem with.

  • Mobile Reviews: Those using Pendo for mobile apps can also use its product feedback features to collect reviews for the iOS App Store or Google Play Store. In addition to offering insights, these reviews could also boost user acquisition (provided they’re mostly positive).
  • Pendo Feedback: Pendo offers a separate product called Pendo Feedback that can be used to centralize feedback and integrate that data with tools like Salesforce or Jira. Pendo Feedback uses custom pricing and is charged by the seat.
  • Segmented Feedback: Pendo feedback lets you see what segment respondents are in, how much they spend, and other relevant user tags so you can highlight responses from your most valuable customers.

Userlane for user feedback

Userlane helps you create interactive tours and guides within your software.

These guides collect feedback from users as they navigate through the application.

This feedback can be through surveys, questionnaires, or specific prompts. The aim is to collect user product feedback, including opinions, suggestions, or concerns about the product. How? Through the following:

  • Creates interactive tours to guide users through software.
  • Collects feedback via surveys, questionnaires, and prompts.
  • Gathers user opinions, suggestions, and concerns about the product.

Pendo vs Userlane: Which one you should choose?

To further simplify this selection process, let’s break down the strengths and limitations of each tool. Understanding the distinct advantages and potential drawbacks of Pendo and Userlane will provide you with a detailed roadmap for making a well-informed decision!

Pros and cons of Pendo

Pros of Pendo

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.

Cons of Pendo

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.

Pros and cons of Userlane

Pros of Userlane

Higher productivity, less support effort, and happier users are what Userlane is created for. From a vast spectrum of capabilities to elegantly crafted UI elements that cater to any walkthrough, regardless of its level of customization, Userlane stands out as a robust platform to bolster user engagement and product familiarization.

Let’s dive into the pros of using Userlane:

  • Streamlined no-code interface: Userlane boasts a user-friendly dashboard, enabling even those with no coding background to easily design and implement onboarding flows.
  • Product adoption analytics: Get a real-time view of digital transformation progress in your organization. Delve deeper into user behaviors across different applications and analyze engagement levels so you can optimize user experiences.
  • Dynamic user walkthroughs: Craft compelling and interactive walkthroughs that intuitively guide users through your software, ensuring they grasp every essential feature.
  • Versatile in-app communication tools: Whether tooltips, banners, or pop-up modals, Userlane offers many tools to engage users directly within your platform. With Userlane’s customer onboarding solution, you can tailor communications for different user segments, guiding them through the tasks and processes they will most likely need help with.
  • Seamless third-party integrations: Integrate Userlane with various analytics tools, CRM platforms, and other essential software to ensure a harmonious workflow and data sharing.
  • Granular audience segmentation: Understand your users and their needs better by segmenting them based on behavior, user type, or other customizable metrics. This ensures that your messaging and tours are always relevant and timely.
  • Optimized A/B testing capabilities: Refine your onboarding and in-app messaging by A/B testing different approaches, enabling you to continually enhance user experience based on concrete data.
  • Thoughtful pacing with walkthrough rate limiting: Ensure users aren’t too quickly bombarded with too much information. With Userlane’s rate limiting, you can pace the introduction of new features or tasks, striking a balance between informing and overwhelming.

Cons of Userlane

As with any tool, weighing its strengths and weaknesses is essential. Here are the notable drawbacks of adopting Userlane:

  • Visual Customization Restrictions: One of Userlane’s apparent setbacks lies in its restricted visual customization capabilities. If you have an eye for aesthetic and unique branding elements might find the platform limiting. The lack of diverse templates and somewhat rigid design elements could impede brands from truly reflecting their identity.
  • Analytical Ambiguities: In the age of data-driven decision-making, Userlane’s analytical powers — or the lack thereof — stand out. While it offers basic insights, those looking for a deep dive into granular user behavior, funnel analysis, heatmaps, and more might need to bridge the gap with external integrations.
  • Integration Quandaries: Speaking of integrations, Userlane might not be the Swiss Army knife of connectivity that some businesses might be hoping for. While essentials like Zendesk, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and Salesforce are on the list, those yearning for a wider array of integration options might need to strategize around these limitations.
  • Cost Considerations: Userlane’s pricing structure could be a roadblock, especially for startups and SMEs keen on budget constraints. The initial investment for Userlane might seem daunting, especially considering the added costs of potential integrations and the learning curve associated with maximizing the platform’s potential.

Userpilot – A better alternative for your SaaS

Userpilot is a product growth platform that drives user activation, feature adoption, and expansion revenue. It also helps product teams collect user feedback, streamline onboarding, and gather actionable insights from analytics.

With Userpilot, you’ll be able to track both product usage and user behavior to get a holistic view of how customers use your product — which will guide future development, improve the user experience, and inform your growth efforts.

Pros of Userpilot

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.

Cons of Userpilot

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.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post helped you decide whether Pendo or Userlane is more appropriate for your company. As you can see – both have many upsides and downsides.

Undeniably, Userpilot provides a better value for money and is a better choice for a mid-market SaaS, especially when it comes to user onboarding and user feedback.

If you’re interested in finding more, book a demo with our team here!

Try Userpilot – the Best User Onboarding Solution for SaaS

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