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A recent study found that well over half of customers prioritize a great onboarding flow when deciding whether or not to make a purchase,
This is especially important to note in the product-led growth (PLG) SaaS space, where self-serve is the name of the game and leaders are always trying to find new ways to remove friction from processes — including onboarding.
That’s why we’ve carefully crafted this list full of some of the top SaaS user onboarding software platforms on the market.
String them together, integrate them into your existing systems, and finally create that robust, efficient onboarding flow loved by users and busy go-to-market (GTM) teams.
16 SaaS user onboarding platforms for building your best flow 〰️
Whether you already have a fully self-serve motion and just looking for strategies to make it cleaner or you’re a SaaS startup looking for ways to reduce load on your GTM team (sales, marketing, support, etc.) — here are our recommendations s on modern, effective solutions for building out a custom, friction-free user onboarding experience.
Best in-app guidance tools
An in-app guidance tool does exactly what it sounds like — it provides SaaS companies with a platform on which they can build product walkthroughs to guide users in app.
Typically, these tools rely on drag-and-drop interfaces and low-code installation strategies so they’re as usable as possible for the non-developer GTM teams.
1. Appcues
With Appcues, anyone on your GTM team can create relevant onboarding walkthroughs for various segments.
Just add a snippet of code to your codebase or integrate via Segment to start using Appcues to build no-code onboarding experiences with drag-and-drop functionality.
Learn more about Appcues from our PLS Vendor Spotlight where we chatted with Appcues Content Director Ramli John.
Pricing: Get started for free. Then, plans start at $249/month, paid annually, for 2,500 active users. Custom enterprise plans are also available.
2. Userflow
Userflow claims to be the “fastest flow builder on the market.”
Non-technical users can take advantage of the visual interface and proprietary algorithm to quickly spin up an interesting product tour. Lightweight installation code adds to the speed of working with Userflow.
Pricing: A free trial is available. Annual billing starts at $200/month, annually. Custom enterprise plans available.
3. Pendo
Pendo is all about turning every user into a product expert via delightful first impressions, intuitive in-app guidance, and training sessions that help new users cement and build on their knowledge — which also builds retention.
Pricing: New users can try Pendo for free. A starter package can be purchased for $7,000/year. Contact the company for details on other pricing plans, including a discounted one for startups.
Next gen embedded onboarding
These tools are similar to in-app guidance, mentioned above, but they take a different approach to the usual tooltips and overlays that currently dominate the category. Instead, they strive to provide an onboarding experience that feels natural and seamless within the app.
This approach allows for onboarding segmentation and customized experiences depending on your user personas.
4. Dopt
Dopt combines a visual flow builder with SDKs & APIs that help you develop amazing onboarding and education flows natively in your product. With Dopt SDK you can create custom checklists and progress bars directly into your product that update based on user interactions.
You can also build interactive walkthroughs, an alternative to tooltip tours which are often hurriedly skipped by users.
Pricing: Dopt is still in beta, so there’s no pricing info yet, but you can sign up!
5. Bento
Bento allows GTM teams to easily build in-app contextual guides, that are opt-in for users, and allow you to test different discoverability options: visual tags, animated sidebar toggle, or a list of available guides.
Pricing: Pricing is not readily available, but you can request a demo here.
Best data-driven messaging platforms
We’re all over those totally cold and lifeless emails, notifications, texts, and other messages — right? 😴
With these data-informed messaging platforms that enable GTM teams to apply personalization, you’ll be able to create messaging campaigns and triggers that actually keep leads engaged, without taking up your whole work day.
6. Customer.io
Use Customer.io to automate the process of sending emails, push notifications, and more that are closely aligned with where the user is in their journey. When it comes to onboarding, that means welcoming and helpful emails that waste no time in pulling users back into the product.
Pricing: Request a free demo or sign up for $100 per month for up to 5,000 profiles. Contact the company for pricing on other packages.
7. Braze
Braze is big on powering personalized cross-channel messaging, which provides a stellar first impression and encourages further action from new users.
Pricing: Contact sales for pricing info and to get started.
Best marketing automation tools
Marketing automation tools are pivotal to eliminating human intervention in the user onboarding process, a core tenant of high-functioning and lean self-serve SaaS companies.
Use one of these platforms to take advantage of modern machine learning and artificial intelligence to apply smart personalization and automation — so your team can focus on the tasks that require real human thinking.
8. HubSpot
While HubSpot has many facets, its marketing automation element in particular helps GTM teams create bespoke workflows. Send new users relevant and personalized messages at the right place and time as they move along the onboarding pipeline.
Pricing: HubSpot’s marketing hub starts at $45/month, billed annually, for 1,000 contacts. An enterprise plan begins at $3,600/month, billed annually, for 10,000 contacts. Free tools and discounted bundles are also up for grabs.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign’s drag and drop automation builder allows GTM teams to build highly targeted workflows for each point of the customer lifecycle. Like HubSpot they offer different products for sales and marketing including a CRM.
Pricing: They have a 14 day free trial, pricing starts at $29 for a single user, $49 for 3 users, and $149 for 5 users billed yearly.
Best conversational marketing instruments
A somewhat new concept, conversational marketing uses a blend of real-time dialogue and smart automated messaging to keep new users engaged, effectively moving them through the onboarding or purchasing process.
10. Drift
Drift, which can be partially credited with popularizing the idea of conversational marketing, gives GTM teams an approachable format in which to engage new users who need help during the onboarding phase.
With Drift, folks from sales, marketing, support, and beyond can connect via live conversation as well as automated message via chat, video, voice, and email — all of which is managed from one modern dashboard.
Pricing: Drift starts at $2,500/month, billed annually. More plans are available, as well as add-ons and integrations.
11. Intercom
Using Intercom, support and sales teams can engage with new users at key points during the onboarding process, creating thoughtful experiences that spur them to activate and stay retained. Intercom can also be used to build omni-channel messaging campaigns, personalized via first-party data.
Pricing: The only package pricing available is for very small teams, which starts at $74/month, annually. Add-ons, combo deals, early-stage discounts, and custom packages are available when you chat with sales or sign up for a demo.
Best helpdesk tech
Help desk technology comes in many forms, but what’s important is that it has the features necessary to empower customer support personnel to deal with customer questions and requests in a way that’s efficient and effective for both them and struggling users.
12. Zendesk
Zendesk strives to serve both customers and business teams with a platform that enables conversation organization, seamless support across all channels, chatbots, forums, and help centers for users who choose to help themselves.
Pricing: Zendesk for service teams starts at $49 per agent/month, billed annually. The top-tier enterprise package begins at $215 per agent/month, annually.
13. Help Scout
Help Scout is focused on serving every element of the customer support interaction.
Agents enjoy an inbox-like conversation database and other tools that enable collaboration and automation so support can be rendered quickly. On the other side, customers get access to live chat, in-app messaging, and even a robust knowledge base to address their every concern.
Pricing: Annually, Help Scout users can pay $20/month to $65/month per user. Non-profit and startup rates and free trials are also available.
Best video and webinar tools
You already know what video and webinar software does. What matters here is how it fits into the SaaS user onboarding flow.
The fact is that the majority of customers report watching videos to learn the ins and outs of products, and agree that video is a helpful educational tool that they wish to see more of.
So with that in mind, here are some platforms for creating video demos and webinar-based training sessions for onboarding users.
14. Loom
Loom is a simple platform for creating quick, video-based messages, which can include screen recordings. This makes Loom a powerful visual tool for showing off features in general or helping new users through specific areas where they’re experiencing friction.
Pricing: Loom can be used for free, but business plans start at $12.50/month, per creator, when billed annually. Enterprise and educator plans available.
15. Livestorm
With Livestorm, GTM teams can host live demonstrations, aka webinars, to onboard large numbers of new product users all at once.
Pricing: Sign up or get a demo of Livestorm for free. Business plans are $88/month, billed annually. More custom plans can be quoted by sales.
Product-Led Sales software
While Product-Led Sales (PLS) software doesn’t typically fall into the onboarding software category, they’re a valuable add-on to your stack.
Why? Because they bring together both product usage and customer data — which provide deep insights into opportunities for improving onboarding.
With powerful PLS software, GTM teams can finally make sense of all that data their product and users are generating to remove onboarding friction and engage with high-value leads.
Pocus
Pocus is one such PLS platform helping companies up-level SaaS user onboarding.
In fact, it’s kind of the PLS platform as a pioneering tool helping GTM folks convert product and user data into revenue like magic. ✨
How?
Pocus’ no-code platform aids even the most non-technical GTM teams in creating the dashboards and procedures they need to seize hot opportunities.
Here are the main features we’re always honing to empower GTM teams:
- Activate your PLS strategy using magic playbooks that can be infinitely customized by adding ICPs, teams, goals, actions, and beyond.
- Build on Pocus’ recommended intelligent scores, attaching different ones to different playbooks.
- Connect and model your data, your way in Pocus to create a functional database that works for you in just a few hours.
- Integrate with Slack to get an alert anytime a high-potential opportunity arrives in your inbox.
- Let Pocus guide you in choosing the best course of action or starting the appropriate automatic sequence.
- Data, operations, and every element of your go-to-market team can enjoy a single source of user and product data truth with Pocus.
Ready to help your GTM team make magic with your product and user data?
Explore how with Pocus. 🔮
Learn More: Explore Our SaaS Onboarding Resources
But wait, there’s more! 🤓
These additional resources from our blog will help you learn even more about onboarding — from why it’s so critical to product-led growth to how to combine it with sales for maximum impact, and beyond.
- Read Onboarding: A crucial piece of the PLG puzzle for a deeper dive into the real value of onboarding when selling a self-serve SaaS product.
- Check out Product-led growth tools: The modern tech stack for PLG companies to learn about the rest of the tools that accompany these onboarding platforms in the product-led stack.
- Read our Product-Led Sales AMA with Ramli John — Appcues Director of Content, PLG coach, and author of "Product-Led Onboarding."
- And don’t forget our convo with Wes Bush all about How to layer sales on top of self-serve user onboarding, where we discuss mistakes to avoid, myths to be aware of, and exactly how to create a product-led onboarding experience.
Start Optimizing Your Onboarding Workflow Now
With that, you have the knowledge and the tools at your disposal to power a SaaS user onboarding process that’s effective and efficient for your team as well as your customers.
While you’re on a roll, what do you say we take it one step further?
Join the ranks of Webflow, QuickNode, and more of our cutting-edge customers and capitalize on all the product usage and customer information that’s currently going to waste at your company. 💰
At Pocus, we pride ourselves on always knowing the next best step.
Right now, for you, that step is exploring our product or requesting a white-glove demo.
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