Wondering whether Userpilot or Intercom is the best option for your SaaS company?

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

In the post below, we’ve covered all the common use cases and done an in-depth analysis of the key features of Userpilot and Intercom – as well as explaining which one is better in certain cases.

Let’s get into it!

Overview of Userpilot vs Intercom

• Let’s explore how Userpilot, and Intercom compare when it comes to user onboarding and other common use cases.
  • 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.
  • Intercom is a customer service platform. It offers customizable live chat widgets, omnichannel support capabilities, and integrations with over 300 apps. While Intercom is primarily a support solution, it does have add-ons that offer other functionalities such as product tours.
• However, in certain situations, Userpilot is a comprehensive product growth platform so its onboarding, adoption, and analytics capabilities far exceed that of Intercom’s Product Tours add-on:
  • User Onboarding: Userpilot’s no-code builder lets you build in-app flows using the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to choose from various UI patterns like modals, banners, tooltips, hotspots, and more (each with its own pre-built templates that can save you time).
  • Product Adoption: Userpilot’s visual feature tagging lets you add up to 15 tags on the entry-level plan and unlimited tags on the Growth tier or higher to track adoption rates. You can also use the no-code builder to add UI spotlights and other guides that drive feature discovery.
  • Advanced Analytics: Userpilot’s advanced analytics dashboards let you conduct trend analysis, generate funnel reports and path analysis to monitor product usage, and track feature engagement. Userpilot also has 14 survey templates that let you collect qualitative feedback from customers.
• Get a Userpilot demo for user onboarding and drive your product growth code-free.

What is Userpilot?

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.

What is Intercom?

Intercom is a customer service platform. It offers customizable live chat widgets, omnichannel support capabilities, and integrations with over 300 apps. While Intercom is primarily a support solution, it does have add-ons that offer other functionalities such as product tours.

The Product Tours add-on contains features that aid onboarding, adoption, and feature discovery. Intercom’s product tours can include UI patterns like modals and tooltips as well as other media formats such as microvideos.

Userpilot vs Intercom for user onboarding

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

Userpilot for user onboarding

User onboarding is a crucial part of the customer journey as it speeds up the adoption process and increases retention rates. Onboarding is one of Userpilot’s core use cases along with product growth analytics and user feedback, so it has plenty of features that you can utilize.

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.

• Native tooltips: Userpilot lets you create native tooltips that show up when users hover over an element or click on an information badge. Since these native tooltips attach to the element itself, they aren’t page-dependent and will show up on any screen where that element is visible.

• Funnel analytics: Userpilot’s advanced analytics lets you create funnel reports that track the onboarding journey. You can also add filters (like name, user ID, signup date, operating system, country, etc.) and monitor the total conversion rate from the first step of the funnel to the last.

• User segmentation: Userpilot lets you segment users based on the device they’re using, where they’re located, their engagement data, or which NPS rating they selected on the latest survey. You can then filter your analytics dashboards to see which segments struggle with onboarding.

Intercom for user onboarding

User onboarding educates new customers, teaches them how to use your product, and helps them get the most value in the least amount of time.

Intercom’s Product Tours add-on includes UI patterns and onboarding analytics that can prove helpful (if you’re willing to pay extra for them).

This will cost you an additional $199/month on top of what you’re currently paying for your base Intercom subscription. This puts its pricing on par with dedicated onboarding/adoption tools despite lacking feature parity.

Here’s an overview of Intercom’s Product Tours add-on:

• UI Patterns: Intercom’s product tours for onboarding come with an expansive selection of UI patterns like tooltips, banners, surveys, in-app checklists, and multi-step flows. You can also use communication features in your tours such as SMS messages or live chat widgets.
• Onboarding Analytics: Intercom shows you detailed analytics for each product tour such as the total number of views, overall completion rate, percentage of users who achieved a particular goal, and how many issues were encountered during the tour.

Userpilot vs Intercom for product adoption

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

Userpilot for product adoption

Product adoption is when users become repeat users of your product. It covers the entire journey spanning from the awareness stage to trial signup and finally full-on adoption. As a product growth platform, Userpilot has advanced analytics capabilities for tracking adoption over time.

Here are the Userpilot features that can help you measure and improve product adoption:

• Product analytics: Userpilot lets you create trend reports to track adoption over time by feature or segment, funnel reports that show you which steps of the process most users get stuck on, and integrations with third-party analytics providers so you can sync data between tools.
• Product usage dashboard: It collects all your key product usage metrics automatically without you having to set anything up: your Daily, Monthly, and Weekly Active Users and Companies, Trends of Active Users and Companies over time, user stickiness, top pages, features, and events, as well as the most engaged users, highest user activity times throughout the day, user retention, average session duration and product usage by browser.

• Feature engagement: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you see how often a feature is used and by how many people. You’ll also be able to see the top 20 events for a certain time period or create custom events that group multiple features together for clearer insights.

• Feedback collection: Userpilot has a no-code survey builder with 14 templates to choose from. You’ll be able to collect quantitative data like CSAT, CES, or NPS ratings and qualitative feedback on the strongest/weakest parts of your product straight from your users.

• User insights: The Insights dashboard lets you monitor user activity based on which segment they’re in and which company they’re from. You’ll also be able to choose from daily, weekly, and monthly time periods to see if user activity is shifting towards full product adoption over time.

Intercom for product adoption

User onboarding educates new customers, teaches them how to use your product, and helps them get the most value in the least amount of time.

Intercom’s Product Tours add-on includes UI patterns and onboarding analytics that can prove helpful (if you’re willing to pay extra for them).

This will cost you an additional $199/month on top of what you’re currently paying for your base Intercom subscription. This puts its pricing on par with dedicated onboarding/adoption tools despite lacking feature parity.

Here’s an overview of Intercom’s Product Tours add-on:

• UI Patterns: Intercom’s product tours for onboarding come with an expansive selection of UI patterns like tooltips, banners, surveys, in-app checklists, and multi-step flows. You can also use communication features in your tours such as SMS messages or live chat widgets.
• Onboarding Analytics: Intercom shows you detailed analytics for each product tour such as the total number of views, overall completion rate, percentage of users who achieved a particular goal, and how many issues were encountered during the tour.

Userpilot vs Intercom for customer experience

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

Userpilot for customer experience

Userpilot gives you an eagle-eye view of the customer experience through user analytics, trend/funnel reports, and feedback collection through different types of surveys.

Here’s how you can use Userpilot to track and analyze customer experience insights:

• User analytics: The users dashboard gives you an overview of all your users while letting you sort by segment, company, or when they were last seen. You can also export user data in bulk as a CSV or click on the Insights tab to see segment-specific insights for a given time period.

• Trends and funnels: Userpilot’s trends and funnels reports let you track certain events like a specific feature’s usage, add filters to narrow down the data, and then create a breakdown based on segmentation data or user attributes — offering quick and actionable CX reports.

• Satisfaction benchmarking: Userpilot has a built-in NPS dashboard that tracks customer loyalty over time. In addition to the NPS dashboard, you can also use Userpilot’s survey templates to run CSAT or CES surveys and gather additional quantitative and qualitative insights on the customer experience.

• Self-service support: Userpilot lets you build in-app resource centers, which can include feedback widgets to collect feedback passively, checklists to walk users through specific processes, or integrations with knowledge bases to leverage existing documentation.
• In-app flows: Userpilot’s no-code flow builder helps you create product experiences that can help you optimize the customer experience by educating customers and reducing their time-to-value (TTV). All UI patterns are available on every Userpilot plan from Starter to Enterprise.

Intercom for customer experience

Customer experience management (CXM) consists of building, monitoring, and optimizing the experience that each customer has with your brand/product. Intercom helps you improve the customer experience through surveys and various forms of analytics reporting on your support interactions.

Here’s how you can use Intercom to gather customer experience insights:

• Analytics: Intercom’s reporting capabilities help you track key performance indicators (KPIs) that are tied to the customer experience. For instance, you’ll be able to see the median first response time, average time to close, and percentage of positive conversation ratings from users.
• Surveys: Intercom has two types of surveys: small format and large format. The former helps you collect quantitative metrics like CSAT, CES, and NPS data, while the latter helps you gather actionable feedback from customers on specific features or functionalities.

Note: The Surveys add-on will cost an additional $49/month on top of your existing Intercom subscription cost. You can create surveys on the Starter plan but you won’t be able to publish them unless you upgrade your subscription with the add-on.

• Content: Intercom’s support analytics displays the most frequent answers from chatbots and help center articles with the highest number of views. This helps you identify common problems and bake proactive solutions into the product experience during the CXO process.

Userpilot vs Intercom for user feedback

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

Userpilot for user feedback

User feedback is an essential part of listening to the Voice of the Customer (VoC) and making product development or marketing decisions that best suit your customer base. Userpilot has a no-code survey builder, 14 templates to choose from, and advanced analytics for extracting insights.

Here are the Userpilot features you can use to collect customer feedback and analyze it:

• Survey builder: Userpilot’s survey builder lets you edit the content, update the widget’s style/placement, and set page-specific or event-specific triggers to ensure that users see the survey at the most contextual moment — all without writing a single line of code. You can also translate surveys into your audience’s native language.

• Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from with a wide array of different use cases. You can collect qualitative responses on how to improve the user/product experience or quantitative data for customer satisfaction benchmarking such as CSAT and CES scores.

• Advanced analytics: Userpilot’s advanced survey analytics will show you what the most common responses were, what percentage of users selected a specific option, and display open-ended feedback about your product or specific features.

• NPS dashboard: Userpilot’s NPS dashboard compiles response data from all NPS surveys so you don’t have to manually go into each survey and check its analytics. You’ll be able to view key metrics like response rates, total views, and NPS history and sort all the data by different segments.

Intercom for user feedback

User feedback can help guide product development, business decisions, and pricing adjustments while improving the customer experience to reduce churn.

Intercom lets you collect quantitative and qualitative feedback, plus review survey analytics.

Note: The Surveys add-on will cost an additional $49/month on top of your existing Intercom subscription cost. You can create surveys on the Starter plan but you won’t be able to publish them unless you upgrade your subscription with the add-on.

Here’s how you can use Intercom to collect customer feedback:

• Intercom’s small format surveys let you gather quantitative user feedback through scalar surveys that can use numbers, stars, or emojis to collect ratings from users.
• Large format surveys can be used to gather qualitative feedback as they let you ask a maximum of 15 questions (three per step) compared to the four for small format surveys. Large format surveys are displayed as modals, while small format surveys are banners.

• Use the survey analytics dashboard to see the number of users who received the survey, response rate, and click-through rate. You can also go into the questions settings and enable “Store answer to a user attribute” to tie response data to individual profiles.

Userpilot vs Intercom: Which one you should choose?

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

Pros and cons of Userpilot

Pros of Userpilot

As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:

• No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
• UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot, such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
• Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
• Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
• Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
• A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
• Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
• Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
• Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
• Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
• Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.

Cons of Userpilot

Of course, no tool is perfect and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:

• Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
• Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
• Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.

Pros and cons of Intercom

Pros of Intercom

• Robust Live Chat: Intercom’s live chat widget is the most popular feature on the platform. You’ll be able to style the widget in accordance with your brand colors, choose which support options customers will see, and insert apps to create a self-serve experience.
• Product Tours Add-On: In addition to Intercom’s customer service capabilities, its Product Tours add-on offers support to new users during the onboarding and adoption phases. Features include a no-code builder, audience targeting, analytics reporting, and more.
• Extensive Integration Gallery: If Intercom’s built-in support/onboarding features aren’t enough, you can expand its native functionality using third-party integrations. Intercom’s App Store has over 300 tools to choose from with new solutions being added regularly.

Cons of Intercom

• Buggy Search Function: Searching through support tickets is a core task for Intercom users but this process is often laggy or refuses to work altogether by freezing the page. Intercom’s searchability shortcomings have been present for years with no fixes released.
• Confusing Navigation Interface: While Intercom does have a wide array of features, its user interface isn’t intuitive and it’ll take a lot of memorization (or trial-and-error) to figure out where everything is. There are many features that can (and should) be combined into one page.
• Support Response Times: Intercom is a customer service platform which is why it’s ironic that their support team isn’t able to reliably respond in a timely manner. Numerous customers have noted slow response times from support representatives when reviewing Intercom.

Userpilot vs Intercom – Why Userpilot might be a better choice?

Userpilot is a comprehensive product growth platform so its onboarding, adoption, and analytics capabilities far exceed that of Intercom’s Product Tours add-on:

• User Onboarding: Userpilot’s no-code builder lets you build in-app flows using the Chrome extension. You’ll be able to choose from various UI patterns like modals, banners, tooltips, hotspots, and more (each with its own pre-built templates that can save you time).
• Product Adoption: Userpilot’s visual feature tagging lets you add up to 15 tags on the entry-level plan and unlimited tags on the Growth tier or higher to track adoption rates. You can also use the no-code builder to add UI spotlights and other guides that drive feature discovery.
• Advanced Analytics: Userpilot’s advanced analytics dashboards let you conduct trend analysis, generate funnel reports and path analysis to monitor product usage, and track feature engagement. Userpilot also has 14 survey templates that let you collect qualitative feedback from customers.

Conclusion

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

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

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

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