Choosing a digital adoption platform (DAP) can be tricky. Should you go with big names like WalkMe or Whatfix?

While Walkme and Whatfix are quite similar, they are not entirely interchangeable. So in this article, we’ll clearly lay out the differences and how to choose the best DAP for your company’s user onboarding needs.

So let’s get right to it!

What is WalkMe?

At its core, WalkMe is an enterprise solution for effective training for your employees to use your tools. The platform lets you create customizable, in-depth product walkthroughs to help users learn your software and track their progress as they go.

WalkMe can also be used for SaaS user adoption, but it’s not their primary focus, meaning you won’t get some key features needed for this.

WalkMe features overview

WalkMe’s two core features – product walkthroughs and user analytics – are quite powerful and versatile for user onboarding.

Having some programming knowledge and technical ability will allow you to make these features even more sophisticated. But for those without coding expertise, WalkMe offers an editor tool that makes its basic functions easy and quick to set up.

With WalkMe, you’ll be able to:

• Set up customizable product tours with on-screen guidance.
• Create basic user segments with branching walkthrough experiences.
• Communicate with users via in-app messages and notifications.
• View analytics on user interactions and engagement with your software.

Coding knowledge will allow you to customize user interface elements, onboarding flows, and analytics even further. Or you can hire a WalkMe technician to help you with that.

Either way, WalkMe has considerable depth for user onboarding, particularly in the case of employee training.

What is Whatfix?

In many ways, Whatfix is quite similar to WalkMe. Its typical customers are also large, enterprise-level companies with employee and user onboarding needs. It provides in-app guidance for web, desktop and mobile applications to foster digital transformation for large enterprises.

Whatfix features overview

Whatfix offers the ability to create product tours “code-free”. But like WalkMe, it’ll take some programming ability to actually customize the UI elements and user experience.

So, in a nutshell, Whatfix lets you:

• Create custom product tours for user onboarding and employee training.
• Incorporate additional features like onboarding checklists.
• Set up basic contextual onboarding to differentiate user experience.
• Integrate and connect various tools such as product usage analytics and customer support channels.

At this point it may still seem difficult to tell the difference between WalkMe and Whatfix. The core features we’ve looked at so far are mostly the same.

So let’s take a more detailed look at how the two digital adoption platforms differ.

WalkMe vs. Whatfix digital adoption platforms comparison

Now as we’ve established, WalkMe and Whatfix offer basically the same features and functionality to increase new user productivity by adopting your tools faster.

However, it turns out that there are some noteworthy differences in the quality and breadth of these features in each product.

Here’s a rundown of some of the most important differentiating factors:

Implementation comparison: technical knowledge needed

Overall Whatfix is easier to install and implement than WalkMe. You just need to install their Chrome or Firefox extension and copy a few JavaScript snippets to get started.

WalkMe, on the other hand, has a much more involved installation process. It’s an on-premise solution, which means it needs to be implemented locally. This requires quite a bit of technical knowledge and often requires assistance from a WalkMe-certified expert.

Analytics comparison: onboarding data

Here is where Whatfix starts to fall behind. While WalkMe has a user-friendly dashboard for viewing onboarding and digital adoption data and analytics on user progress, Whatfix has quite limited analytic capabilities.

Whatfix does allow you to integrate Google Analytics or other similar tools for tracking and measuring user behavior data, but this doesn’t match the power and convenience of the full analytics platform that WalkMe supports.

It also means that getting truly robust product usage analytics with Whatfix will require purchasing an additional tool.

Product integrations comparison

Although user analytics with Whatfix is a limitation, its capacity for integration turns out to be an advantage.

Whatfix is designed to provide easy integration with analytics tools, LMSs, and customer support channels. So instead of having multiple external tools or separate, potentially confusing support channels, Whatfix connects them all together to make for a smoother user experience.

WalkMe offers a more robust system overall but doesn’t support the same level of integration that Whatifx does.

Customer support comparison

The relatively technical nature of both WalkMe and Whatfix means that support is a key issue.

WalkMe may be harder to set up, but it tends to offer better support. For elements of personalization or custom implementation you may have to pay for this support, but WalkMe has a reputation for delivering when it comes to technical assistance.

In contrast, Whatfix users report that it’s not always fully compatible with their product, and the support they receive can be lacking. In fact, Whatfix’s largest resource for self-serve support is their forum, and even there it’s often other Whatfix users who answer questions.

Employee onboarding vs SaaS user onboarding: can they do both?

The most significant point to consider here is probably that both WalkMe and Whatfix are enterprise solutions designed for big companies with large user bases.

As such, one of their main use cases is employee onboarding and training.

Does this mean that WalkMe and Whatfix can’t be used for SaaS customer onboarding? Not at all.

It’s just that user training is more in their wheelhouse than customer onboarding to increase user activation and product adoption.

The distinction here is important. In employee onboarding, there’s no need to drive a user to the “AHA moment” where they discover value in the product. For SaaS businesses, this moment is critical to product adoption and keeping users subscribed.

Employees don’t have a choice – they have to use the product or online tool.

This means the use case that WalkMe and Whatfix prioritize is centered on helping users become more productive with a piece of software, but not necessarily derive more value from it.

SaaS businesses need to be able to motivate activation and fight churn.

WalkMe and Whatfix both have the functionality to do this in a limited way, but not to the extent that solutions focused on customer onboarding use cases can.

WalkMe vs. Whatfix pricing comparison

Neither WalkMe nor Whatfix publishes their exact pricing information. However, there are some clues we can use to make an estimate.

Both platforms require users to request a quote. Whatfix states that “Our pricing is completely on the basis of customer’s requirement and usage” :

While WalkMe offers Basic and Custom plans:

Typically, if a company avoids publishing pricing information, it means that its services aren’t going to come cheap.

Based on user reviews, it appears that WalkMe’s Basic plan starts at around $9,000 per year. Whatfix reviews indicate that their services begin at $1,200 – $2,000 per month.

We can’t directly compare these prices, though. WalkMe’s Basic plan is far more limited than the general features that Whatfix offers.

But then again, we don’t know exactly what features Whatfix customers get for $1,200 per month.

WalkMe vs Whatfix alternative: Userpilot

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.

Now, to be clear, Userpilot isn’t for employee onboarding and training. Rather, it’s most suitable for mid-market SaaS companies who want to do some top-quality user onboarding and get access to advanced product analytics in one tool.

Userpilot was built specifically for SaaS product teams that want to improve their user onboarding experience and boost user activation.

You can build a huge variety of user onboarding experiences and in-app guidance flows without needing to code.

When you start using Userpilot you get access to the following key features:

• Forget about coding in-app experiences: Userpilot is a no-code solution and only requires your app developers to install a line of javascript inside your app and for you to download a chrome extension that opens up the visual builder.

• Build in-app flows using the largest range of UI patterns (modals, slideouts, tooltips, hotspots, banners) and in-app onboarding experiences (checklists, microsurveys, NPS surveys, in-app resource center) to guide users and enable digital adoption of your tool.

• Get access to a built-in NPS tool for collecting and analyzing user sentiment so you can improve your onboarding process based on real data.
• Create and track combinations of in-app events like clicks, hovers, and form fills, and then analyze all these interactions under your own custom events, which can be built without code or API calls.
• Use advanced product analytics and in-app flows analytics to identify where users need help, how and if they complete tasks and create granular user segments to trigger in-app experiences contextually (segment based on user identification data, in-app engagement, custom events, clicks, hovers, form fills, user feedback responses, NPS scores and more)

• Enhance the onboarding experience with in-app help by launching a Resource Center directly inside your app. Add in-app guides, and video tutorials, and give users access to search the knowledge base or reach out to support. Self-service has never been easier and your support team will no longer have to deal with the same repetitive queries again.

The best user onboarding is contextual and it happens right where the users need it, inside your app. There isn’t a better digital adoption platform out there that offers more value for the money than Userpilot.

Schedule a demo with our team and get ready to build the best onboarding experiences your users have seen.

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.

WalkMe vs. Whatfix – Which is the leading digital adoption platform?

In the end, WalkMe vs Whatfix are more alike than they are different. But let’s summarize a few key points where they differ:

• Whatfix is easier to implement and maintain than WalkMe.
• Whatfix is more accessible to SMEs, but both target themselves to enterprise software businesses.
• WalkMe has much more powerful built-in user analytics than Whatfix.
• WalkMe’s customer support has a significantly better reputation than Whatfix’s for delivering effective assistance.
• The exact pricing of each is unknown, but if you can get by with WalkMe’s Basic plan it’s probably cheaper than Whatfix.

On the other hand, remember: If your use case is not employee onboarding and you’re looking for a more user-friendly, affordable and intuitive onboarding solution to increase user adoption, Userpilot might be just what you need!

Interested in setting up a great onboarding experience for your customers? Check out a Userpilot demo today!