Chameleon vs Apty – Which is Better for No-Code Growth?

Which tool for no-code growth is worth your time and money; Chameleon or Apty? Or is there another in-app onboarding software that is superior than the two?

Choosing a tool can sometimes feel like a gamble and the plethora of no-code tools available today just adds to the confusion.

Before you select a tool, you need to consider your priorities and the functionalities you need to get the job done. You also need to ensure that the price of your chosen tool matches your budget.

In this article, we explore the must-have features of no-code growth tools and thoroughly compare a few top ones, so you select the best choice for your company’s needs.

Let’s get started.

TL;DR

  • To be truly product-led, you must aim for no-code growth. The latter can help reduce CAC, lower customer support and success costs, and generate higher customer satisfaction.
  • A robust tool is necessary for no-code growth. However, not all tools are made alike. Ensure your no-code growth tool is truly no-code, offers basic UI patterns, enables segmentation, provides product analytics features, and allows integration with third-party tools.
  • Chameleon is a powerful digital adoption platform that offers impressive in-app messaging and UI patterns, provides good segmentation options, and allows two-way integrations to Mixpanel, HubSpot, and more.
  • However, Chameleon is an expensive tool that is not fully no-code. Additionally, Chameleon doesn’t offer a self-service resource center where users can access multiple guides.
  • Apty is another solid digital adoption platform that enables users to create and track goals. With Apty, you can create checklists, and walkthroughs and can segment users to offer them personalized experiences.
  • However, Apty doesn’t offer basic UI patterns (modals, hotspots, banners, and slideouts), in-app customer feedback collection, and self-service support.
  • A great alternative to Chameleon and Apty is Userpilot. Userpilot offers great value for money and offers features to help you achieve no-code growth.
  • With Userpilot you can create multiple UI patterns (available in all plans), collect in-app feedback, and track UI engagement (clicks, form fills, hovers). However, Userpilot is available on browser/web app only.
  • If you’re interested in what Userpilot has to offer, book a demo today.

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What is no-code growth?

No-code growth is a method of achieving product-led growth (using your own product as a lever and revenue growth channel) without coding, using no-code tools.

It essentially allows people like product managers, product marketing managers, or marketers (who may not necessarily have a background in engineering) to create in-app onboarding experiences, optimize signup and onboarding flows, etc. in order to achieve higher conversion rates, user activation rates – and in the long run – drive retention.

No-code movement in general empowers non-programmers to create software elements using a graphical user interface, instead of writing code. According to no-code advocates, technology should enable and facilitate creation, not act as a barrier.

Why should you care about no-code growth?

Product-led growth may be a bit of a buzzword, but achieving no-code growth is particularly important for SaaS companies with low ACV, freemium models, and generally those in the SMB sector.

Product-led growth is a way of generating revenue from the product itself – by improving user engagement metrics, working on smarter pricing and product plans to unlock more revenue through expansion, promoting word of mouth, etc.

It’s essentially free revenue from your existing user base, which is particularly important when your customers’ LTV is around $150 in total. By giving your product managers and marketers no-code tools, you can generate more no-code growth. Simple.

Let’s look at more detail at some reasons why no code growth is important, especially for companies such as the ones mentioned above:

  • No code growth can massively reduce your CAC.
  • Generating product-led growth without code also means you don’t need to hire programmers to implement these tactics – which further reduces your operational costs.
  • Applying product-led growth practices also reduces your customer support and success costs – as your agents don’t need to reply to the same repetitive questions over and over again, and can replace them with reactive tooltips themselves without any help from the developers.
  • This contributes to higher satisfaction from the users in general – as they tend to prefer to self-serve rather than talking to support.
  • Finally, no code product-led growth means free expansion revenue for your company – and who wouldn’t welcome that, especially nowadays.

Why do you need tools for no-code growth?

One thing is clear – to drive no code growth, you will need to use proper tools to automate flows and drive engagement.

To achieve product-led growth without coding, you need a no-code tool that will allow you to:

  • Capture feature usage (with tools like feature tagging) and record all the events happening in-app regardless of the interaction type (clicks, hovers, form fills)
  • Capture qualitative data with e.g., session recordings
  • Create interactive walkthroughs and onboarding flows
  • Use product to promote upsells

Tool’s must-have features for no-code growth?

Before deciding which no-code growth tool deserves your try, you should have a basic understanding of what features you should be looking for in “the one.”

Although the exact features you need will differ based on factors such as the size of your company, your business strategy, and your goals, here are the most crucial features you should look for:

  • Truly “no code” – make sure the no code growth tool you pick really allows you to build and style robust and native-looking in-app experiences without coding. You will be surprised how many tools require the knowledge of CSS to publish decent-looking onboarding flows.
  • Make sure the tool you choose has all the basic UI patterns available – e.g., checklists, modals, tooltips, banners, and hotspots. This will allow you to create all the product-led growth experiences you may need.
  • Targeting the experiences to the right user segments is extremely important for your PLG plays to be successful. Make sure your no-code growth tool offers advanced segmentation capabilities, so you can build customer segments based on product usage, in-app behavior, feedback, and user persona to craft hyper-personalized messages and trigger them at the right time.
  • On that note – real-time, event-based triggering is an important feature of a product growth platform that only a few solutions on the market currently offer. Being able to respond to your users’ actions in real time can be critical to push them towards those precious conversion points.
  • Finally, product analytics is another “must-have” that a good no-code growth platform should provide. You should be able to monitor your users’ behavior with it, the engagement with your PLG in-app experiences, and how they contribute towards improving your metrics.
  • The right code-free PLG tool should also offer integrations with other tools so you can add them to your stack and get better insights on your data under one roof.

Chameleon for no-code growth

Chameleon is a digital adoption platform with a difference: while the other tools discussed are mostly no-code, Chameleon will require some developer involvement.

Nevertheless, it’s a powerful and effective tool that works in a similar way to Userpilot and offers similar features: styling, analytics, templates, goals, A/B testing, and checklists.

However, it doesn’t offer a resource center, or dedicated NPS, and it’s a lot worse value for money with limited features in the basic plan, which is over $150 more expensive for the same number of MAUs.

You can build widgets (launchers) and classic guides and tours with Chameleon as the main drivers of user onboarding.

Here’s how Chameleon’s main functionality helps with user onboarding:

  • Chameleon’s product tours help you build flows for guidance. You can use several UI patterns for this: modals, banners, tooltips, and hotspots.
  • You can customize the styling (font, color, opacity, etc.) of your product tours and even add in some CSS styling if you want advanced branding.
  • Launchers are where Chameleon is different compared to its competitors. These are in-app widgets that can open checklists, small help widgets, or notification centers. The downside is that you can’t have one launcher with multiple types of content.
  • You can target content to different user segments based on multiple data sources including event triggering.
  • Ability to use micro surveys with great customization and question-and-answer types.
  • On Growth Plan and higher, you also get access to more functionality like A/B testing, multiple environments, localization (Enterprise plan only), and advanced integrations like Hubspot.

All in all, Chameleon has good functionality for user onboarding but will be very limited on the Startup plan as you only get one Launcher and five micro surveys.

To build contextual and efficient user onboarding, you will need more than that. Considering what you get for the money, Userpilot offers much better value.

Pros of Chameleon?

Chameleon is a robust tool for your onboarding and adoption needs. Here are the main pros to consider if you’re still deciding:

  • Offers a good range of in-app messaging and UI patterns. You can create custom modals, slideouts, tooltips, hotspots, launchers (checklists or resource hub), and more.
  • Good segmentation options, you can either build different user segments inside the product, or you can integrate your Chameleon account with other tools and import your data.
  • Can be used on 3rd party tools, meaning you can use it for employee onboarding too.
  • Offers a good range of two-way integrations: Mixpanel, Segment, Intercom, Customer.io, Segment, HubSpot, etc.

Cons of Chameleon?

While Chameleon is a great tool, the main downside is the cost and restrictions you get with it. Here are the main cons of the tool:

  • There are some limitations to user onboarding flows. You can’t run multiple in-app experiences at the same time, as you can in Userpilot. Instead, Chameleon enables you to create user onboarding campaigns (different sequences of product tours shown over time).
  • It’s built for single-page apps: Chameleon can’t build flows that run over multiple URLs.
  • Doesn’t offer a self-service resource center where users can access multiple guides and tutorials or contact support. It does provide launchers that are similar but more restricted. A launcher can be a checklist or a list of resources, but can’t be both.
  • It has a steeper learning curve and it’s not a completely no-code tool.
  • The Startup (starter) plan is quite restrictive and expensive (starts at $349/mo for 2500 MAU and includes 1 Launcher only and 5 micro surveys). You will need to go for Growth ($1249/mo) if you want to drive product adoption.

What users say about Chameleon?

Users appreciate Chameleon’s versatile functionalities. Let’s see what they have to say about it.

I love the variety of formats we can build in Chameleon, from interactive tooltips to progressive tours and launchers! It’s also really easy to track performance of each of these and adjust accordingly. The interface still feels quite clunky whenever I’m in build mode. For instance, I don’t like that I have to use markdown and CSS when formatting text instead of having an inline styling menu to select from. Then there’s also the issue of surveys or tour steps appearing where they’re not supposed to, apparently mistaking an element in another page for the anchor. -Nikki D

Chameleon is a good tool overall and it’s loved by its users. Most complaints are about the price and some limitations such as customization of tours and reporting and analytics.

I wish there was an easier way to schedule content for release and more button options on the Tours. However, I think the scheduling feature is coming soon! I also wish it was easier to customize how launchers look without needing to know how to code UI changes in. – Lubana L.

There is limited reporting and dashboarding functionality within Chameleon currently. – Administrator in Financial Services

I think the software is a bit on the pricey side, but since it lets us do things that we would normally need our developers to do, we are truly saving in the grand scheme of things. It means we can focus on features and bug fixes, instead of building a new communication method that would only be used internally!-Nathalie L.

Is Chameleon the right fit for your business?

Chameleon is a great tool but we can’t say it’s the best there is. Here are three main reasons why you might consider an alternative.

  1. To get access to all the needed tools for proper onboarding and adoption, you need to pay for the higher plans that can get expensive.
  2. Chameleon focuses on customization but in most cases, you will need a lot of CSS to achieve the look and feel of your brand. There are other tools that are truly no-code.
  3. If you need proper product and user analytics without having to pay for extra tools and integrate with Chameleon, you might need to consider a different tool.

Chameleon pricing

Chameleon split their pricing options primarily by the number of monthly active users, but you should keep in mind that the Startup plan also has limited features and might not be enough for interactive user onboarding and adoption for SaaS products:

  • 0 – 2500 MAUs: Startup plan from $349/mo, Growth plan from $1249/mo
  • 2000 – 3000MAUs: Startup plan from $419/mo, Growth from $1299/mo.
  • 3000 – 5000 MAUs: Startup plan from $489/mo, Growth from $1449/mo.
  • 5000 – 10,000 MAUs: Startup plan from $629/mo, Growth from $1749/mo

Disclaimer: with the Startup plan you only get 5 micro surveys and 1 launcher, no A/B testing, no Goals, and no localization.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Chameleon!

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Apty for no-code growth

Apty’s digital adoption platform aims to make product adoption a snap with engaging onboarding flows and product tours. It does this with a mix of on-screen guidance, interactive walkthroughs, and in-app messaging.

This platform is great for engaging users on your platform to increase product adoption, feature adoption, and conversions.

Here’s how Apty can help with user onboarding:

  • Enables you to create checklists to guide users and interactive walkthroughs that simplify the onboarding process.
  • It also allows you to segment users and design tailored onboarding experiences based on the role, location, and other characteristics to deliver the promised value fast.
  • The goal-tracking feature allows you to set custom goals and monitor how users navigate through them. For example, you can set user activation and set it as one of your onboarding milestones to analyze progress. Then you can segment users who haven’t reached the goal and implement a number of strategies to activate them.
  • Combine tooltips and create interactive walkthroughs to shorten the learning curve and, subsequently the time to value.

Pros of Apty?

Apty is a robust tool for your onboarding and adoption needs. Here are the main pros to consider if you’re still deciding:

  • Apty is excellent for product adoption, training, and onboarding. The tool makes it easy to develop workflows which makes development turnaround very fast-paced. In addition, it’s very simplistic to use since Apty lives in the browser as an extension.
  • You can either build different user segments inside the product, or you can integrate your Apty account with other tools and import your data.
  • Can be used on 3rd party tools, meaning you can use it for employee onboarding too.

Cons of Apty?

While Apty is a great tool, the main downsides are the cost and restrictions you get with it. Here are the main cons of the tool:

  • Apty offers tooltips and checklists for building product experience flows, but unlike other similar tools, it lacks some important UI patterns such as modals, hotspots, banners, and slideouts.
  • One of the biggest disadvantages of Apty is the absence of in-app customer feedback collection. In-app surveys help you collect user insights at scale and improve the product to match user expectations. Without feedback and user input, you are missing out on a lot.
  • Doesn’t offer self-service support like a help center where users can access multiple guides and tutorials or contact support. It does provide guides that are similar but more restricted.

What users say about Apty?

Overall, users feel positive about Apty– here are some reviews summarizing some key points about its features and the value it offers:

Our Apty Representative, Joe Fimiani, is one of the main reasons we love working with Apty. Joe works hard to establish a trusting relationship with his customers. Joe goes above and beyond to ensure we are satisfied and happy with our Apty product by doing regular check-ins.One thing that is a little frustrating is getting past the Apty pop-up widgets. Sometimes the pop-up widgets are in the way of tabs that need to be selected. As a result, the tabs are harder to select. However, this may not be an Apty issue, rather a Clarity issue 🙂 –
Desiree G.

Apty is incredibly helpful for new employees to get familiar with processes in our project management software. The work flows and tooltips have been essential for our workforce.The only downside to Apty was the learning curve of first building out the application to work with our project management tool. Apty had a great support system to help through those challenges. – Jennifer T

Most complaints are about missing features, integrations, and the steep learning curve.

It’s tricky to make the most of it, particularly in the early stages of adoption. The support team are great, but it can be challenging to know what support can be asked for if we’re unaware of what’s possible.- Administrator in Business Supplies and Equipment

With each new release of the software, there is a bit of uncertainty in the stability of new features. Requires more attention than preferable with each new switch. Also, our tools are more complex than your standard website and that requires more work and work-arounds than expected when first acquiring a third-party onboarding tool.- Administrator in Computer Software

UX experience when it comes to testing is cumbersome; a lot of back and forth.
Below are critical tools that are missing or need improvement. I would like to see these additions and enhancements as current features are limiting our options for solutions: Auto triggers (Related to Rule Engine, i.e. Specific page load, removing the reliance on triggers such as: Launchers, Menu Widget, and Announcement Button),IDP for standardized User Identifier,eLearning for content creators (Builder Certifications),Surveys,Chatbot etc- Paolo T.

Is Apty the right fit for your business?

Apty is a great tool but has limited usability. Here are three main reasons why you might consider an alternative:

  1. To get access to all the needed tools for proper onboarding and adoption you need to pay for the higher plans that can get quite expensive.
  2. Apty doesn’t offer user feedback surveys, which are a very effective way to collect user sentiment at scale and improve your product experiences to meet customer expectations. So if you are aiming to be a customer-centric company that puts users and their needs at the heart of the business, you may need to choose another tool
  3. Although Apty offers some segmentation options, in Userpilot you can group users on many more attributes and create more advanced segments.

Apty pricing

Apty offers a free trial and custom quotes based on business needs.

  • Free trial: Up to 45 days, includes 2-3 flows, works on a single domain.
  • Custom pricing: Intelligent analytics, complex flow creation, multilingual support, available on multiple domains.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Apty!

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Is there a better alternative for no-code growth?

Chameleon and Apty are good tools for no-code growth. We’ve seen how they compare to each other and what you can achieve with them. Call us biased, but if you’re looking for something better, Userpilot offers more value for your money than these tools.

Userpilot for no-code growth

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.

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, microsurveys, 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.

Pros of Userpilot?

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.

Cons of Userpilot?

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 Hubspot and Zapier are coming soon.
  • Not appropriate for small startups on a shoestring budget (<$100) – Userpilot is a powerful, mid-market to the enterprise-level tool. So $249 a month might be too expensive for really small startups.

What users say about Userpilot?

Let’s check what real users like about Userpilot.

Userpilot is an incredible, user-friendly software that allows us to create unforgettable experiences for our clients! From basic to complex experiences, we have been able to do them all with ease! I would highly recommend this software to anyone who wants to provide their clients or users with the best product tour experience. The possibilities of what you can create are endless! – Tayla G.

Userpilot is simple to set up, use, and does not require any dev – which means instant publishing. This is critical for us as a SaaS company that releases new features frequently; we need the ability to inform our customers of changes quickly, and doing this in our platform through Userpilot allows us to reach the right audience, at the right time, in the right place. There have been many awesome extra features we’ve discovered since coming on board, and it’s been great to see new features released frequently. The tool itself is intuitive and reliable. Having used similar products previously that were clunky and buggy this has really made us happy with our decision to move to Userpilot. – Melina K.

Get more value for your money with Userpilot!

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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.

Conclusion

This is the end of our thorough comparison between Chameleon and Apty. You should be able to make a confident decision by now. If you’re looking for a solid tool for no-code growth that promises great value for money, give Userpilot a go. Book a demo today.

There is a better tool for your SaaS than Chameleon!

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