WalkMe is a highly rated digital adoption platform (DAP) for user and employee training. It offers much-needed solutions for onboarding, product adoption, process automation, and more. So, why would one be looking for WalkMe alternatives?
Well, you may need a more affordable and easier-to-use solution. Or you might prefer a tool focused on user guidance, with more customization options.
Whatever your reason, we’ve got you covered. We’ve tested the top WalkMe competitors on the market and will share our insights with you in this article.
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What is WalkMe? A quick overview of key features and use cases
WalkMe is a low-code digital adoption tool for enterprise companies that is mostly focused on employee onboarding. However, it also supports user onboarding features, like product tours and interactive walkthroughs.
WalkMe was among the first products in the user guidance space, hitting the market with interesting features like:
- In-app guidance: WalkMe’s Smart Walk-Thrus takes users through your application’s features and functionalities.
- Product analytics: WalkMe’s product usage data can help you understand user behavior and discover and remove friction points in the user journey.
- Self-service: Provides contextual in-app guidance and a knowledge base so users can find answers on demand.
- Personalization: WalkMe’s user segmentation features enable you to deliver different onboarding experiences to different users.
How much does WalkMe cost?
This is a tricky question to answer for one simple reason: WalkMe’s pricing is not transparent.
They have two main pricing plans: WalkMe for Employees and WalkMe for Customers. Both plans feature content creation and management systems, interactive in-app guides, targeted surveys, and more.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to request a custom quote for both plans. When you do make that request, G2 reviewers say you can expect to pay above $30,000, while Vendr puts the average contract price at $79,000.
WalkMe is designed for enterprise applications, so it’s expected to be fairly expensive. Still, these numbers are higher than average, even for enterprise-focused products.
Why you may need a WalkMe alternative?
If you’re in the market for a software adoption tool, WalkMe is certainly a great option. But it isn’t without its disadvantages. Some of them include:
- Pricing: As noted earlier, WalkMe’s pricing is expensive and opaque. It is an enterprive-level solution with unclear, higher-than-average prices, so it’s far from ideal for small startups with budget constraints.
- Complex implementation: Implementing and setting up WalkMe is a long and complex process that requires significant technical expertise. Simpler no-code solutions exist for businesses with limited technical knowledge.
- Steep learning curve: WalkMe’s extensive feature list may take some getting used to for newer users.
7 WalkMe alternatives you may like better
Regardless of your needs, budget, or preferences, there is a diverse selection of digital adoption platforms out there. Let’s now explore seven of the best WalkMe alternatives worth considering:
1. Userpilot
Userpilot is an all-in-one, no-code product adoption tool that combines in-app guidance, user behavior analytics, surveys, and session replays.
While WalkMe focuses on employee onboarding and digital transformation efforts, Userpilot helps you onboard new users and understand your users’ behavior within your app.
Its key features include:
- Different UI patterns can be used as standalone messages or grouped into product tours. Unlike WalkMe, Userpilot is truly no-code. Once you’ve installed a line of JavaScript in your app, you can begin building user experiences using the Chrome extension.
- Autocapture for tracking all in-app user actions without any manual setup, with support for automatic retroactive analysis. This differs from WalkMe, where every event has to be set up individually before it can be tracked.
- Advanced analytics reports, including funnels to identify drop-offs and track conversion times, paths analyses, cohort tables for analyzing retention trends (not available on WalkMe), and user profiles for granular analysis.
- Userpilot’s robust resource center allows you to create in-app help centers with different modules. Within it, users can search articles, play videos, and start interactive walkthroughs. This feature is currently unavailable in WalkMe.
- 15+ standalone in-app survey templates, from CSAT to product experience, PMF, and user discovery. Using a visual editor, you can customize its colors, fonts, and question types and even add flow logic (defining the next step based on a user’s response). In contrast, WalkMe offers basic surveys that can’t be fully customized to match your native UI without using CSS.
- Userpilot offers advanced NPS capabilities. You can tag qualitative NPS responses to help you identify trends. You can also use NPS responses as segmentation criteria. This contrasts with WalkMe’s basic NPS surveys and dashboard.
Userpilot pricing
Userpilot follows a transparent pricing model based on feature access and the number of supported monthly active users. The plan is broken into 3:
- Starter: Starts at $249/month and supports up to 2,000 MAUs. Its features include in-app user engagement, segmentation, NPS surveys, and product analytics.
- Growth: Starts at $799/month and features robust analytics, in-app surveys, content throttling, session replay, and more. It is the ideal plan for mid-sized SaaS companies, offering the perfect balance of features and pricing.
- Enterprise: Ideal for enterprise applications, this plan is to be customized to your needs and budget. It supports extra features like custom roles and permissions, SLA, SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, etc.
Is Userpilot worth the investment?
Userpilot offers in-depth analytics, rich customer onboarding features, and extensive user feedback collection and analytics features. Compared to WalkMe, its price is also a steal, and its setup process is much easier.
Before making any final decisions, though, consider some of the pros and cons highlighted by Userpilot’s users.
Pros of Userpilot
- Quick implementation. All you’ll need to do to get started with Userpilot is insert a code snippet once and install the Chrome extension.
- Supports different platforms, including web and mobile applications, and enables an omnichannel experience through integrations with CRM systems, data management systems, support tools, etc.
- Its more affordable entry point offers great value for money, combining three sophisticated tools (onboarding, feedback collection, and analytics) for the price of one.
For example, Atention Insight’s CMO summed up their Userpilot experience as follows:
This makes sense as Attention Insight had selected Userpilot for its user-friendly interface, extensive analytics and onboarding features, and affordability. The result was a 47% relative increase in their first activation step and an 83% relative increase in the second.
Cons of Userpilot
- It can be expensive for small teams.
- Userpilot lacks employee onboarding features.
Userpilot vs. WalkMe: Final verdict
Here’s a quick summary of everything we’ve discussed and the ideal use cases for both WalkMe and Userpilot.
Supercharge Your Digital Adoption Strategy with Userpilot!
2. Pendo
Pendo is a full-stack product experience platform like Userpilot. It’s a no-code tool that enables teams to monitor product usage, analyze user behavior, and publish in-app guidance.
Some of its key features include:
- In-app guides for onboarding new users and highlighting new features. While Pendo’s guides are focused on customer-facing products, WalkMe favors complex workflows and employee training.
- Robust analytics providing detailed insights into how users interact with digital products. Like Userpilot, it offers more features for tracking user behavior, feature usage, and navigation patterns.
- Session replays to help teams observe how users interact with their applications and identify friction points. In contrast, WalkMe’s session playback feature focuses on user interactions within its guided experiences.
- A roadmapping tool to enable product teams to prioritize features based on user feedback and data insights. As of this writing, WalkMe lacks this feature.
Ultimately, Pendo prioritizes analytics and feedback collection, while WalkMe focuses on user guidance and digital adoption. Pendo also requires less technical knowledge to implement.
Pendo pricing
Pendo offers a limited free plan and 3 paid plans with no pricing information. However, according to Vendr, prices for this tool range from $17,075 to $131,566, with a median price of $46,987.
Pros of Pendo
- Its sophisticated analytics features offer valuable insights into user adoption and product performance.
- Pendo leverages AI across its different layers, from user engagement to analytics, feedback collection, and session replays.
Cons of Pendo
- Pendo’s in-app guides are fairly basic, offering only limited customization.
- It is one of the more expensive options on this list, and its pricing methods are far from transparent.
- Pendo doesn’t offer real-time analytics or a way to trigger events based on user actions.
3. Appcues
Appcues is a learning management system designed to improve user onboarding. It’s a no-code solution for building interactive walkthroughs, modals, and slideouts.
Its key features include:
- In-app messaging to guide users, highlight features, and deliver announcements. Where Appcues leans toward better-looking messaging designs, WalkMe’s guides are better for complex software.
- A/B testing of in-app experiences to enable optimization based on how users engage with them. Although WalkMe has a suite of analytics features, A/B testing isn’t one of them.
- Multi-channel engagement via push notifications, emails, and in-app messages. WalkMe doesn’t offer any form of engagement beyond in-app guides.
All this to say, Appcues is easier to use and focuses on creating effective and visually-appealing in-app experiences. WalkMe, meanwhile, is a better fit if you’re interested in some form of product analytics to go with your guides.
Appcues pricing
Appcues offers 3 pricing plans, with the cheapest starting at $375/month (paid annually) for 2,000 MAUs. The Grow plan starts at $800/month (paid annually) for the same number of MAUs, while the Enterprise plan is custom-quoted.
Pros of Appcues
- Appcues is known for its user-friendly interface and relatively simple setup process.
- It works on both mobile and web apps.
Cons of Appcues
- Appcues lacks any meaningful product analytics features.
- Similarly, surveys on Appcues are limited only to NPS surveys.
- Although it is cheaper than WalkMe, its starting price is higher than that of products like Userpilot, which has a more robust feature set.
4. UserGuiding
UserGuiding is a low-cost, entry-level user onboarding platform for creating engaging flows. It offers most of the features you’d expect from a digital adoption platform, including in-app guides, NPS surveys, resource centers, etc.
Some of its key features include:
- Basic in-app surveys for collecting user feedback.
- Hotspots, onboarding checklists, and walkthroughs for providing users with interactive and contextual guidance.
- User activity and product performance analysis.
Ultimately, UserGuiding is simpler to use and cheaper to purchase, but it is more limited in ability. On the other hand, WalkMe is more expensive and better suited to complex, enterprise-level workflows.
UserGuiding pricing
UserGuiding is available from $89/month (paid annually) or $129/month (paid monthly) for 2,000 MAUs.
Pros of UserGuiding
- UserGuiding is one of the most budget-friendly options for DAPs.
- It interestingly offers a resource center, which WalkMe doesn’t, despite being significantly more expensive.
Cons of UserGuiding
- UserGuiding’s customization and design options are pretty limited.
- It lacks more advanced features for analytics and surveying.
- Users report bugs and performance issues with the software.
5. Whatfix
Whatfix is yet another employee-focused solution and is often described as a more modern version of WalkMe. Like WalkMe, it caters to complex software workflows, with a focus on automation and integration.
Some of its key features include:
- Task automation to help you streamline repetitive tasks and processes within applications.
- On-demand delivery of self-help content through the creation of in-app help widgets and support resources.
- Performance tracking and robust analytics for product features, user actions, user journeys, etc.
So, both WalkMe and Whatfix cater to enterprises and focus on automation. However, Whatfix emphasizes self-help support and support automation, while WalkMe emphasizes workflow guidance and automation of guide processes.
Whatfix pricing
Like its older brother, Whatfix keeps its pricing information private. However, Whatfix separates its software into 3 product categories: Digital Adoption Platform, Product analytics, and Mirror.
Pros of Whatfix
- Whatfix’s workflow automation features help simplify repetitive tasks.
- Whatfix is an all-in-one tool that offers self-help support, session replays, and more.
Cons of Whatfix
- Although it is cheaper than WalkMe, Whatfix’s reported median price of $23,750 is still an expensive option.
- You’ll need CSS knowledge to benefit from the full range of Whatfix customization.
6. SAP Enable NOW
SAP Enable Now is a digital learning management system that enables SaaS enterprises to simplify SAP product learning.
Despite being a niche employee training sector, SAP solutions cut across various industries and processes (payroll, procurement, vacation management, etc.). As a result, SAP Enable Now offers admins the opportunity to create personalized learning paths for employees.
To achieve this goal, it boasts features like:
- Content creation and management to enable the creation of learning and support content, including process documentation, simulations, and e-learning materials.
- Contextual help and support for SAP products to aid users in real time.
- SAP Enable Now also integrates seamlessly with SAP applications, ensuring a smooth delivery of training materials within the SAP ecosystem.
Interestingly, SAP has now acquired WalkMe, with plans to integrate it fully into the SAP ecosystem. This signals SAP’s shift to provide a more comprehensive digital adoption solution beyond its ecosystem.
SAP Enable pricing
As with every SAP product, SAP Enable Now doesn’t have any published prices. You’ll have to request a custom quote based on your needs.
Pros of SAP Enable
- SAP Enable Now integrates seamlessly with SAP applications, ensuring the seamless delivery of training content.
- Strong simulation capabilities for training purposes, especially for complex SAP processes.
Cons of SAP Enable
- It only works on SAP products and cannot be applied to other enterprise software.
- Its user interface could do with a facelift.
7. Intro.js
Intro.js is an open-source JavaScript library for developers to design and develop step-by-step user onboarding experiences directly within their applications’ code base. It uses CSS to edit the design.
Some of its key features include:
- Complete customization control allows developers to tailor the tour’s appearance and behavior using CSS and JavaScript.
- Extensive onboarding features, including the creation and display of step-by-step guides, highlights, and contextual information. However, WalkMe’s low-code environment is more dynamic and interactive.
- Perhaps the biggest Intro.js feature is that it is an open source library. This means it is free to use, unlike WalkMe and its other alternatives on this list.
Intro.js pricing
Intro.js is free and open source. It is offered under an AGPL license but can also be obtained under a commercial license for a single lifetime fee of $9.99 (1 project), $49.99 (5 projects), and $299.99 (unlimited projects).
Pros of Intro.js
- Intro.js offers plenty of flexibility in terms of customization, with developers in full control of their choices.
- You’re completely responsible for your code and can make it as secure as you desire.
Cons of Intro.js
- A significant drawback of Intro.js is that it requires good coding knowledge (JavaScript, CSS, and HTML) for implementation and customization.
- It is more time-consuming to both create and maintain.
Why Userpilot is the best WalkMe alternative for product teams
The digital adoption market is home to several different products, each with its own pros and cons. As a result, what’s ideal for each SaaS business may vary wildly.
Still, Userpilot is consistently considered a strong WalkMe alternative for its ease os use, simplicity of implementation, short time to value, and affordability. Userpilot also boasts extensive analytics (e.g., retention cohorts) and segmentation features to supercharge its onboarding.
Book a Userpilot demo today to see how it all works together.
Supercharge Your Digital Adoption Strategy with Userpilot!
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