UserGuiding vs Spekit – Which Is Better for Interactive User Guides?

Is UserGuiding the better choice for creating interactive user guides or Spekit? Or is there a better user onboarding software that’ll get the job done seamlessly?  

Choosing the right software is a challenging decision. Select the wrong tool, and you can find yourself stuck in an expensive plan. 

This article compares each tool’s features, pros and cons, reviews, and pricing so you can confidently decide which tool is best suited for your business needs. 

Let’s get started. 

TL;DR

  • Interactive user guides use a combination of UI patterns that educate customers on how to use the product better. There are two types of interactive user guides; full product tours and interactive manuals.
  • Creating an interactive user guide is important as it shortens the time to value, drives product adoption, and reduces customer success and support costs.
  • It is essential to use a no-code tool for building interactive user guides because this way you can focus on improving your product as anyone from your team can create them – no developer assistance needed.
  • Not all tools help you easily create interactive user guides. Look out for these must-have features; a good range of UI patterns, customization, segmentation, and product usage analytics.
  • UserGuiding is a cost-effective product adoption tool. With UserGuiding, you can offer in-app guidance, add different onboarding UX elements, and create in-app resource centers.
  • UserGuiding is ideal for small startups, looking to offer interactive user guides without breaking the bank. However, users have reported that it has a buggy platform and has limited functionality in its basic plan.
  • Spekit is another digital adoption platform that solely provides employee onboarding. If you’re looking to onboard customers, you need to look elsewhere. Spekit offers knowledge checks, in-app alerts, and data dictionaries.
  • The biggest benefit of using Spekit is that it’s easy to install and use. However, limited UI patterns are offered (modals and tooltips) and performance issues have been reported.
  • A better alternative to UserGuiding and Spekit is Userpilot. Userpilot is a product adoption platform that lets you easily create interactive user guides.
  • Userpilot offers a wide range of UI patterns that aren’t limited to any plan. You also benefit from advanced segmentation and product analytics so you can create positive, targeted customer experiences.
  • One advantage of using Userpilot is that it is fairly easy to use. Additionally, you can A/B test different elements and capture real-time product engagement. However, you can’t use Userpilot on mobile applications and can’t offer employee onboarding.
  • Interested in what Userpilot has to offer, book a demo.

Looking for the best tool for interactive user guides? Userpilot is what you need!

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What is interactive user guides?

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 backbone of a successful onboarding strategy 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 determine 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.

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

However, some people think there’s too much friction due to bugs. Let’s have a look at some negative reviews to see what 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

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’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 with 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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Spekit for interactive user guides

Compared to the other solutions on the market, Spekit is a digital adoption platform that focuses on employee onboarding rather than user onboarding. Their technology is excellent for using targeted feature adoption flows to quickly familiarize new employees with internal capabilities.

Spekit prides itself on the robustness of its internal database system.

Employees and managers can easily add, update, and search for information, so everyone is aware of internal best practices. This database can also assist new employees to get up to speed quickly, as they can use the database rather than bugging other employees when they have questions.

Spekit sits on top of any web-based application like Salesforce and provides instant access to curated content, such as training videos, guides, and other materials. So if you want to drive product adoption by collecting useful data in one place, Spekit is perfect for that.

Here’s what you can expect from Spekit’s digital adoption capabilities:

  • Spekit allows you to drive retention and assess your users with knowledge checks.
  • You can embed your training beside fields, objects, and picklists for easier adoption.
  • In-app alerts allow you to communicate updates and drive behavior.
  • You can sync Spekit to your tool to automatically create a data dictionary that updates in real-time.

As in the case of contextual onboarding, it lacks personalization, segmentation, and more advanced features.

Due to this, you might find it limited when it comes to targeting in-app experiences unless you also pay for other product adoption tools.

Pros of Spekit?

Spekit is a useful tool for your employee onboarding needs. Here are the main advantages to consider if you’re still deciding:

  • It’s easy to use and easy to install in any web-based application.
  • You can create versatile knowledge bases with different formats for different teams.
  • Your new employees have answers to their questions in one place. So instead of interrupting other employees’ work, they can easily find what they are looking for with Spekit.
  • You can collect a data dictionary that will be available to your users across different apps.

Cons of Spekit?

The main downside that comes with Spekit is the absence of feedback collection and more advanced analytics. Here are the main cons of the tool:

  • There are some limitations to user onboarding flows as Spekit only offers tooltips and modals as part of their UI patterns.
  • There are many bugs and performance issues when using the tool. The UI is also fairly tricky to navigate as the tool is on the right-hand side.
  • As the tool is missing some advanced analytics, it’s hard to find friction points and solve any issues with user experience.

What users say about Spekit?

On the whole, users feel positive about Spekit – here are some examples summarizing some key points about its features and the value it offers. You can find more reviews on G2 or Capterra.

The in-app guidance using field speks and the ability to view step by step instructions side by side using the sidebar dock have been a game changer for our organization!
The only downside I can think of is the use of the extension. I’ve had to “nag” users over and over again to get them to download it and discover all the magic that comes with it. – Samantha L.

The plug in is intuitive, easy to use and makes finding answers/solutions easy and efficient. For months we had tons of valuable resources and collateral that went untouched because reps didn’t know it existed. Now they have it right at their fingertips.
Our only pitfall was the flows piece. We aren’t able to leverage as easily as we would like.
-Administrator in Information Technology and Services/mid-market.

Most complaints about Spekit are about the upside bar positioning and some implementation issues.

Great Idea! A bit tougher on the implementation side. ” I like the idea of this platform. It’s essential to train folks where they work. The sales team was very responsive throughout the pre-sales process. Unfortunately, our experience with implementation was nowhere as easy as we thought it would be. The slack integration was inadvertently set up internally before the full implementation. This caused an issue (which is understandable), but it took 4+ weeks for Spekit to determine the root cause. This has still not been addressed, unfortunately. Because of the difficulties with implementation/embedding into our environment, we are focused on one value proposition only: the slack Q&A creation process. We’ve needed to purchase other software that will better meet our needs. – Executive Sponsor in Information Technology and Services / Enterprise

Some users think it still has room for improvement.

Nice, but needs work“. Customizable content, but we don’t have the capacity for someone to always manage that. Button position is very inconvenient, even though I know I can move it around. Don’t need the sidebar. I would also like to toggle off the buttons near things I have already learned so that I am not always interrupting work flows to click out of a window that I have mistakenly opened. – User in Airlines/Aviation / Mid-market

While other people think it’s overpriced.

“It’s cool, but overpriced in my opinion.” Extremely flexible. Lets us do things we wouldn’t be able to otherwise and is pretty easy to use. It looks a little funny on the screen. Kind of clutters up the screen. It looks a little funny and is too expensive in my opinion. – Administrator in Newspapers

Is Spekit the right fit for your business?

Spekit is a great tool when it comes to employee onboarding but has limited usability. Here are three main reasons why you might consider an alternative.

  1. Spekit focuses on employee onboarding but in most cases, you will need another tool that will provide you with in-depth analytics. There are other tools that are truly no-code.
  2. Spekit has a fairly tricky UI to navigate as users have encountered performance issues when using the tool.
  3. If you want to create more contextual onboarding with different segments, you might want to consider an alternative tool.

Spekit pricing

Spekit has recently updated its pricing policy. The price will vary depending on your organization and specific use cases.

Previously, Spekit charges $20 per person monthly so it’s more suitable for small to midsize businesses. It also doesn’t provide a free trial or a freemium version of its features.

Some features such as seismic integration, knowledge checks, and knowledge check analytics are sold as add-ons that come with an extra fee.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Spekit!

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Is there a better alternative for interactive user guides?

UserGuiding and Spekit 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.

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 guide 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?

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 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

By now, it should be easier to decide between UserGuiding and Spekit. It’s hard to say which tool is the best since both have their own pros and cons. The tool you select ultimately depends on your product and current needs. If you want the best value, go with the alternative option.

Want to see how Userpilot can help you make interactive user guides? Get a demo today.

There is no better tool for creating interactive guides than Userpilot

Get a demo today

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