Whatfix vs Stonly vs Userpilot - Which is Best for Your SaaS?

Finding the right product growth platform for your SaaS can be a challenging decision. That’s why we’ll be comparing three leading tools; Whatfix, Stonly, and Userpilot. In this detailed analysis, we delve into each tool’s features, discuss their use cases, and highlight their respective pros and cons, going beyond the information typically available on review sites.

Whether your primary focus is on enhancing user onboarding, increasing product adoption, or gathering user feedback, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s dive in.

TL;DR

Whatfix is a digital adoption tool that lets you create onboarding flows and knowledge bases easily. However, the platform is buggy and the analytical features offered are basic at most.
The second platform on our list is Stonly which was initially created as a tool for customer support teams. While it’s great for building knowledge bases, it offers limited features to help you with increasing adoption and collecting user feedback.
Userpilot is a powerful product growth tool that offers onboarding, adoption, and feedback features all in one. It offers a vast library of UI patterns and predesigned survey templates. One thing to note, however, is that it can’t be used for mobile applications.
If you’re interested in what Userpilot has to offer, book a demo today.

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What is Whatfix?

Whatfix dashboard

Whatfix is one of the top digital adoption platforms around and a driver of innovation in this space.

Whatfix offers a well-made product that allows you to create user flows, knowledge bases, and task lists to get new users engaged and learning. On top of this, their analytics platform is easy to understand and helps you keep track of behavior analytics, guidance analytics, and user feedback all in one place.

What is Whatfix best for?

Typically, SaaS Product Managers consider Whatfix for the following reasons: they want to improve their user onboarding, they need product adoption and want to measure their user feedback. How does Whatfix perform when it comes to these top-three use cases? Let’s examine it all, and then compare it to the other tools we’re discussing in this post.

Whatfix for user onboarding

Whatfix’s digital adoption platform makes your user onboarding easier. The tool helps you create personalized walkthroughs by adopting the learning-by-doing technique.

Here are the benefits you can gain if you choose Whatfix:

Create interactive product walkthroughs and flows code-free with native integration options
Incorporate different onboarding elements into your flows, including modals, checklists, tooltips, and beacons
With its user-level segmentation, you can set up basic contextual onboarding to differentiate user experience.

However, Whatfix targets mostly large enterprise companies and might not be the right choice for SMBs or startups. If this is the case, you should be looking for alternative tools to power up your user onboarding.

Whatfix for product adoption

To drive product and user adoption, you need to provide continuous value to your users and provide contextual help across all stages of the customer journey.

Whatfix helps your enterprise company achieve that by unlocking the full potential of user segmentation and in-app guidance.

Here is what you will get with Whatfix product adoption functionality.

Create contextual in-app guides to make users get the maximum value of your product.
Provide omnichannel support without skyrocketing your customer support goals.
Powerful analytics to try new ideas based on real-time data and find ways to optimize the customer experience.

Whatfix for user feedback

If you want to collect user feedback on specific interactions, Whatfix is a good tool to build micro surveys for that.

Here’s how you can collect user feedback with Whatfix:

With user surveys, you can collect feedback on the onboarding tours and training flows, so you can continuously improve your product support.
Whatfix’s in-app feedback surveys make it easy to gather feedback and insights from users in real-time.
Add a follow-up question to enable open-minded feedback
Send push reminders to customers so they don’t forget about providing feedback

However, if you want to build traditional NPS surveys with response tagging capabilities, then segment customers based on their feedback, Whatfix might not be the best fit for you. This is something that Userpilot offers.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Whatfix!

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What is Stonly?

Stonly builder

Stonly positions itself as a budget-friendly alternative to its more expensive competitors, but in fact – it’s more of a CS tool for building knowledge bases than a product adoption tool for onboarding. Similarly, as with Intercom Product Tours, Stonly’s tour builder feels like a makeshift add-on to the Knowledge Bases rather than a fully-fledged product (compared to its competitors like Userpilot or Appcues).

So it may be good for startups and small businesses with few users and a per-view pricing model (which may become super-expensive once you have more users!) and that want a tool primarily for the Knowledge Base use case.

What is Stonly best for?

Similar to Whatfix, Stonly is typically considered for user onboarding. Let’s examine Stonly for this use case before we compare it to Userpilot.

Stonly for user onboarding

Stonly tour editor in-app

Stonly’s product tours are not the most intuitive (and require quite a bit of coding), and they come with limited integrations. In fact – its setup and builder are extremely confusing: you can build the tours both in the Stonly dashboard and on top of your app, but then you need to go back to the dashboard to edit the content of the steps you’ve just built in the Chrome Extension? 🤔 This doesn’t make much sense…

Additionally, Stonly is focused mainly on user onboarding. You can’t use it for increasing adoption or collecting feedback.

Try a better tool for your SaaS than Stonly!

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What is Userpilot?

Userpilot Features & Events dashboard

Userpilot is a comprehensive digital adoption platform (DAP). It enables product teams to track product usage and user behavior to guide product development and optimize the user experience.

In addition, it allows them to gather user feedback and design personalized onboarding experiences to drive product adoption. All of this is possible without coding.

What is Userpilot best for?

Userpilot is used for similar use cases as Stonly and Whatfix. Let’s see how Userpilot compares to the tools we discussed before it comes to user onboarding, product adoption, and user feedback.

Userpilot for user onboarding

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.

Here’s what you’ll get when you start using Userpilot:

Forget about coding in-app experiences: Userpilot is a no-code solution and only requires your dev 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, micro surveys, NPS surveys, in-app resource center).
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 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.

The best user onboarding is contextual and it happens right where the users need it, inside your app. There isn’t a better user onboarding tool 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 for product adoption

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.

Userpilot for user feedback

Editing a survey in Userpilot

There are two types of feedback you should be focusing on collecting to better understand the health of your product and users.

First, you have user sentiment which looks at user satisfaction and effort scores or loyalty (using NPS surveys). Then you may also want to collect feedback on the functionality of the product or specific features.

You can do all these with Userpilot. In short, you can:

Collect and track (NPS) in-app with a built-in NPS widget that allows you to fully customize the survey look and feel, and set the trigger frequency and specific targeting.
Analyze NPS scores, tag responses, and use the data to create specific user segments.
Build and trigger in-app micro surveys like the classic PMF survey, or similar ones and mix multi-choice and open-ended types of questions to collect specific insights.
Be in charge of who gets which survey type and when with advanced segmentation capabilities, and of course, you can use the answers to segment your audience.

The advantage of using Userpilot for collecting feedback over other survey tools is that you can better control who sees the surveys but also you can instantly use the data collected to segment your user base and trigger the right experience for them.

For instance, if your users give you a low NPS score because they think you’re missing a critical feature (that you actually have already), you can push an interactive walkthrough guiding them to find and explore this feature.

Tired of bad Digital Adoption tools? Try Userpilot for your SaaS for free!

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So Which tool should you choose? Whatfix vs Stonly vs Userpilot – final thoughts

As you can see, Whatfix, Stonly, and Userpilot cater to most of the use cases Product Managers typically look for their SaaS companies. There are some differences between the tools when it comes to how those use cases are executed in each, of course. So if you’re still on the fence – there are two more factors that can make a difference for you – the tools’ pricing, and its reviews. Let’s have a look at both below!

Whatfix pricing

Whatfix doesn’t have any pricing plans on its website. Instead, you’ll need to speak with one of their team members to get a custom quote tailored to your needs and organization.

Otherwise, you can request a free trial to see if Whatfix works for you.

Stonly pricing

Stonly pricing

Stonly offers two main pricing plans for its customers, catering to different business sizes and needs. The pricing details are as follows:

Small Business: Starting at $199/mo (billed annually), this plan is designed for small businesses and startups looking to scale self-serve support, targeted product tours, and interactive knowledge management. Features include:
- Unlimited guides in multiple languages.
- Targeting using your user data.
- 3 knowledge bases.
- 4,000 guide views per month.
- 5 team members.
Enterprise: Pricing available upon contacting Stonly, this plan is geared towards employee digital adoption and knowledge resources or high-volume personalized customer guidance. Features include:
- SSO (Single Sign-On).
- Group rights management.
- Private knowledge bases.
- Other enterprise features.

Customers can save 20% on both plans when billed annually.

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: Custom pricing and usage limits.
Enterprise: Custom pricing and usage limits.

What do users say about Whatfix vs Stonly vs Userpilot?

Whatfix reviews

Whatfix review

Stonly reviews

Stonly review

Userpilot reviews

Userpilot review

The final countdown: Pros & Cons of Whatfix, Stonly, and Userpilot

Whatfix pros

There are many advantages when it comes to choosing Whatfix. Here are its pros.

Easy to create flows, even for non-technical team members.
Allows you to develop knowledge bases for self-help solutions.
Ideal for both customer and employee onboarding.

Whatfix cons

But at the same time, Whatfix has some cons so it’s better to get an overview if you’re thinking of buying it:

User experience issues, including bugs and sometimes spotty customer service.
Fewer analytical features and views than you might like.
Lacks in-depth style customizations.
It’s difficult to integrate some of the scripted code in the admin integration sections without the help of a Whatfix support team member.
No free trial option despite it being stated on the homepage.
It’s targeted at enterprise accounts so small companies might get ignored.

Stonly pros

Stonly has a number of advantages:

The ability to support multiple languages
Small companies with fewer initial views will benefit from this pricing model
Integrated analytics
Front, Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Segment integrations
Knowledge base functionality included

Stonly cons

There are also several considerable downsides to using Stonly though:

Extremely confusing builder
Pretty code-heavy product tour setup for a “no-code tool”
Confusing installation: it’s impossible to install it for a non-technical user:
Stonly installation

Requires some knowledge of CSS to customize – the customization options are worse than the market standard
Doesn’t allow you to add content to your product guides (text) directly in the Chrome Extension:
Stonly tour editor in-app
There is a lack of certain popular product tour features, such as progress bars and checklists

Userpilot pros

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.

Userpilot cons

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 Zapier is 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.

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Conclusion

This article thoroughly explored the strengths and weaknesses of Whatfix, Stonly, and Userpilot in terms of user onboarding, product adoption, and user feedback. Making a decision now should be easier – remember, the tool you choose must be consistent with your feature requirements and budgets.

While we may be a bit biased, we genuinely believe that Userpilot offers the best bang for your buck, especially when it comes to user onboarding. Book a demo to see Userpilot in action.

Whatfix vs Stonly vs Userpilot – Which is Best for Your SaaS?

CONTENTS

TL;DR

Comparing Whatfix vs Stonly vs Userpilot? Try the best one FREE!

What is Whatfix?