Intercom Product Tour Alternatives: Top 3 of All Time [In-Depth Comparison]

A lot of people ask us if there are any Intercom Product Tour alternatives worth taking a look at.

As it turns out, there are a few alternatives that can help you scale up your user onboarding.

Some of these products will suit you and your organization better than others — we’re here to help you figure out which one is the best fit. We’ve tried and tested each product, and we’ve tried to be as unbiased as possible. Before we delve into the alternatives to Intercom Product Tours, it’s only fair we take a look at the Intercom itself.

So let’s get started!

TL;DR

• Intercom is a customer communication and engagement platform which offers Product tours as an add-on to their plan.
• Intercom Product Tours is a lightweight user onboarding tool that helps you create product tours to guide customers. 
• Although it’s very easy to set up and is not expensive if you already use their chat widget, Intercom product tours are basically single, linear product tours consisting of a few modals with the “next” button. It’s more suitable for simple products. 
• There are better alternatives for Intercom Product tours. The list includes Userpilot, Chameleon, and Appcues.
• Userpilot is the best alternative for Intercom if you want to build contextual interactive walkthroughs with a wide range of UI patterns such as modals, tooltips, checklists, slideouts, banners, etc. What’s more important you get more value for your money. 

What do Intercom Product Tours do?

Intercom is better known as one of the most popular customer engagement products. Their Product Tours is a lightweight user onboarding tool and you can use them to create a simple product tour like the one below: 

You are able to customize the look of your UI elements a little, but more serious customization can be done only through CSS coding.

Product Tours also integrates directly with Intercom’s customer support product. This ensures a consistent experience for your users.

Why should you choose Intercom Product Tours?

Here are some reasons why you should give Intercom Product Tours a try.

• Intercom Product Tours can instantly integrate with the rest of Intercom is the biggest selling point.
• If you already use Intercom’s chat widget on your site or in your app, then you can combine it with Product Tours. This creates a great product experience for your users. It also makes it easier for your teams to manage. It also allows you to use the same dashboard for sending emails.
• The tool is a relatively lightweight product. It doesn’t offer as many features as some of the alternatives we’ll be looking at later. And most importantly – it is not a digital adoption platform or a product growth platform. But if you have a relatively simple product, zero time, and less than 500 users (because of the pricing – we’ll get to that later!)  then the lack of features may actually be useful to you. 
• It is very easy to set up and build the simple, linear product tour consisting of a few modals 
• In the start-up plan, up to 500 MAUs, Intercom is one of the cheapest options, at just $49 per month.  

Why you might need an Intercom Alternative for Product Tours?

If you’re already using Intercom’s Product tours then you should have already noticed these drawbacks that the tool comes with. In case you plan to give it a try in the future, then look at the cons list.

• Don’t be fooled: Intercom Product tours is basically a single, linear product tour consisting of a few modals with the “next” button. 
• It’s very basic. It feels almost like an MVP. 
• The segmentation and analytics options are also very basic. You can basically see how many users dropped out at each stage of the user journey. That’s it.
• The lightweight features of Intercom Product Tours are best suited to simple products.
• If your product is slightly more complex, then you’re going to want to create more sophisticated onboarding flows. You can’t do that in Intercom Product Tours. You can’t do feature introductions as it lacks slideouts either. 
• It is not a digital adoption platform/ product growth platform. It’s literally a user onboarding tool that allows you to build just that one product tour. 
• This means you can’t use it to create checklists, modals, slideouts, or non-linear onboarding.
• The lack of onboarding elements means that a lot of companies are going to have to consider alternatives to Intercom Product Tours. This becomes even more important as you scale.
• The other drawback of Intercom’s product is the lack of styling. You are able to customize your onboarding elements, but only with CSS coding. If you don’t know any coding, then this can be a tricky and time-consuming part of the process. You may end up having to enlist the help of a designer or dev.
• The pricing is deceptive. Yes, it may have the lowest entry point at $49, but it’s so easy to go over the 500 MAUs you’re allowed in the startup plan, and then the price goes up exponentially. Nobody even knows how much exactly as it’s not clear on Intercom’s website. 
• Finally, Intercom Product Tours doesn’t offer any form of split testing. This is an important part of building an onboarding process, as it means you can learn which onboarding flows are the most effective. Without any A/B testing, you’re effectively just guessing, and hoping you stumble on the right answer.

How much do Intercom Product Tours cost?

Product Tours is offered as an “add-on” to an existing Intercom package.

That means that if you don’t already pay for Intercom, you’re going to have to buy one of their plans, and then also buy the Product Tours add-on.

The cheapest “regular” Intercom plan is their Essential Plan. This will cost you as little as $87 per month (for 2 seats and 200 active users). More users and more seats will cost more money.

The Product Tours add-on will then cost you an extra $149 a month.

That means in total you’ll be paying at least $200 a month for the most basic package.

The price soon shoots up if you need to invite multiple team members in, or if you have a large number of users.

It’s also worth pointing out that Intercom offers a startup package for one year at $49 per month. But if you’re scaling, then you’ll probably end up finding an alternative afterward anyway!

What are the best Intercom Product Tour alternatives?

Intercom Product Tours is a good tool for creating a simple user onboarding flow for less complex products. But if you want something that is specifically designed to help you with your onboarding, then you may need to look for an Intercom Product Tours alternative.

So let’s take a look at some of the best alternatives in the market.

Intercom Product Tour Alternative #1: Userpilot for Personalized Onboarding

Userpilot enables you to create the perfect product experience for your users. It’s an all-in-one product growth platform to help you onboard your users, improving your adoption rate.

You can add complete walkthroughs, tooltips, checklists — basically any onboarding element you can think of.

We also have an on-demand help widget, an in-app survey & native tooltips that can boost your reactive onboarding.

You can then customize those elements without a single line of code. Where Userpilot really shines is its ability to create contextual onboarding experiences. These trigger when a user performs a specific action.

Why should you choose Userpilot?

The key selling point of Userpilot is that you can use it to create contextual onboarding experiences.

In other words, you can show the right message to the right user at the right time.

If, for example, your user can only get value from Feature B after first setting up Feature A, it makes no sense to onboard Feature B first.

With Userpilot, you can set up Feature B’s onboarding flow to trigger when the user sets up Feature A: 

Contextual onboarding is significantly more effective when it comes to driving user adoption.

Perhaps an even better feature of our user onboarding tool is what we call “driven actions”. None of the other Intercom Product Tours alternatives offer this.

Essentially it means you can create an onboarding experience across multiple URLs, even dynamic URLs (ones that change for every user). This leads to even more interactive onboarding flows.

Userpilot is also a good choice for those who want complete control over the look of their onboarding.

Other onboarding tools either offer limited customization or force you to edit the styling with CSS code.

Userpilot offers in-app customization so you can achieve the exact look you want with no coding required.

Other than that, Userpilot offers a lot of other useful tools as a part of its product growth suite: 

• onboarding checklists:
• resource center: 
• very detailed segmentation options:

• NPS surveys and detailed NPS analytics: 

 

• slideouts perfect for features introductions: 

…and many more! Try Userpilot for free now!

Why should you not choose Userpilot?

The main reason that Userpilot might not be the best fit for you is that it doesn’t currently support mobile apps (though we are working on this, and hope to release it soon!).

If you want to add onboarding elements to your mobile app, then you’ll have to look elsewhere for now. 

How much does Userpilot cost?

Userpilot’s pricing is fairly straightforward. The “Standard Plan” starts at $249 a month (billed annually) for up to 2,500 monthly active users.

That plan offers all the functionality of the product. No features are limited. 

As the number of monthly active users increases, so too does the price. The Growth plan starts at $499, and the Enterprise plans start at $1000.

Userpilot vs Intercom Product Tours

Userpilot offers a more comprehensive onboarding tool for SaaS compared to Intercom’s linear Product Tours.  

You can choose from a wide range of UI elements, you can customize the look of your onboarding with no code, and you can provide contextual onboarding.

If you’re after an onboarding tool without all the extra functionality (and cost) that Intercom has, Userpilot is a great choice.

Intercom Product Tours Alternative #2: Chameleon 

Most of the Intercom Product Tours alternatives offer a degree of in-app UI customization, and then CSS coding on top.

Chameleon offers something a little more advanced when it comes to customization. They will custom-code your UI elements for you.

This means you can achieve exactly the look you want with no effort on your part.

Chameleon also offers a wide range of onboarding elements including checklists and modals.

It provides limited trigger functionality and basic segmentation.

Why should you choose Chameleon?

The main selling point of Chameleon is its advanced coding customization.

This is aimed at companies who want to have complete control over the look of their onboarding, but lack the coding skills to do it themselves.

Chameleon’s team will handle the custom coding for you as part of your onboarding with their product.

Chameleon also has a large range of onboarding elements. One of these, the launcher, is exclusive to them. It enables you to provide self-serve onboarding menus or product announcements.

Why should you not choose Chameleon?

The trouble with Chameleon’s custom coding approach is that it’s going to cost you more money, and you also have to wait for them to actually do the work.

Other Intercom Product Tours alternatives, like Userpilot, enable detailed customization with no coding. This is a far better option for fast-moving, scaling SaaS companies.

Chameleon is also fairly difficult to use. The UI takes some getting used to, and it’s a lot more complex. It’ll take you longer to get to grips with it.

Chameleon offers basic triggers for your onboarding flows but it isn’t as customizable as other onboarding platforms.

You’re also unable to segment your users, which is especially useful when it comes to personalizing your onboarding flows.

How much does Chameleon cost?

The cheapest price you’ll pay for Chameleon is $279. That’s for up to 2000 monthly active users. 

The price soon shoots up if you add more MAUs, or if you want more launchers (the basic plan gives you 3).

You also have to upgrade to their “Growth Plan” if you want to A/B test your onboarding.

The price of this plan is custom-based.

Is Chameleon a good Intercom Product Tours alternative?

Yes, and no.

Chameleon offers a lot more onboarding functionality than Intercom Product Tours.

It’s also very customizable if you can work your way around coding.

However, Chameleon isn’t as easy to get up and running as Intercom and takes a bit of getting used to.

It also lacks a lot of important onboarding features that other Product Tours alternatives have.

Intercom Product Tours Alternative #3: Appcues 

Appcues was one of the first major onboarding products. It paved the way for the likes of Intercom Product Tours and Userpilot.

It enables you to build your onboarding flow using a wide range of elements, including modals, slideouts, and tooltips.

It offers limited customizability and multi-level segmentation.

You can A/B test your onboarding flows via Appcues, to make sure you’re providing the most effective experience.

Why should you choose Appcues?

Appcues has been around for so long that it’s become a trusted name in the onboarding world.

As a result, they’ve been able to steadily add more and more features to the product, resulting in a robust onboarding platform.

They offer a massive range of UI elements. This helps you craft the exact onboarding flow you want.

It’s also worth pointing out that Appcues provides a mountain of useful content. They share lots of best practices on their blog and showcase great UX on their Really Good UX site.

This information will definitely help you when it comes to your own onboarding flows.

Why should you not choose Appcues?

While the robustness of Appcues can be seen as a positive, it’s also a bit of a problem.

Appcues have gradually tacked on more and more features, which is great, but it means that their product is now fairly complicated to use.

You often have to go from one page to another, and then back again, in order to set up your onboarding flow.

Appcues also limit you when it comes to customization. It offers limited custom options in-app, but for more detail, you’ll need to use your own CSS coding.

Finally, Appcues doesn’t support non-linear onboarding. In other words, a user has to sit through each onboarding flow in turn, whether it’s relevant to them or not.

This decreases the effectiveness of your onboarding and can lead to decreased adoption if you aren’t careful.

How much does Appcues cost?

Appcues’ cheapest plan comes in at $249 a month (when charged annually).

This gives you 1000 monthly active users and 3 team seats. It also limits your customization options, and the integrations you have access to.

To use most of their best features, you’ll need to upgrade to their “Growth Plan”, which starts at $879 a month.

Is Appcues a good Intercom Product Tours alternative?

If you’re willing to spend a lot more money on your onboarding, then Appcues definitely improves upon Intercom Product Tours.

There’s a large range of UI elements to choose from, and you can pretty much craft the perfect onboarding flow.

That being said, other alternatives are not only more cost-effective but also offer added functionality that Appcues doesn’t.

Conclusion

Userpilot is the best Intercom Product Tours alternative as it offers the best in-app customization and provides every UI element you need to build your onboarding flow.

It also enables you to create contextual and non-linear onboarding. Both of these drastically improve user adoption.

Compared to some of the other Intercom Product Tours alternatives, Userpilot is also relatively cheap to get started with.

You can be up and running in no time with Userpilot. Get a demo today!