Pendo vs Whatfix - which is better for interactive user guides?

Pendo vs Whatfix – summary

Let’s explore how Pendo and Whatfix compare when it comes to creating interactive user guides.
- 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.
- Interactive user guides — whether in the form of linear product tours or interactive walkthroughs — can streamline the product adoption process for new users. Whatfix lets you build interactive user guides with task lists and smart tips on multiple platforms.
If you’re looking for a better option for creating interactive user guides, 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 and drive your product growth code-free.

What is an interactive user guide?

An interactive user guide is a set of UI patterns designed to work together and help customers understand how to use your product.

There are two main types of user guides: full product tours (which tend to be more detailed and time-consuming), and interactive manuals (using tooltips and real-time guidance to provide more contextual help to your customers).

Interactive user manuals are an excellent way of engaging and educating your users, helping them to get the most out of your product, and improving user onboarding and feature adoption.

Must have features for interactive user guide tools

Not all tools are built the same. Some offer different advantages over others while some will simply get you basic functionality but at a low price. It depends on your budget and needs which will be the best tool to build interactive user guides.

Here’s what to look for as the main functionalities when picking a tool to build in-app guides:

Good range of UI patterns to use for building your guides.
Ability to customize each interactive guide to fit your brand and style.
Segmentation so you could trigger the guides to the right audience at the right time. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t bring you the desired results.
The ability to trigger the user guides when specific in-app events happen is nice to have and will help you build more contextual in-app experiences.
Minimum product usage analytics, to be able to track how users engage with the product, and where they get stuck so you can build relevant user guides to help them.

The above list is not exhaustive but it’s a starting point. Depending on your product, you might also need automated localization, A/B testing capabilities, advanced analytics or security, and more.

Pendo for creating interactive user guides

Product tours, walkthroughs, and tooltip sequences all count as interactive user guides. Pendo lets you build interactive user guides that drive feature adoption for both web and mobile apps while writing little to no code.

Here are the benefits of using Pendo to create interactive user guides:

Intuitive Analytics: Pendo divides its analytics into Paths, Retention, and Funnels to avoid overwhelming new users. This makes it easy to find the exact metrics you’re looking for while ignoring other data that would otherwise serve as background noise.
No-Code Guides: Whether you’re creating a full-blown product tour or a short guide sequence, Pendo lets you build and edit these flows without the need for extensive coding. This speeds up the build process and reduces the amount of engineering resources needed to iterate.
Segmented Guides: Pendo lets you limit visibility for certain guides to specific segments — meaning users only see in-app guides that are relevant to their use case and where they are in the user journey.
Mobile Guides: Unlike most of its competitors, Pendo lets you create interactive user guides for your mobile apps. This is invaluable to mobile product adoption as data from Adjust showed that the majority of mobile apps get deleted within a week of inactivity.

No-code product tours in Pendo

Product tours help new users reach product activation, increase retention rates in the long run, and drive feature adoption through secondary onboarding flows. Pendo has plenty of features that you can use to create streamlined product tours for new and existing users.

Here are a few product tour features that you can utilize with Pendo:

Welcome Screens: Pendo lets you create a full-screen welcome modal that welcomes new users and tells them what the next step of their onboarding process is. You can also let them select which product tour they’d like to proceed to or link to more resources for them to explore.
Segmented Guides: When creating in-app guides with Pendo, you’ll be given the option to limit certain flows to a specific segment. This means you’ll be able to create separate product tours for each use case to make the onboarding process as contextual as possible.
Feature Adoption: Pendo’s feature adoption analytics will show you which features have the highest or lowest adoption rates. These insights can help you make a data-informed decision on which features to promote within product tours.

In-app messaging in Pendo

In-app messaging is one of the most effective ways to engage with active users with the goal of educating, retaining, or upselling them. Most in-app messaging flows are comprised of tooltips, modals, or a combination of the two.

Here are Pendo in-app messaging features you can use to connect with your users:

Lightboxes: Lightboxes are Pendo’s take on modals. Certain lightboxes can prevent users from interacting with the product until the in-app message has been dismissed, so these intrusive popups should be reserved for important notifications.
Tooltips: Instead of taking up large swathes of the screen, tooltips are small text snippets that show up next to a button or feature to provide additional context. These can help users discover new features or figure out where to go next after completing a product tour.
Banners: While not as commonly used as lightboxes and tooltips, Pendo banners are another in-app messaging option that you can use. These show up at the top of the screen and can be used as a less-intrusive alternative to lightboxes as they don’t restrict product interaction.

Whatfix for creating interactive user guides

Interactive user guides — whether in the form of linear product tours or interactive walkthroughs — can streamline the product adoption process for new users. Whatfix lets you build interactive user guides with task lists and smart tips on multiple platforms.

Here’s an overview of Whatfix’s interactive guide capabilities:

Task Lists: Task lists are Whatfix’s version of an onboarding checklist. This feature will display a targeted list to give new users a clear view of what their next steps should be. You can also set the task list to always display on-screen until every task is complete.
Smart Tips: Whatfix’s smart tip functionality lets you embed contextual guidance within the UI of an application. These could consist of tooltips that expand when interacted with or input validation for information entered on text fields.
Mobile Guides: Whatfix Mobile lets you build interactive flows for customers or employees who are using applications on a mobile device. This ensures that users get the same Whatfix onboarding experience regardless of which platform they’re on.

No-code product tours in Whatfix

Whatfix’s digital adoption platform may be separate from its product analytics solution. Still, it does offer a well-rounded feature set for building no-code product tours, task lists, and smart tips that help new customers/employees learn about a product.

Product Tour: Whatfix lets you use custom pop-ups that greet customers, brief employees, and lead into an interactive tour of the product’s core functionality. You’ll also be able to embed multimedia — such as microvideos — that help with onboarding and adoption.
Task List: Whatfix’s task lists (essentially onboarding checklists) give each customer or employee a tailored list of in-app flows that they should complete before proceeding. You can even tweak the settings to keep the task list visible until all tasks have been completed.
Smart Tips: The smart tips feature shows contextual guidance within the UI of a particular product. For instance, this could be a tooltip that expands when customers use a specific feature. These smart tips can also be used to validate text field inputs from users.

In-app messaging in Whatfix

In-app messaging helps you keep users engaged and provides an opportunity for sharing important updates. Whatfix uses in-app flows, contextual help embeds, and a self-help widget to help you share key messages with your users.

In-App Guidance: Whatfix’s no-code flows and product tours are the primary means of communicating with employees or customers using an application. Whatfix lets you create pop-ups, task lists, and various UI patterns for guiding users through the adoption process.
Contextual Help: Whatfix contextual help embeds let you insert guidance within the UI of a product to ensure users have easy access to key information when they need it most. These could include tooltips that expand when users interact with them.
Self-Help: The self-help widget is always present on the right side of your users’ screens. This lets every customer or employee easily search for product documentation or other resources that they might need while using a specific application.

Pros and cons of Pendo

There are a few obvious instances where you’ll likely need an alternative solution to Pendo — such as these use cases:

Over 500 MAUs: If your product has more than 500 MAUs then you’ll need to subscribe to a premium Pendo plan (which tends to be significantly more expensive than other competitors on the market).
Real-Time Analytics Needs: Companies that operate in fast-paced work sprints will likely opt for product adoption solutions with real-time analytics since Pendo’s one-hour data lag can data-driven decision-making difficult.
Expensive Pricing Model: Pendo is more expensive than most solutions on the market and the subscription cost rises rapidly as your MAUs grow. Even if you’re on the Starter plan, you could be paying $35,000 annually once you reach 10,000 MAUs — which makes it harder to scale.

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 Whatfix

Whatfix is priced lower than its closest competitor (WalkMe) while letting you onboard both customers and employees to software applications. That said, there are a few clear scenarios where you might want to look for alternative solutions:

If you’re the type of customer who wants to “try before they buy”, then Whatfix isn’t going to be the right fit. The trial request form on their website is buggy, you’ll need to wait a month to hear back on your request, and you might end up with a demo instead of a trial.
Many customers have complained about the subpar support that Whatfix offers. There are multiple reviews on websites like G2 citing slow resolution times, high success manager turnover, and an overall lack of technical assistance from the Whatfix team.
Despite claiming to be built for enterprise organizations, Whatfix’s analytics capabilities leave much to be desired. If you’re looking for advanced analytics capabilities, then find alternatives like WalkMe, Userpilot, or Appcues.

Pros of Whatfix

Whatfix may not be as popular or widely adopted as competitors like WalkMe but it does have its fair share of benefits:

Pricing: While Whatfix does not publish the exact cost of its plans publicly, numerous reports from customers suggest an average entry point of $1,000/month. This is significantly cheaper than its closest competitor, WalkMe, which reportedly starts at closer to $10,000/month.
Automation: Whatfix Flows helps you automate repetitive tasks to save time. The Whatfix Flows dashboard also lets you analyze your existing flows and then use them to create entirely new automation in a single click.
Integrations: Whatfix’s third-party integration options make it easy to incorporate the solution into the rest of your tech stack. It integrates with Salesforce, Amplitude, Google Analytics, Slack, and more — providing a good selection of the top CRM, analytics, and communication tools.

Cons of Whatfix

Whatfix offers a more affordable employee onboarding solution than its closest competitors but is limited by its lackluster analytics and support — along with its high-friction trial signup process for prospective customers.

Here are the key drawbacks of using Whatfix:

Whatfix is quite lacking in the analytics department — both in comparison to direct competitors like WalkMe as well as other onboarding solutions like Userpilot, Appcues, or Pendo. If detailed user data matters to you, you’ll want to consider alternatives.
Technical assistance (or the lack thereof) is arguably one of Whatfix’s largest weaknesses. While all plans promise to give you a customer success manager, most Whatfix users complain about the subpar support they provide.
While Whatfix has a trial request page on its website, this form is buggy and inconsistent. You can reach out to support to request a trial directly but resolution times can be upwards of a month — and, in the end, you may even be redirected to a demo call instead of a trial account.

Pendo vs Whatfix: Which one fits your budget?

Understanding the cost implications is paramount when selecting the right solution for creating interactive user guides, so here’s a detailed pricing comparison of Pendo and Whatfix.

Pricing of Pendo

Pricing for paid Pendo plans is only provided on a quote basis and there are no listed price ranges on the solution’s website. That said, certain reviews have stated that prices start at upwards of $20,000 per year for a single product and more than twice that for higher plans.

Pendo has two paid plans and one free version that is limited to 500 MAUs which makes it accessible to startups but difficult to scale in the long run.

Here are the differences between each Pendo plan:

Pendo Free: The free version of Pendo can accommodate 500 MAUs and has features like native analytics dashboards, feature tagging, event tracking, segmentation, NPS surveys (with Pendo branding), analytics reports, and in-app guides.

Growth: Pendo’s Growth plan is designed to be used for a single web or mobile app but can accommodate a custom number of MAUs. It includes features like native analytics dashboards, in-app guides, NPS surveys and response tracking, and customer support.
Portfolio: Pendo’s Portfolio plan is targeted towards customers who want to use the tool for multiple web and/or mobile apps. Features include guide experiment capabilities, cross-app executive dashboards, cross-app journey reporting, and access to product engagement scores.

Pricing of Whatfix

Whatfix doesn’t have public pricing listed on its website. It also charges separately for its product analytics solution but we won’t be going over those plans since we’re focusing on the digital adoption platform.

Here’s an overview of the three plans available for Whatfix web:

Standard: This includes core features like in-app guidance, contextual guidance, a multi-media knowledge base, and content aggregation capabilities. It also includes access to pre-built surveys and up to two integrations.
Premium: This includes additional features such as automatic content localization, automated flow testing, unlimited integrations, and single sign-on (SSO). You’ll also be able to build custom surveys while on the Premium plan.
Pro: This includes the features from previous plans as well as enterprise-exclusive options such as self-hosting. This plan is targeted towards customer-facing applications with a million or more users.

Userpilot – A better alternative for building interactive user guides

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.

No-code product tours in Userpilot

Product tours are an effective way to show new users what a product can do and reduce the time-to-value (TTV) for them. Userpilot lets you build advanced product tours, set contextual triggers, and target specific audiences, all without writing a single line of code.

Here are the Userpilot features that you can use to build a product tour for your users:

Flow builder: Userpilot’s no-code flow builder has a variety of UI patterns to choose from, such as modals, slideouts, tooltips, and driven actions. All UI patterns are available for use regardless of which Userpilot plan you’re on. All you need to do is install the Chrome extension.

Contextual triggers: Userpilot lets you set triggers for your flows to ensure that they appear at the most contextual moments. Flows could be triggered when users land on a specific page or when a tracked event occurs. There are also manual triggering options that you can tinker with.

Audience targeting: Userpilot’s audience targeting setting lets you set the conditions needed for a flow to show up for a specific user. You can use these settings to create flows that target a specific segment or exclude certain users from seeing a flow if certain conditions are met.

In-app messaging in Userpilot

In-app messaging enables communication within your product to onboard new users or drive feature adoption among existing customers.

Here are a few ways you can send in-app messages using Userpilot:

Modals: Userpilot lets you use modals to send unmissable in-app messages to your users. Simply choose from one of the six templates or create a new modal from scratch. You’ll be able to use text, emojis, images, and videos to help your modals get the message across to users.

Banners: Userpilot banners can be used to send in-app messages that are urgent but don’t need to take up the entire screen. You can also add blocks with text, emojis, images, videos, forms, custom JavaScript functions, and more to style banners to your liking.

Tooltips: They are the least intrusive form of in-app messaging as they only show up when users hover over an element or click on an info icon. You’ll be able to adjust the height, shape, color, and placement of tooltips to make them native-like.

Pricing of Userpilot

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 $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).

What do users say about Userpilot?

Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:

I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.

What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.

Source: G2.

Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:

“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”

Source: G2.

Conclusion

This is the end of our thorough comparison between Pendo and Whatfix. You should be able to make a confident decision by now. If you’re looking for a solid tool for building interactive user guides that promises great value for money, give Userpilot a go. Book a demo today.

Pendo vs Whatfix: Which is Better for Interactive User Guides?

Pendo vs Whatfix – summary

What is an interactive user guide?

Must have features for interactive user guide tools