Userlane for Interactive User Guides: Features, Pricing, and Review
Looking for an effective interactive user guides tool and wondering if Userlane is the best option for your SaaS company?
With numerous Userlane alternatives, it can be challenging to make a final decision.
In this article, we’ll delve into precisely that – helping you determine whether Userlane is the ideal choice for your interactive user guides needs. We’ll explore its features, pricing, and offer a comprehensive review to aid in your decision-making process.
Let’s get started!
TL;DR
- Userlane is a good choice for interactive user guides and it comes with features such as user segmentation, onboarding checklist, tooltips, and in-app messaging.
- While Userlane is undoubtedly powerful, certain scenarios might necessitate exploring alternatives.
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- Extensive Third-party Integrations: While Userlane offers some key integrations if your business heavily relies on a diverse range of third-party tools and you need a seamless, in-depth integration for all of them, you might want to explore platforms like Pendo or Mixpanel that offer broader integration ecosystems.
- Budget Constraints: While Userlane offers a plethora of features suitable for established enterprises or growing companies, it might be beyond the reach of early-stage startups with limited funds. If you’re on a strict budget and looking for a more affordable solution, platforms like UserGuiding, Intercom, or Intro.js might be more aligned with your financial constraints.
- Complex Customization Needs: If your platform requires highly specialized or intricate onboarding experiences that go beyond standard walkthroughs and tooltips, you might find Userlane’s customization options a bit restrictive. In such cases, tools like WalkMe or Appcues, known for their deep customization capabilities, might be a better fit.
- If you’re looking for a better option for interactive user guides, Userpilot exceeds both functionality and value for money compared to Userlane.
- Ready to see Userpilot in action? Schedule a demo today to explore its powerful interactive user guides capabilities firsthand.
Looking for a Better Alternative for Interactive User Guides? Try Userpilot
What is Userlane?
Userlane is a no-code digital adoption platform used to measure how employees use applications, identify areas for improvement, and offer real-time guidance directly within any application.
In addition, it allows you to get a real-time view of digital transformation progress in your organization. You can now delve deeper into user behaviors across different applications and analyze engagement levels so you can optimize user experiences.
Must have features of interactive user guides tools
Not all tools are built the same. Some offer different advantages over others while some will simply get you basic functionality but at a low price. It depends on your budget and needs which will be the best tool to build interactive user guides.
Here’s what to look for as the main functionalities when picking a tool to build in-app guides:
- Good range of UI patterns to use for building your guides.
- Ability to customize each interactive guide to fit your brand and style.
- Segmentation so you could trigger the guides to the right audience at the right time. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t bring you the desired results.
- The ability to trigger the user guides when specific in-app events happen is nice to have and will help you build more contextual in-app experiences.
- Minimum product usage analytics, to be able to track how users engage with the product, and where they get stuck so you can build relevant user guides to help them.
The above list is not exhaustive but it’s a starting point. Depending on your product, you might also need automated localization, A/B testing capabilities, advanced analytics or security, and more.
Userlane features for interactive user guides
With the Userlane Editor, you can create powerful interactive guides within applications, enhancing user experiences and facilitating content creation and editing.
You can create guides within the application or tooltips to add explanations to an element within the application for your users. Let’s take a look at how Userlane can help you create interactive user guides:
- Real-time assistance: Userlane’s interactive guides are more than just pop-up hints. They provide context-aware help right when and where a user needs it. If a user seems stuck or unsure of the next step, Userlane’s guides can nudge them in the right direction, ensuring they’re not frustrated or overwhelmed.
- Sleek learning path: Userlane allows the creation of adaptive learning paths. This means the guides can adjust in complexity and depth based on the user’s previous interactions, ensuring a customized and efficient learning experience. The platform’s no-code functionality allows these adaptive paths to be set up without needing to delve into complex coding or scripting.
- Seamless integration: Userlane understands that users have different learning preferences. Some prefer text, while others benefit from visuals or videos. The platform seamlessly integrates multimedia elements into the guides, ensuring a comprehensive and engaging learning experience.
Userlane’s user segmentation
Userlane has an Advanced Segmentation Builder to help you target different user segments.
Here’s how it can work:
- You can create and display interactive user guides tailored to specific users based on their context. This way, the guidance is relevant to the users.
- Teams can customize interactive guides based on different roles within the team. A role-specific offers a more personalized user experience.
- You can target individual users through their unique IDs. This way, each user receives only the relevant guidance.
Userlane’s onboarding checklist
With Userlane you can create and convert these onboarding tasks into onboarding guides, which is essentially an automatic checklist of simple steps users need to follow to reach their goal.
However, Userlane doesn’t offer general onboarding checklists compared to Userpilot. An onboarding checklist template is a code-free checklist widget you can easily copy, customize, and reuse for different user segments and stages of the user journey. You can build an onboarding checklist template quickly and easily without writing any code by using Userpilot.
Userlane’s tooltips
With tooltips, you can provide process-related information to users to help them complete certain processes or show them new features by grabbing their attention with the help of a pulsating icon.
Userlane doesn’t offer much when it comes to creating great tooltips. You can create hints and beacons and add them to elements on the page:
- Hints are used to display the content on hover. They can provide additional information to help users finalize a process or explain unknown words, features, or specific error messages.
- Beacons are animated icons that display the content on click and disappear after the interaction. They are used to draw the user’s attention to a new feature or change in the underlying application, or they could be used as a call to action (e.g., to ask end users to report a bug in case an alert pops up).
However, you can leverage a no-code tool like Userpilot to create, customize, trigger, and A/B test all the tooltips you want without relying on devs or technical skills. With access to modern templates and great compatibility with your current tech stack.
Userlane’s in-app messaging
With Userlane, you can deliver in-app messages to your users through the Userlane Assistant. This way, you can communicate with your users without the hassle of using a Google translator to translate to their preferred language.
- Contextual Communication: Delivers tailored messages to users based on their actions, position within the app, or specific milestones, ensuring timely and relevant engagement.
- Role-Based Message Management: Grants specific permissions to administrators, moderators, and contributors in your product team, allowing for streamlined creation, editing, and publishing of in-app messages.
- Content-Rich Announcements: Supports the inclusion of various media types, like images, and offers capabilities to link messages directly to detailed guides, enhancing the depth and versatility of the messaging experience.
What are the pros and cons of Userlane?
Userlane’s pros
Higher productivity, less support effort, and happier users are what Userlane is created for. From a vast spectrum of capabilities to elegantly crafted UI elements that cater to any walkthrough, regardless of its level of customization, Userlane stands out as a robust platform to bolster user engagement and product familiarization.
Let’s dive into the pros of using Userlane:
- Streamlined no-code interface: Userlane boasts a user-friendly dashboard, enabling even those with no coding background to easily design and implement onboarding flows.
- Product adoption analytics: Get a real-time view of digital transformation progress in your organization. Delve deeper into user behaviors across different applications and analyze engagement levels so you can optimize user experiences.
- Dynamic user walkthroughs: Craft compelling and interactive walkthroughs that intuitively guide users through your software, ensuring they grasp every essential feature.
- Versatile in-app communication tools: Whether tooltips, banners, or pop-up modals, Userlane offers many tools to engage users directly within your platform. With Userlane’s customer onboarding solution, you can tailor communications for different user segments, guiding them through the tasks and processes they will most likely need help with.
- Seamless third-party integrations: Integrate Userlane with various analytics tools, CRM platforms, and other essential software to ensure a harmonious workflow and data sharing.
- Granular audience segmentation: Understand your users and their needs better by segmenting them based on behavior, user type, or other customizable metrics. This ensures that your messaging and tours are always relevant and timely.
- Optimized A/B testing capabilities: Refine your onboarding and in-app messaging by A/B testing different approaches, enabling you to continually enhance user experience based on concrete data.
- Thoughtful pacing with walkthrough rate limiting: Ensure users aren’t too quickly bombarded with too much information. With Userlane’s rate limiting, you can pace the introduction of new features or tasks, striking a balance between informing and overwhelming.
Userlane’s cons
As with any tool, weighing its strengths and weaknesses is essential. Here are the notable drawbacks of adopting Userlane:
- Visual Customization Restrictions: One of Userlane’s apparent setbacks lies in its restricted visual customization capabilities. If you have an eye for aesthetic and unique branding elements might find the platform limiting. The lack of diverse templates and somewhat rigid design elements could impede brands from truly reflecting their identity.
- Analytical Ambiguities: In the age of data-driven decision-making, Userlane’s analytical powers — or the lack thereof — stand out. While it offers basic insights, those looking for a deep dive into granular user behavior, funnel analysis, heatmaps, and more might need to bridge the gap with external integrations.
- Integration Quandaries: Speaking of integrations, Userlane might not be the Swiss Army knife of connectivity that some businesses might be hoping for. While essentials like Zendesk, Google Analytics, Hubspot, and Salesforce are on the list, those yearning for a wider array of integration options might need to strategize around these limitations.
- Cost Considerations: Userlane’s pricing structure could be a roadblock, especially for startups and SMEs keen on budget constraints. The initial investment for Userlane might seem daunting, especially considering the added costs of potential integrations and the learning curve associated with maximizing the platform’s potential.
What do users say about Userlane?
Userlane boasts of some great reviews on G2. Testimonies range from the tool’s effectiveness, helpfulness, and simplicity.
First of all, I like the ease of creating guides, tool tips and announcements.
Secondly, the segmentation, for users and pages, is critical for our platform.
Our developers really like how easy it is to embed the Userlane code snippet, and adjust it as needed.
Finally, we are thrilled that we are going to finally have solid data on our user’s platform behavior and habits. The HEART analytics were key in our decision to go with UserLane.
Customer support has been fantastic through the entire process. Great team!
On G2, Userlane has 5-star and 4-star reviews only. However, there are a few ‘’dislike’’ reviews:
I would say that the downside of using the tool is that you cannot gain feedback on specific parts of your application, although I believe this feature will be added soon, and I can’t wait to use it!
Userlane’s pricing
Userlane’s pricing plan is structured in a customizable pattern. This means you need to get a custom quote to know the plan that fits your brand’s purpose based on the level of your SaaS and the number of acquired customers.
3 Reasons why you might need a Userlane alternative
While Userlane is undoubtedly powerful, certain scenarios might necessitate exploring alternatives.
- Extensive Third-party Integrations: While Userlane offers some key integrations if your business heavily relies on a diverse range of third-party tools and you need a seamless, in-depth integration for all of them, you might want to explore platforms like Pendo or Mixpanel that offer broader integration ecosystems.
- Budget Constraints: While Userlane offers a plethora of features suitable for established enterprises or growing companies, it might be beyond the reach of early-stage startups with limited funds. If you’re on a strict budget and looking for a more affordable solution, platforms like UserGuiding, Intercom, or Intro.js might be more aligned with your financial constraints.
- Complex Customization Needs: If your platform requires highly specialized or intricate onboarding experiences that go beyond standard walkthroughs and tooltips, you might find Userlane’s customization options a bit restrictive. In such cases, tools like WalkMe or Appcues, known for their deep customization capabilities, might be a better fit.
Userpilot – A better alternative for interactive user guides
Interactive user guides can help users figure out how to use your product and get them towards activation faster. Here are the Userpilot features you can use for creating interactive guides:
- No-code builder: Userpilot lets you build in-app guides using modals, slideouts, banners, etc., without writing any code. You can also tinker with audience settings to target specific segments or exclude users who meet certain conditions from seeing a particular flow.
- Spotlight elements: The spotlight feature lets you add standalone UI elements like tooltips, hotspots, and driven actions that aren’t part of a multi-step flow. This makes it possible to display contextual guidance when users hover over a feature they’re interested in.
- Funnel reports: Userpilot’s advanced analytics capabilities include funnel reports that show you which pages or actions most users get stuck on. This can help you identify confusing or high-friction areas that can be removed through contextual interactive user guides.
Userpilot’s user segmentation
User segmentation is essential for creating a personalized and contextual onboarding experience. Userpilot can segment users based on demographics, product usage data, NPS scores, and more. You can then trigger flows or filter analytics based on segments.
Here’s an overview of Userpilot’s customer segmentation capabilities:
- Segment conditions: Userpilot lets you form segments by adding different conditions like user data, company data, features and events, etc. You can then use these segments as analytics filters or flow triggers later on.
- Analytics filters: Userpilot’s product analytics and user insights dashboards can be filtered to only display data from specific segments (or companies). This will help you extract insights from certain cohorts and compare how adoption or activation varies from one segment to the next.
- Flow triggers: Userpilot’s audience settings let you trigger flows for specific segments or target users that meet certain conditions. You can combine this with page-specific or event-occurrence triggers to show relevant flows to the right users at the most contextual moments.
- External data: Userpilot integrates with tools like Amplitude, Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Segment using a one-way integration. This means you can use the data inside Userpilot to build advanced segmentation and trigger contextual experiences. For more advanced use cases, the two-way integration with Hubspot lets you send and receive data, unlocking a full set of use cases.
Userpilot’s onboarding checklist
Onboarding checklists help new users learn about a product and reduce their time-to-value (TTV). Userpilot checklists can be created using the no-code builder, used to trigger specific actions, and tracked using the analytics dashboard to gauge overall engagement.
Here’s how you can use Userpilot to create an advanced onboarding checklist:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s checklist creator lets you edit the content of checklists, add tasks, style icons, and configure the triggers for when your checklist should appear. You’ll also be able to choose from five widget icons (or upload your own) and recolor the widget to match your UI.
- Smart tasks: Checklist tasks can be set to trigger specific actions upon being completed, such as redirecting a user to a different page, launching an in-app flow, or running a custom JavaScript function. You can also set the conditions for when a task and action will be marked as complete.
- Checklist analytics: The Checklists dashboard shows you all relevant metrics. These include the number of live checklists you have, how many views they’ve gotten, and how many have been completed. You can also sort these analytics by segment or time period to identify trends.
Userpilot’s tooltips
Tooltips are the most straightforward way to offer contextual information to users without interrupting their workflows. Userpilot lets you create tooltips as part of your in-app flows, attach standalone tooltips to individual features, and leverage the power of AI to streamline the process.
Here are the ways you can use Userpilot to create tooltips:
- Tooltip flows: Tooltips are one of the UI elements you can utilize when creating in-app flows. You’ll be able to edit the size, placement, and behavior of your tooltip as needed. You could also toggle the option to continue or dismiss the flow if a tooltip’s element can’t be located.
- Native tooltips: Userpilot spotlights let you create native tooltips that expand when users click on an element or hover over a feature. Since these tooltips are attached to the features rather than specific pages, they’ll show up anywhere that the element is present.
- AI assistance: Userpilot’s AI-powered capabilities help you create better tooltips in less time. You could use the writing assistant to create, shorten, or extend the content of tooltips and leverage automated localization to translate your flow’s tooltips to any of the 32 languages available.
Userpilot’s in-app messaging
In-app messaging enables communication within your product to onboard new users or drive feature adoption among existing customers.
Here are a few ways you can send in-app messages using Userpilot:
- Modals: Userpilot lets you use modals to send unmissable in-app messages to your users. Simply choose from one of the six templates or create a new modal from scratch. You’ll be able to use text, emojis, images, and videos to help your modals get the message across to users.
- Banners: Userpilot banners can be used to send in-app messages that are urgent but don’t need to take up the entire screen. You can also add blocks with text, emojis, images, videos, forms, custom JavaScript functions, and more to style banners to your liking.
- Tooltips: They are the least intrusive form of in-app messaging as they only show up when users hover over an element or click on an info icon. You’ll be able to adjust the height, shape, color, and placement of tooltips to make them native-like.
What are the pros and cons of Userpilot?
Userpilot pros
As a full-suite digital adoption platform, Userpilot has all the features you need to onboard users, track analytics, and gather feedback from customers without writing a single line of code. Here are a few pros of using Userpilot as your product growth solution:
- No-code builder: Userpilot’s Chrome extension lets you build flows, add UI elements, and tag features without writing a single line of code.
- UI patterns: There are plenty of UI patterns to choose from when using Userpilot, such as hotspots, tooltips, banners, slideouts, modals, and more!
- Startup-friendly: Userpilot’s entry-level plan gives you access to all available UI patterns so you can hit the ground running.
- Walkthroughs and flows: Build engaging interactive walkthroughs and personalized onboarding flows that target specific segments of your user base.
- Self-service support: Build an in-app resource center to help users solve problems, customize its appearance to align it with your brand, and insert various types of content (videos, flows, or chatbots) to keep your customers satisfied.
- A/B testing: Userpilot’s built-in A/B testing capabilities will help you split-test flows, iterate on the best-performing variants, and continually optimize based on user behavior.
- Feedback collection: Userpilot has built-in NPS surveys with its own unified analytics dashboard and response tagging to help you retarget users. There are other survey types to choose from and you can even create your own custom survey.
- Survey templates: There are 14 survey templates to choose from so you can gather feedback on specific features or run customer satisfaction benchmarking surveys like CSAT and CES.
- Advanced analytics: Userpilot lets you analyze product usage data, monitor engagement on all in-app flows, and use the data to create user segments that are based on behaviors instead of demographics.
- Event tracking: Userpilot’s no-code event tracking lets you tag UI interactions (hovers, clicks, or form fills) and group them into a custom event that reflects feature usage.
- Third-party integrations: Userpilot has built-in integrations with tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Segment, Heap, HubSpot, Intercom, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager so you can share data between all the solutions in your tech stack.
Userpilot’s cons
Of course, no tool is perfect and there are a few cons to consider before choosing Userpilot as your user onboarding or product growth solution:
- Employee onboarding: Currently, Userpilot only supports in-app customer onboarding.
- Mobile apps: Userpilot doesn’t have any mobile compatibility which could make it difficult for developers with cross-platform applications to create a consistent user experience for both versions of their product.
- Freemium plan: There’s no freemium Userpilot plan so those bootstrapping their startup and need sub-$100 solutions should consider more affordable onboarding platforms like UserGuiding or Product Fruits.
What do users say about Userpilot?
Most users laud Userpilot for its versatile feature set, ease of use, and responsive support team:
I recently had the pleasure of using Userpilot, and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. As a product manager, I’m always on the lookout for tools that can enhance user onboarding and improve overall user experience. Userpilot not only delivered on these fronts but also went above and beyond with its impressive new features, unparalleled ease of use, and truly exceptional customer support.
What truly sets Userpilot apart is its outstanding customer support. Throughout my journey with Userpilot, the support team has been responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely dedicated to helping me succeed. Whenever I had a question or encountered an issue, their support team was always there to assist promptly, going above and beyond to ensure my concerns were addressed effectively.
Source: G2.
Of course, other users are also kind enough to share constructive criticism regarding specific features like event tracking filters:
“The filtration while analyzing specific events is a little confusing. Understanding of custom properties and data management configuration could have been more organised.”
Source: G2.
Userpilot’s pricing
Userpilot’s transparent pricing ranges from $249/month on the entry-level end to an Enterprise tier for larger companies.
Furthermore, Userpilot’s entry-level plan includes access to all UI patterns and should include everything that most mid-market SaaS businesses need to get started.
Userpilot has three paid plans to choose from:
- Starter: The entry-level Starter plan starts at $249/month and includes features like segmentation, product analytics, reporting, user engagement, user feedback, and customization.
- Growth: The Growth plan starts at $499/month and includes features like resource centers, advanced event-based triggers, unlimited feature tagging, AI-powered content localization, EU hosting options, and a dedicated customer success manager.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan uses custom pricing and includes all the features from Starter + Growth plus custom roles/permissions, access to premium integrations, priority support, custom contract, SLA, SAML SSO, activity logs, security audit and compliance (SOC 2/GDPR).
Conclusion
There you have it.
It should be easier now to make an informed decision whether Userlane is your go-to option for interactive user guides. Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your product and current needs.
If you’re looking for a better alternative to Userlane for interactive user guides, book a Userpilot demo today to experience firsthand how it can enhance your user experience and drive product growth!
Looking for a Better Alternative for Interactive User Guides? Try Userpilot
