Pendo and WalkMe are two major players in the digital adoption industry.

Today we’re going to put them head-to-head to see which comes out to be the strongest tool. We’ll also be sharing an alternative to these tools that might just be a better choice.

A look into Pendo

Pendo specializes most in product analytics, though it certainly has powerful tools for creating onboarding flows (called Pendo guides). Despite the price and its steep learning curve, Pendo does have a few pros compared to its competitors.

Pros of Pendo

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of using Pendo:

• Custom themes: Pendo’s themes let you create multiple color palettes and ensure that any in-app materials published align with your existing brand palette.
• 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 wayPendo integrations

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 In some cases, this data lag could lead product teams to make the wrong decisions or draw false conclusions from outdated insights.
• Steep learning curve: While Pendo offers a robust set of features, learning to use all of them effectively can be challenging for non-technical teams. The user interface can feel cluttered or overwhelming, particularly for beginners, making it harder to navigate and utilize its full potential.
• Limited engagement features: Pendo’s UI patterns aren’t the best. First, it lacks standalone checklists, they are only available as part of the resource center, second Pendo doesn’t offer slideouts like some other product adoption tools in the market do.

A look into WalkMe

WalkMe, recently acquired by SAP, was one of the first in the scene for digital adoption. It has many of the same key features as Pendo, but while it does offer tools for customer-facing experiences, its larger focus is on employee onboarding.

Pros of WalkMe

Here are the pros of using WalkMe:

• Multiple in-app engagements: It offers a wide range of in-app engagement options, including product tours, tooltips, help widgets, onboarding checklists, and more.
• Workflow automation: Workflow automation features like onboarding automation stand out as they enable you to automate a series of steps and processes like clicking buttons to make your customer experience better.
• Community: WalkMe offers a strong community of experts and partners who can help you whenever you get stuck.

Cons of WalkMe

While WalkMe has a bunch of good things to offer that make it one of the leading digital adoption platforms out there, it does have a few drawbacks that prevent you from unlocking its full potential. Let’s take a look at some of the cons of this platform:

• Coding knowledge: Even though WalkMe is no-code/low-code for most of its functions, you’ll need to know HTML or CSS to make the most out of the platform.
• Challenging on complex sites: The process of implementing WalkMe on your website depends on the complexity of your site. You might find it challenging to ensure that your content behaves the way it should if you’ve got a complicated website.
• Focused on employees: WalkMe’s primary use case lies in digital adoption for employees, even though it has a specific plan for customers. However, this makes it slightly weaker compared to other platforms, like Userpilot, that have been dedicatedly built for customers.

Here’s what one ex-WalkMe customer has to say about the tool:

Pendo vs WalkMe for user onboarding

Both Pendo and WalkMe have a strong presence when it comes to user onboarding. There’s also a good bit of overlap in terms of their core features.

To start with, both will let you create effective user onboarding experiences that guide users across the user journey toward activation.

However, the different use cases of each tool mean there are key differences in the features they offer.

Pendo for user onboarding

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.

WalkMe for user onboarding

WalkMe has a bunch of features for user onboarding:

• You can create an onboarding checklist through the Onboarding Tasks feature on WalkMe. It’s possible to set different goals inside your checklist so users can keep checking them as they complete them. The Onboarding Tasks can include Smart Walk-Thrus, videos, and articles to guide your new users.
• You can also use WalkMe’s SmartTips feature to guide your users through the app’s UI. These serve as on-screen guidance and help reduce the learning curve for new users. Clicking on a SmartTip opens a pop-up that gives more information on the element.

• Likewise, you can use ShoutOuts to draw your new user’s attention to specific announcements. They’re essentially banners that you can use to show users what they need to know when getting started. You can also get them to take action through ShoutOuts.

• You could also use Launchers in your onboarding flow for some self-guidance. When users click on Launchers, a new action like a Smart Walk-Thru will get triggered. Users can click on each Launcher you create to learn more about your platform.

Pendo vs WalkMe for product usage analytics

Product usage analytics are important because they allow your product managers to determine whether your onboarding flow is achieving the desired results, and if not, how to improve it.

Both Pendo and WalkMe give you access to product usage and onboarding analytics, but not to quite the same extent.

Pendo for product analytics

Pendo has no shortage of product analytics capabilities as both native features and third-party integrations. You’ll even be able to access the most important metrics like MAUs and feature use from the home dashboard itself.

Here’s a closer look at Pendo’s analytics features:

• Native analytics: Because Pendo is a product adoption platform, most of its adoption and engagement analytics are native to the solution. This means you’ll be able to track the number of views, clicks, and interactions that specific in-app guides or product areas get.
• Paths: The Paths section of your Pendo account shows you which paths users take when coming from a specific page or which path they took to get to a particular page. You’ll also be able to sort this data by segment, date, or see the paths taken by individual visitor IDs.

• Retention: Pendo’s retention analytics dashboard lets you see cohort retention data from month to month. You’ll also be able to toggle between visitors versus accounts, switch between weekly or monthly views, and measure retention for specific segments.

• Funnels: Pendo’s funnel analytics can tell you how many unique visitors have seen your funnels, how many attempts have been made to get through the funnel, and the average time it takes to complete the funnel. You’ll also be able to see completion rates and sort by date or segment.

• Analytics widgets: Pendo’s home dashboard lets you choose which widgets you’d like to add or remove. You’ll be able to select from various analytics widgets that track product goals, feature adoption, guide views, time-on-app, and other core metrics.

WalkMe for product analytics

WalkMe offers some advanced features for product analytics:

• The session playback feature can help you look into user sessions from the past year. By default, up to 1,000 session playbacks will be visible in your account at any given time. You can use them to analyze past user sessions and even ones happening in real time.

• You also get user funnel tracking capabilities on WalkMe. It enables you to create a custom funnel to track various events. You can then monitor various metrics like funnel completion rates and drop-off rates to see how users interact with your platform. WalkMe also lets you filter the data based on browser, date ranges, and more.
• It’s also possible to get analytics on your in-app experiences to determine which features are being used the most by your users.

Pendo vs WalkMe ease of use comparison

Now, before diving into this section it’s worthwhile to point out that the question we’ll answer isn’t really “Which is easier to use?” Both tools are not that user-friendly.

Rather, it’s more like, “Which is less difficult.”

We’ve already touched on this a bit, so let’s start with setup.

Setup and implementation comparison

WalkMe is on-premise software, meaning you’ll need to install it locally. This is not as easy as double-clicking an executable file, and actually takes quite a bit of time, work, and technical knowledge.

WalkMe’s certified technicians can help you with this, but don’t imagine that you’ll sign up for WalkMe and start building custom product walkthroughs all at once.

Pendo is simpler and faster to set up than WalkMe but still requires some relatively advanced technical ability.

Using the product

WalkMe offers highly customizable and sophisticated product walkthroughs – that is, provided you have the coding and technical skills necessary to get them working.

You can also pay for a certified expert to help with the technical aspects, but this just makes an already pricey product even more expensive.

Pendo, on the other hand, offers its Visual Design Studio as a way to reduce the need for coding. Unfortunately, this comes with two major downsides.

First, using the studio limits your ability to customize walkthroughs and UI elements. To do that, you’ll need to be able to write some CSS.

Second, the Visual Design Studio can be a bit clunky to use. You can preview your walkthroughs in the studio dashboard, but that’s separate from the web app where you actually create them.

This means that you have to constantly switch between applications just to get a sense of how your edits are taking effect. Further, you can’t test your walkthrough until the code has been installed via API.

Pendo vs WalkMe pricing comparison

Comparing prices between Pendo and WalkMe is tricky since WalkMe doesn’t make its pricing information publicly available.

What we can say, though, is that neither option is cheap, especially not for startups and SMEs.

Pendo pricing

Pendo offers valuable product experience solutions, but pricing transparency seems to be a recurring point of concern. Based on user reviews, Pendo uses a tiered pricing model based on features and number of monthly active users (MAUs). Costs for Pendo can potentially range from $25,800 to $132,400 annually.

Here’s an overview of Pendo pricing plans:

• Free: Limited functionality for up to 500 monthly active users (MAUs). Includes basic product analytics, in-app guides, NPS surveys, and roadmaps.
• Base: This plan targets companies starting with product experience management. It includes custom MAU limits, product analytics, in-app guides, and one integration.
• Core: The core solution for driving business results, it includes everything in Base, plus session replay functionality.
• Pulse: Focuses on optimizing product investments, it includes everything in Core, plus NPS surveys to collect user feedback and product discovery functionalities.
• Ultimate: Most comprehensive plan, it includes everything in Pulse, plus advanced in-app guides (Pro edition) and data sync capabilities.

WalkMe pricing

WalkMe’s pricing isn’t transparent, but it’s fully customizable based on your requirements. It offers a bunch of useful features like analytics, a self-serve content creation engine, in-app engagement creation, and more.

However, you need to get in touch with their team to find pricing details for both the customer and employee versions. Considering the platform is specifically built for enterprises, you can expect the cost to be on the higher end. You could end up spending anywhere between $9,000 to $50,000 per year if you choose to use WalkMe.

Is Pendo better than WalkMe? The final verdict

If you’ve been keeping score, it’s pretty clear by now that Pendo has won in most categories.

To summarize, Pendo comes out ahead because of:

• More control over user segmentation and user analytics.
• Is simpler to implement and use.
• Supports customer-facing onboarding in startups and SMEs – not just large enterprises doing employee onboarding.
• Is probably cheaper. However, this is unclear without getting a quote from the company.

At this point, you might be thinking that these products seem useful, but don’t quite meet the needs of your SaaS business or customer success goals.

If only there was a third option that’s easier to use, more focused on SaaS growth goals, and less expensive.

Fortunately, such an option does exist! Allow me to introduce a third contender: Userpilot.

Try Userpilot and Take Your Product Growth to the Next Level

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Userpilot: A better alternative to Pendo and WalkMe

If you’re a mid-market SaaS company with a product team, Userpilot might be just the digital adoption platform you need. It allows you to improve your user onboarding process by building in-app messages, and triggering them contextually to drive customer engagement and ultimately product adoption.

Let’s run through some of Userpilot’s key features and see how they compare.

Userpilot for user onboarding

Here are some Userpilot features you can use when onboarding new users:

• No-code builder: Creating flows with Userpilot is as simple as installing the Chrome extension, selecting the UI patterns you’d like to use, and then editing the content/settings to suit your use case. You can also use templates to create modals, slideouts, tooltips, and driven actions to streamline your in-app messaging strategy.

• Advanced flow settings: With advanced condition settings, you can decide when, where, and who you’ll be triggering your onboarding flows. This helps you create contextual and personalized onboarding experiences that drive engagement and adoption.

• Staging environment: You can easily test all your content – flows, customer feedback surveys, and everything else – in a staging environment. This way, you can ensure everything works before it reaches your users.

• Onboarding engagement analytics: You can easily assess the impact of your onboarding flows, guidance, etc. by analyzing the engagement rate of tooltips, interactive walkthroughs, checklists, etc.

Userpilot product analytics features

Here are Userpilot’s top product analytics features:

• Autocapture: Userpilot automatically records everything your users do, like clicks and form inputs, so you don’t need to tag events or involve developers.

• Session replays: Userpilot’s Session Replays let you watch real-time recordings of how users interact with your product, so you can see exactly what they experience. It’s a simple way to uncover friction points, understand user behavior, and improve your product’s usability.

• Trends and funnels: Userpilot’s trends and funnels report lets you extract actionable insights from big data. You’ll be able to see which stage of an onboarding/conversion funnel most users drop out on and create trend reports with detailed breakdowns by user or period.

• Retention tables: This lets you gauge product performance to see how effective your product is at retaining users using cohort tables and retention curves.

• Paths: You can generate and access path reports directly within the reporting builder in Userpilot, alongside funnels, trends, and retention reports. With Userpilot Paths, you can have an overview of how users navigate your product features – offering invaluable insights into their interactions with your products.

• Analytics dashboards: These dashboards enable you to keep track of your key product performance and user behavior metrics at a glance, without any technical setup required. You can also create your own customized dashboards.

Userpilot’s ease of use

You can get Userpilot set up and running in minutes with its Chrome extension and a copy/paste of one line of JavaScript code into your app.

Beyond the single line at installation, there is no coding necessary to access, implement, or test all the tools, features, and resources Userpilot offers.

Check out this article to see how easy it is to get Userpilot up and running.

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, NPS feedback, and customization.
• Growth: The Growth plan starts at $799/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).

Userpilot vs Walkme

Here’s a sum up of how Userpilot stacks against Walkme:

Userpilot vs Pendo

Here’s a sum up of how Userpilot stacks against Pendo:

Conclusion

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to give a definitive recommendation for which tool is “best” overall. Pendo tends to beat WalkMe for most SaaS use cases, and Userpilot is a fantastic option for SaaS startups and SMEs that promise greater value for money.

Does flexible, code-free onboarding software sound like a good fit for your company? If so, check out a Userpilot demo and get started today!

Try Userpilot and Take Your Product Growth to the Next Level

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