15 Top User Onboarding Tools to Improve your SaaS Activation in 2022

Find out which are the onboarding tools that can help you optimize your onboarding process to its full potential.

Onboarding is defined as the moment from which a user creates their account with your product or app, to the moment when the promise of your product or app is delivered to them for the first time.

This promise is the value that your product or app can deliver to him or her.

It’s one of the most critical stages in the customer journey – if the onboarding process isn’t utilized correctly, you might establish an unsuccessful set up for encouraging users to upgrade to a long-term, paid plan.

The faster you can guide users through the onboarding process and arrive at completion, the better: successful onboarding has a large influence on your free trial to paid conversion rates.

But how do you know where to get started in making your onboarding process a fast and smooth experience for the user?

In-app onboarding tools have been introduced throughout the data science industry to help you do just that – from creating product tours and checklists, these tools help you optimize your onboarding process to its full potential, and the best part is that more often than not, they require zero coding skills on your end. They take care of that for you!

Here’s a list of in-app onboarding tools that are absolutely worth checking out:

Appcues

Appcues is a user onboarding tool for SaaS products. It’s a no-code software that enables even non-technical teams to track and analyze product usage, build in-app onboarding tools, and run customer surveys.

Features:

• User segmentation
• Multi-language support ️
• Behavior-response messaging
• Text bubble walkthroughs
• Survey implementation
• Data analysis
• No-code design
• NPS
• Tooltips, checklists, hotspots, and launchpad

Pricing: Appcues’ pricing plan starts at $299/mo for up to 2,500 users with monthly payments. It drops down to $249/mo when paid annually. You can increase the monthly user limit with the same plan and an updated price.

Chameleon

Chameleon is a platform that empowers SaaS teams to build user onboarding to increase feature and product adoption, collect feedback, and improve product experiences without coding skills or technical knowledge.

Features:

• No coding
• Behavior response messaging
• User segmentation
• Text bubble walkthroughs
• Audio-visual walkthroughs
• Data analysis
• Product tours, tooltips, in-product widgets, and micro surveys
• The ability to customize tours by persona

Pricing: Chameleon’s price plans start at $279/mo for up to 2,000 users.

Userflow

As a user onboarding software, Userflow lets you build onboarding checklists and product tours tailored for your product.

Features:

• No-code design, point and click, drag and drop
• Seamless integration with any web app
• Text bubble walkthroughs
• User segmentation
• Build step-based flows
• Surveys and NPS
• Multi-environment and version history for your company’s production/staging workflows
• Completely customizable flows and checklists✅
• Multi-language support
• Branched flows
• Analytics and event tracking

Pricing: Userflow’s pricing plan starts at $250/mo with a monthly payment for up to 3,000 users.

Userpilot

Userpilot is a user onboarding software designed to boost user adoption through behavior-driven product experiences. You can build highly customizable and personalized onboarding flows for new signups, trigger interactive tips, run surveys, and more using this tool.

Features:

• Segment users based on persona and in-app behavior
• Provide contextual hints and tips
• Data analysis
• Text bubble walkthroughs
• Audio-visual walkthroughs
• Survey implementation
• Multi-language support ️

Pricing: Userpilot’s price plans start at $249/mo for up to 2,500 monthly users.

UserGuiding

Even though your users look through the features page and sign up for your product, they may miss several points where they can get more value from your service. That’s where onboarding comes into play. UserGuiding is one of the most cost-effective user onboarding softwares on the market, ensuring you’re able to guide your users like a pro.

The best part? You need zero coding skills to start creating onboarding flows thanks to its drag-and-drop interface. Consequently, it increases product adoption and reduces churn rates.

Features:

• No code tool
• In-depth analytics tool to track the performance of your guides
• Segmentation to create personalized onboarding experiences
• Net Promoter Survey
• Interactive walkthroughs
• Onboarding checklist to guide users step-by-step✅
• Goal tracking and gamification for better product adoption
• Wide range of customization options: Use emojis, GIFs, images, and videos ️
• Hotspots (static infoboxes)
• The ability to create a self-service, interactive help center

Pricing: Userguiding’s price plans start at $99/mo for up to 2,500 monthly users.

Walkme

Walkme is a Digital Adoption Platform designed to maximize user adoption of your digital assets. One of its many solutions, customer onboarding, helps you detect and overcome any friction or struggles during the product adoption process and ensure smooth user experiences.

Features:

• User segmentation
• Multi-language support ️
• Behavior-response messages
• Survey implementation
• Data analysis
• Text bubble walkthroughs
• Audio-visual walkthroughs ️
• Automated steps
• On-screen guides

Pricing: Get a quote based on your specific needs here https://www.walkme.com/pricing/. 

Hopscotch

Hopscotch is a simple user onboarding tool designed for SaaS startups to streamline the process of building interactive product tours.

Features:

• Conditional logic to segment in-app messaging
• Interactive product tours
• Tooltips to educate customers
• Scheduled in-app messaging campaigns
• In-app messages to welcome users or make announcements
• Full browser SDK (software development kit) for the tech-savvy Hopscotch users

Pricing: Hopscotch’s pricing plans start at $99/mo for up to 3,000 monthly users.

Intercom

Intercom is one of the most well-known customer communications platforms, while offering functionality aimed at onboarding users too. It unifies every aspect of the customer journey, from conversion to engagement to support.

Features:

• Customer engagement solution allows you to display helpful in-app messages and product tours to help users get up to speed with your app
• You can send emails and in-app notifications to improve new feature adoption, or re-engage inactive users
• Convert more website visitors to qualified leads and customers with ABM, chatbots, and automated meeting scheduling
• Drive activation and engagement with in-product and multi-channel campaigns, tours, and surveys.
• ​​Provide personalized help at scale with proactive, self-serve, and human support.

Pricing: Intercom’s pricing plan starts at $79/mo for the starter pack and can increase depending on extra features.

Helppier

Helppier is another tool dedicated solely to onboarding new users. Helppier makes it easy to engage and help users online. Turn users into customers with interactive user guides, tooltips, pop-ups, warnings, and more. No coding, no headaches.

Features:

• Create various user guides and manuals
• Send welcome messages
• Set up product tours to give users an overview of your app
• Display in-app messages

Pricing: Helppier’s pricing plan starts at $49/mo with a yearly payment for up to 1000 MAUS

Inline Manual

Inline Manual is a Digital Adoption Platform that helps you create interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, surveys and support articles right in your app.

Inline Manual allows you to customize your messages, time your communications to increase relevance, while using analytics to improve the process.

Main features:

• Walkthroughs: Guide the users through your application to get them to desired goals faster.
• Announcements: Notify your users about training, downtimes or product updates anywhere in the application.
• Tooltips: Support your users with tooltips explaining what they are supposed to do with your application.
• Feedback: Find out how you’re doing, identify the bottlenecks of your application by asking your users directly.
• In-App help: Guide the users through your application to get them to desired goals faster.
• Automation: Automate repetitive tasks, create click shortcuts so your users aren’t bothered.
• Analytics: Track the performance of the content you have created, know how helpful it is.
• Branching: Create multiple branches of content, give users the choice of the path to follow.
• Segmentation: Segment users to serve them with the most relevant content in the right moments.

Pricing: Inline Manual’s pricing plan starts at $158/mo with a yearly payment for up to 250 monthly active users.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is an omnichannel customer service software designed to enable businesses of all sizes to deliver smoother customer experiences. It’s a cloud-based tool, converting requests coming in via email, chat, web, form, and social info tickets and gathers them all in one ticket resolution channel.

Moreover, you can automate your workflows, manage SLAs (service level agreement), and provide self-service with chatbots.

Features:

• Team Inbox: Track and manage incoming support tickets from multiple channels with one inbox.
• Agent Collision Detection: Ensure that multiple agents don’t wind up working on the same ticket by accident.
• SLA Management: Set deadlines for ticket response and resolution based on different business hours or categories.
• Ticket Field Suggester: Automatically suggest ticket fields to categorize, prioritize and route incoming tickets
• Thank You Detector: Prevent reopening of tickets when customers respond with a thank you
• Custom Ticket Status: Create custom statuses that suit your workflow to identify what stage a ticket is in.
• Scenario Automation: Perform multiple actions on a ticket with a single click by automating repeated actions.

Pricing: Freshdeck offers multiple plans and pricing options separated into two categories- Support Desk plans or Omnichannel plans. Learn more here: https://freshdesk.com/pricing.

Bonjoro

Bonjoro is often used by sales teams to send personalized videos to leads, but it’s also ideal for users in the midst of onboarding. Bonjoro notifies you whenever a user takes an action you’ve flagged so you can record and send them a personalized video.

Features:

• Team workspaces: Create private Bonjoro workspaces for your different teams – multiple team members included on every plan
• Desktop and Mobile Apps: Record your videos from your desktop or on-the-go using our handy iOS and Android apps.
• Tracking and Analytics: Track all interactions with your videos in real-time and analyze your results to optimize your approach.
• Benefit from a host of unique features including workflow filters, custom landing page domains, and 20+ languages.

Pricing: Bonjoro’s pricing plan includes the Forever Free plan, available for up to 3 users and 50 videos/month. Starter pack starts at $19/mo.

Auth0

When it comes to user onboarding, your goal is to reduce friction and drive users to your onboarding flow as quickly as possible. One potential roadblock is the login. Many people forget logins or don’t want to create a new account, leading them to just walk away instead.

But that doesn’t mean you should allow the rush to turn your app into a security hazard. With a tool like Auth0, you can activate users immediately during onboarding and personalize their experience with single sign-on (SSO) across platforms, and social login through Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Features:

• Universal login: Authenticate your users securely across every application, from the first click to the last. See how your organization’s identity helps secure digital access for users everywhere.
• Single sign on: Orchestrate an uninterrupted authentication experience, across multiple applications, with a single set of login credentials.
• Multifactor Authentication: Improve security by letting users authenticate with WebAuthn, SMS, voice, email, push notifications, Google Authenticator-like apps as their second authentication factor.
• Passwordless: Authenticate using your device biometrics, or with a one-time password received by email or SMS.

Pricing: Auth0’s free plan works for companies with up to 7,000 users, and paid plans start as low as $23/mo.

Totango

Stay on top of the status and progress of your onboarding program at any time. Use Totango‘s ready-built dashboards with best-practice onboarding metrics or customize them with the unique goals and onboarding KPIs for your business. Whether you have a high-touch program or you want to onboard customers digitally, Totango’s Onboarding SuccessBLOCs have what you need to jumpstart your program.

Features:

• Customer Health Score: Get an instantaneous view into the status and engagement of your customer.
• Meaningful measurement: Customize the Customer Health Score with data measurements that are meaningful to your business. The most widely used measures are: Usage, Adoption, Support, Voice of the Customer, CSM Sentiment, Financial and Engagement.
• Powerful insights: All pre-configured health criteria roll up into one, easy-to-read Health Scorecard. See overall account health for your customer base, number of accounts affected, revenue at risk, health signal trends and more.
• Account Health: Account health allows you to set measurement categories and define values for what is good, bad or poor.
• Multidimensional Health: Multidimensional account health lets you set and customize the scoring of sub categories or dimensions within a health measurement.

Pricing: Totango’s free plan works for companies with up to 100 customer accounts, and paid plans start as low as $199/mo.

Stonly

With Stonly, you can leverage interactive guides while layering on user data to make the onboarding experience hyper-relevant. No-code implementation makes it easy to create, launch, and update an integrated experience without needing a developer. To better optimize the journey, you can easily track which paths users are taking by segment, including where they’re getting stuck or dropping off.

Features:

• Interactive guides let users make their own choices
• Leverage user data to direct users to the right guides
• Match your aesthetic with simple UI and CSS styling
• Multiple prompt options, including videos, short tours, tooltips, and hotspots
• Modular design to deploy whole guides or individual steps
• Powerful analytics to monitor user paths and optimize

Pricing: Stonly’s free plan works for companies with up to 1,000 guide views, and paid plans start as low as $49/mo.

Usetiful

Digital product adoption made simple. Usetiful aims to close the gap between users and digital systems. Product tours and contextual help increase user retention and engagement in any digital software.

Features:

• Product tours: Guide your customer through any digital product and assist them during first use. 
• Onboarding checklist: Checklists organize small atomic parts of user onboarding into consistent experiences.✅
• Smart tips: Smart Tips simplify even complex forms or processes on your site. Use smart tips to add hints or important information to critical inputs or confusing elements.
• Assistant (Coming Soon): Serve your customers with simple access to all valuable knowledge needed to get their job done. Aggregate your knowledge base, how-to articles, useful links, as well as the Usetiful product tours into an easily accessible widget.

Pricing: Usetiful’s free plan works for companies with one product tour & one page with smart tips. 2000 assists, and paid plans start as low as $29/month.

Final Thoughts

The number of in-app onboarding tools available for data science people is incredible – we hope you found this list helpful as you search for the perfect tool for you and your product. We recommend using an in-app onboarding tool in combination with other tools in the martech stack such as product analytics tools.