Userguiding vs Chameleon – which is better for interactive user guides?

Userguiding vs Chameleon - which is better for interactive user guides?

Is Userguiding or Chameleon the best tool for interactive user guides? And is there a better in-app onboarding software that would better fit your needs?

With so many alternatives on review sites, it’s a bit tricky to really choose one.

You need to consider your priorities and what functionality you’ll need from the tool to get the job done. Then there’s also the price that needs to match your budget. Right?

In this post, we’ll discuss exactly that – what the perfect tool for interactive user guides should deliver and which will be the best choice for your company’s needs.
Let’s dive in!

TL;DR

  • Interactive user guides and walkthroughs are important tools for improving user onboarding and feature adoption.
  • There are two types of in-app guides: traditional, linear product tours and interactive walkthroughs with tooltips and real-time guidance.
  • The most efficient way of building in-app guides is by using no-code tools. The key features of such no-code interactive user guide tools include: a wide range of UI patterns, customization, segmentation, triggering based on in-app events, and (at least basic!) product usage analytics.
  • When it comes to interactive guide tools, some of the most common choices include Userguiding, Chameleon and Userpilot.
  • UserGuiding is a lower-cost, entry-level product adoption tool for onboarding and boosting product adoption. Its key features include a no-code builder, segmentation options, various UI patterns (hotspots, tooltips, modals), a resource center, and basic analytics.
  • The in-app guidance features in Userguiding (which is probably what you’re looking for) include interactive product walkthroughs, onboarding elements (modals, tooltips, hotspots, checklists), and in-app resource center.
  • The main issues with Userguiding are its limited features on the basic plan, no dedicated customer success manager, and UserGuiding branding on the in-app guides (!) – which is only removable in the higher pricing plans. The users have been also reporting bugs and performance issues, limited functionality on basic plan, requires technical knowledge, and limited customization options.
  • When it comes to pricing, Userguiding has three tiers (Basic, Professional, Corporate), which range from $69/mo (paid yearly) to $499/mo (also paid annually).
  • In contrast to Userguiding and many no-code alternatives, Chameleon requires some developer involvement. The tool includes step-by-step tours, self-serve launchers, best-practice tips, and microsurveys to create personalized user flows for successful adoption.
  • Chameleon’s pros include a variety of in-app messaging and UI patterns, good segmentation capabilities, compatibility with third-party onboarding tools, and two-way integrations. Chameleon does have some disadvantages, such as limited user onboarding flows, being built specifically for single-page apps, lacking a self-service resource center, having a steeper learning curve, and being somewhat expensive and restricted in its starting plan.
  • In general, Chameleon users are satisfied with its versatility, though they note some limitations in customization, reporting, and analytics, as well as pricing concerns.
  • Chameleon isn’t the best choice if you need an entirely no-code solution, need full-feature access at a low cost, or need advanced product and user analytics. A Chameleon plan’s price is determined by how many users are active within a month. The Startup plan starts from $349/month and the Growth plan starts from $1249/month, but keep in mind that the Startup plan comes with limited features.
  • There is an alternative to both though: Userpilot is a powerful product adoption platform for creating personalized, contextually relevant in-app experiences without writing a line of code. It provides a broad range of UI patterns, advanced in-app checklists, interactive walkthroughs, a self-service in-app resource center, and user feedback tools. Userpilot’s advantages include its no-code builder, multiple UI patterns, engaging walkthroughs, in-app help, experimentation capabilities, powerful feedback options, advanced analytics, event tracking, and several integrations with popular analytics tools. What’s also great about it is its excellent value for money: Userpilot’s pricing is based on the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) and ranges from $249 per month for up to 2,500 users to $1,000+ per month for large-scale businesses.
  •  There are some downsides of using it of course too: it doesn’t support native iOS/Android mobile apps at the moment, employee onboarding, it’s missing some integrations (e.g. with Salesforce), and can potentially be too expensive for small startups on a tight budget.
  • Userpilot might be the best alternative to both Chameleon and Userguiding if you need a user-friendly no-code builder with advanced analytics and event tracking features.

Looking for the best tool for interactive user guides? Search no more!

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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.

Why should you care about interactive user guides?

All product managers want to delight and engage their customers. A big part of that is making sure your users know how to get the most from your application (and in the modern world, that means more than creating a support documentation page).

Fail in that mission, and you risk damaging customer loyalty. Here’s why building interactive user guides is important:

All in all, interactive user guides are the back bone of a successful onboardingstrategy and should be a must for your user experience,

Why do you need tools for building interactive user guides?

Wondering why you even need a tool to create interactive user guides? There are several reasons why you may need one:

For most software companies, creating interactive manuals from scratch is the wrong approach. Why?
Rather than reinventing the wheel, your developers should prioritize their efforts around enhancing your software – making it faster or more visually appealing – and regularly shipping updates that delight your customers.

Here’s how using a tool can help:

  • With the low technical barrier to entry, anyone -from operations to customer success managers – can quickly create an interactive tour, which means you can reduce reliance on software developers.
  • Rather than a “one size fits all” approach, you can trigger user guides contextually – so based on the specific actions the customer has taken, targeted support is triggered to help them navigate and use the product more effectively.
  • There are dozens of variables you might want to adjust, from small changes to copy to tweaking the design. In a custom-built tool, this represents a significant amount of work – in a no-code tool, it’s incredibly simple.
  • Customer adoption tools make it easy to see which version of an interactive user guide performs more effectively with A/B testing (and adapt your approach accordingly).

You shouldn’t question the necessity for a tool to build interactive user guides, but you need to understand what functionality you should look for in a tool and which tools are the best.

Must-have features for building no-code interactive user guides?

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.

Userguiding for interactive user guides

UserGuiding is a lower-cost, entry-level product adoption tool offering a range of features to help companies onboard new customers and boost product adoption.

UserGuiding excels at building simple onboarding experiences for users. It includes a no-code builder, segmentation options, and easily added UI patterns like hotspots, tooltips, and modals.

Although it also has some other goodies like a resource center and analytics, the meat of this product is its onboarding flow builder. If all you’re looking for is a relatively easy way to build simple onboarding flows, this could be a great choice for you. However, people looking for more analytics, customization, or complex integrations should probably look elsewhere.

userguiding

Here’s how UserGuiding can help drive adoption:

  • Offering in-app guidance with interactive product walkthroughs to educate, inform and update customers on the go.
  • You can add different types of onboarding elements to your flows. This includes modals, tooltips, hotspots, and checklists to repeatedly engage users and help them adopt the product
  • There is also an option to build an in-app resource center so you can incorporate learning materials in one place and provide on-demand support

If you’re looking to build complex in-app flows and experiences, UserGuiding is a great fit. However, you don’t get all its features in the Basic plan.

They also don’t have a dedicated customer success manager, and you can’t really customize your flows. Not to mention that it comes with UserGuiding branding which can only be removed if you go for a higher plan ($299).

Pros of Userguiding?

There are some advantages when it comes to choosing UserGuiding. Here are its pros:

  • For small startups or independent businesses, the price is an attractive element to consider.
  • A good variety of UI patterns to choose from when building flows and guides
  • Unlike some of the more expensive options, you can choose to add a Resource Center (a bonus for self-service support).
  • For a budget tool, UserGuiding still offers integrations with other applications, such as Mixpanel, Hubspot, Woopra, Slack, Webhook, etc.

Cons of Userguiding?

Though UserGuiding is a solid product many improvements are still needed. The cons of using UserGuiding include:

  • There are many bugs and performance issues when using the tool. The UI is also fairly tricky to navigate.
  • It has limited functionality, particularly on the basic plan. There you only have a small range of features available – all with the UserGuiding watermark/branding.
  • Technical knowledge is required to get the maximum out of this product.
  • Customization and design options for UI patterns aren’t the greatest.

What users say about Userguiding?

If you check the product review sites, most people like using UserGuiding.

Here are some reviews from real users:

Creating guides/checklists are easy to implement. It does not take a lot of time to make adjustments when you need to make changes.
You can go live with a simple guide or checklist within minutes. I was able to go live within a few days of getting started. – Administrator in Computer Software

userguiding review

However, some people think there’s too much friction due to bugs. Let’s have a look at some negative reviews to see why users complain about:

It is a bit buggy, sometimes it lags or freezes.

And, some people think that there is still room for improvement:

The analytics felt a little elementary. Other than the Mixpanel integration, it wasn’t possible to analyze user data directly on the UserGuiding dashboard. There was an API we could use that required some set up, but this was something I expected to be baked into the product for sure.- Administrator in Computer Software

userguiding bad review

Is Userguiding the right fit for your business?

UserGuiding is a great fit for small SaaS businesses but it might be not the right fit if you want to:

  1. Create fully interactive product tours
  2. Build segments completely code-free as segmentation features aren’t very intuitive and may require additional help from a developer
  3. Get in-depth analytics. Though UserGuiding does have analytics functionality, it’s not complex and doesn’t give you much data.

Userguiding pricing

userguiding pricing

UserGuiding’s pricing model is far simpler than others on our list. There are three tiers, each one charging a set amount for access to certain tools.

Here are its packages:

  • Basic will give you access to only the most essential onboarding tools: Starting at $99/mo or $69/mo (if you buy the yearly contract), this budget option has a few limitations to consider (i.e. just 1 Team Member, a limit of 20 guides, and 2 checklists, UserGuiding branding on all UI patterns).
  • Professional adds unlimited guides, hotspots, and checklists. Starting at $399/mo or $299 /mo if billed yearly.
  • Corporate gives you access to everything plus personalized coaching. Starting at $699/mo or $499.mo for a yearly plan.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Userguiding!

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Chameleon for interactive user guides

Chameleon is a digital adoption platform with a difference: while the other tools discussed are mostly no-code, Chameleon will require some developer involvement.

Nevertheless, it’s a powerful and effective tool that works in a similar way to Userpilot and offers similar features: styling, analytics, templates, goals, A/B testing, and checklists.
However, it doesn’t offer a resource center, or dedicated NPS, and it’s a lot worse value for money with limited features in the basic plan, which is over $150 more expensive for the same number of MAUs.

chameleon

Chameleon is a no-code solution for SaaS product adoption. It offers four key products:

  • Step-by-step tours: to guide users through the product

  • Self-serve launchers: for easy access to resources

  • Tips for unblocking users and giving best practices

  • In-product microsurveys: for gathering contextual feedback

By allowing you to personalize customer experiences, you’re able to create user flows that will lead to successful adoption of your products.

Additionally, Chameleon offers highly customizable styling, allowing you to create experiences that look native rather than like external products.

Pros of Chameleon

Chameleon is a robust tool for your onboarding and adoption needs. Here are the main pros to consider if you’re still deciding:

  • Offers a good range of in-app messaging and UI patterns. You can create custom modals, slideouts, tooltips, hotspots, launchers (checklists or resource hub), and more.
  • Good segmentation options, you can either build different user segments inside the product, or you can integrate your Chameleon account with other tools and import your data.
  • Can be used on 3rd party tools, meaning you can use it for employee onboarding too.
  • Offers a good range of two-way integrations: Mixpanel, Segment, Intercom, Customer.io, Segment, Hubspot etc.

Cons of Chameleon

While Chameleon is a great tool, the main downside is the cost and restrictions you get with it. Here are the main cons of the tool:

  • There are some limitations to user onboarding flows. You can’t run multiple in-app experiences at the same time, as you can in Userpilot. Instead, Chameleon enables you to create user onboarding campaigns (different sequences of product tours shown over time).
  • It’s built for single-page apps: Chameleon can’t build flows that run over multiple URLs.
  • Doesn’t offer a self-service resource center where users can access multiple guides and tutorials or contact support. It does provide launchers that are similar but more restricted. A launcher can be a checklist or a list of resources, but can’t be both.
  • It has a steeper learning curve and it’s not a completely no-code tool.
  • The Startup (starter) plan is quite restrictive and expensive (starts at $349/mo for 2500 MAU and includes 1 Launcher only and 5 micro surveys). You will need to go for Growth ($1249/mo) if you want to drive product adoption.

What users say about Chameleon?

Users appreciate Chameleon’s versatile functionalities. Let’s see what they have to say about it.

I love the variety of formats we can build in Chameleon, from interactive tooltips to progressive tours and launchers! It’s also really easy to track performance of each of these and adjust accordingly. The interface still feels quite clunky whenever I’m in build mode. For instance, I don’t like that I have to use markdown and CSS when formatting text instead of having an inline styling menu to select from. Then there’s also the issue of surveys or tour steps appearing where they’re not supposed to, apparently mistaking an element in another page for the anchor. -Nikki D

chameleon

Chameleon is a good tool overall and it’s loved by its users. Most complaints are about the price and some limitations such as customization of tours and reporting and analytics.

I wish there was an easier way to schedule content for release and more button options on the Tours. However, I think the scheduling feature is coming soon! I also wish it was easier to customize how launchers look without needing to know how to code UI changes in. – Lubana L.

There is limited reporting and dashboarding functionality within Chameleon currently. – Administrator in Financial Services

I think the software is a bit on the pricey side, but since it lets us do things that we would normally need our developers to do, we are truly saving in the grand scheme of things. It means we can focus on features and bug fixes, instead of building a new communication method that would only be used internally!-Nathalie L.

chameleon review

Is Chameleon the right fit for your business?

Chameleon is a great tool but we can’t say it’s the best there is. Here are three main reasons why you might consider an alternative.

  1. To get access to all the needed tools for proper onboarding and adoption you need to pay for the higher plans that can get expensive.
  2. Chameleon focuses on customization but in most cases, you will need a lot of CSS to achieve the look and feel of your brand. There are other tools that are truly no-code.
  3. If you need proper product and user analytics without having to pay for extra tools and integrate with Chameleon, you might need to consider a different tool.

Chameleon pricing

chameleon pricing

Chameleon split their pricing options primarily by the number of monthly active users, but you should keep in mind that the Startup plan also has limited features and might not be enough for interactive user onboarding and adoption for SaaS products:

  • 0 – 2500 MAUs: Startup plan from $349/mo, Growth plan from $1249/mo
  • 2000 – 3000MAUs: Startup plan from $419/mo, Growth from $1299/mo.
  • 3000 – 5000 MAUs: Startup plan from $489/mo, Growth from $1449/mo.
  • 5000 – 10,000 MAUs: Startup plan from $629/mo, Growth from $1749/mo

Disclaimer: with the Startup plan you only get 5 microsurveys and 1 launcher, no A/B testing, no Goals, and no localization.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Chameleon!

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Is there a better alternative for interactive user guides?

Userguiding and Chameleon are good tools for interactive user guides. We’ve seen how they compare to each other and what you can achieve with them. Call us biased, but if you’re looking for something better, Userpilot offers more value for your money than these tools.

Userpilot for interactive user guides

Userpilot is a powerful product adoption platform that enables you to quickly build personalized, flexible, contextually relevant in-app experiences targeted to different user segments – all without writing a line of code.

userpilot

Product adoption describes the process of getting users to the point where they are experiencing value from your product.

Userpilot is a powerful product adoption platform that enables you to quickly build personalized and contextual in-app experiences targeted to different user experiences – all without writing a line of code.

It’s a great option for enterprise users too since it’s SOC 2 Type II certified and offers robust features for large-scale usage.

Here are some of Userpilot’s product adoption features that you may find helpful:

  • A broad range of UI patterns to build fully customizable, contextual, and interactive in-app flows: modals, slideouts, tooltips, hotspots, driven actions, banners, and more. And – most importantly – you are not limited by plan when it comes to how many UI patterns or designs you can build.
  • Advanced in-app checklists with built-in gamification elements like progress bars or ”automatically marked complete” tasks: checklists also come with analytics so you can track who is interacting with them and how.
  • Fully interactive walkthroughs walk users through engaging and adopting specific features of your app.
  • The self-service in-app resource center lets users search your knowledge base directly inside the app, access chat, and support but also launch guides and tutorials when they get stuck.
  • User feedback tools allow you to collect insights to improve the product and the user experience, thus leading to a higher product adoption rate. You can also collect NPS data and tag responses to uncover patterns into what makes users stick, or build micro surveys for more granular data. Then you can use all the feedback collected to build user segments based on the answers and personalize the path to higher product adoption for each segment.

Want to see Userpilot in action? Get a demo and improve product adoption with contextual and personalized in-app flows that actually help users.

Pros of Userpilot

Userpilot has a number of advantages, especially for mid-market SaaS companies looking for a robust but at the same time very easy-to-use, no-code tool for user onboarding, product adoption, and simplified product analytics. Let’s have a look at the pros of using Userpilot:

  • No-code builder – Userpilot comes with an easy-to-use Chrome Extension builder.
  • Multiple UI patterns – choose from a range of options to build customized flows: modals, slideouts, banners, tooltips, hotspots, and checklists are all at your disposal
  • UI patterns are not limited by plan – you get access to all of them on every single plan, meaning you get value even with the Traction plan (this is the entry-level one).
  • Engaging walkthroughs and onboarding flows- build interactive walkthroughs targeted to distinct user segments.
  • In-app help – build a resource center offering self-service support to your users, customize it with your branding, and select from a range of help options to boost user satisfaction (i.e. videos, in-app flows, chat, and more).
  • Experimentation – built-in A/B testing for flows lets you explore and quickly iterate based on direct user behavior.
  • Powerful feedback options- integrated NPS surveys with analytics and response tagging unlock insight into how your users feel.
  • Advanced analytics and segmentation- analyze product usage and in-app flow engagement and build user segments using the data.
  • Event tracking and feature tags- tag UI engagement (clicks, form fills, hovers) and group them into one custom event to track what really matters.
  • More value with integrations- unlock value faster with built-in integrations with popular tools like Segment, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Intercom, Heap, and more.

Cons of Userpilot

There are, however, some downsides to Userpilot as well:

  • Browser/web app only – Userpilot won’t run on mobile devices/applications.
  • Doesn’t support employee onboarding- The tool is better suited for customer onboarding than for employee onboarding as you can’t build in-app guides on third-party tools.
  • Missing integrations – doesn’t have built-in integrations with some tools, but it has webhooks, and Hubspot and Zapier are coming soon.
  • Not appropriate for small startups on a shoestring budget (<$100)- Userpilot is a powerful, mid-market to enterprise-level tool. So $249 a month might be too expensive for really small startups.

What users say about Userpilot

userpilot review

Let’s check what real users like about Userpilot.

Userpilot is an incredible, user-friendly software that allows us to create unforgettable experiences for our clients! From basic to complex experiences, we have been able to do them all with ease! I would highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to provide their clients or users with the best product tour experience. The possibilities of what you can create are endless! – Tayla G.

Userpilot is simple to set up, use, and does not require any dev – which means instant publishing. This is critical for us as a SaaS company that releases new features frequently; we need the ability to inform our customers of changes quickly, and doing this in our platform through Userpilot allows us to reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right place. There have been many awesome extra features we’ve discovered since coming on board, and it’s been great to see new features released frequently. The tool itself is intuitive and reliable. Having used similar products previously that were clunky and buggy this has really made us happy with our decision to move to Userpilot. – Melina K.

Get more value for your money with Userpilot!

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Userpilot pricing

userpilot pricing

Userpilot offers great value for money compared to other similar tools on the market. Even its entry-level plan (Traction) provides all the necessary features without any usage limit.

The price-to-feature ratio is the best for Userpilot. Other cheaper tools in the market would definitely not fulfill your needs, and others like Pendo would be out of budget. Userpilot sits in that sweet spot. – Saurav S.

The pricing differentiation happens mostly on the service level (e.g. custom domain hosting, dedicated Customer Success Manager, SLA) and is based on the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) your company has.

Here’s the detailed Userpilot pricing:

  • Traction: For up to 2500 users, this plan is $249/ mo.
  • Growth: For up to 10,000 users, this plan is $499/ mo.
  • Enterprise: For large-scale businesses, these plans begin from $1000/ mo.

Conclusion

There you have it.
It should be easier now to make an informed decision between Userguiding and Chameleon. Both tools come with advantages and disadvantages so there isn’t one that is the best. It will depend on your product and current needs.If you want the best value for money, going with the alternative option would be our recommendation. Want to see how Userpilot can help with interactive user guides? Book a demo below.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Userguiding!

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