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Digital Adoption

Appcues vs. Pendo: DAP Comparison

April 14, 2023

Samantha Rohn

As the competition in the world of software products continues to grow, user engagement has become a top priority for product teams. With the rise of in-app messaging and digital adoption platforms, two big players have emerged: Appcues and Pendo.

These DAP provders help software companies increase user adoption and retention by providing personalized experiences to their users.

According to an Epsilon study, 86% of users say personalization plays a role in their purchasing decisions. What’s more is that 44% of consumers say they will likely become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience. These numbers highlight the importance of providing a tailored experience for users and why Appcues and Pendo have become such popular solutions for product teams.

Appcues and Pendo both offer similar features, but they differ in greatly their approach and implementation.

In this article, we’ll compare Appcues and Pendo to help you decide which platform best suits your team. We will dive into their key features, pricing plans, customer reviews, and overall user experiences.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a better understanding of which platform can help you deliver personalized and engaging experiences to your users – and why Whatfix may be the best DAP provider for you.

Appcues vs. Pendo: Comparing Key Features

Herea are the core features of Appcues and Pendo.

Appcues features

1. Mobile first

While not technically a feature, Appcues is a mobile-first DAP. This means that Appcues is built specifically with mobile apps in mind, and its content editor and features reflect that. Its biggest marketshare is also with mobile applications.

2. Visual editor

Appcues’ visual editor lets you create customized user experiences without any coding expertise. This functionality allows you to customize and design pop-ups, tooltips, and banners to navigate users across your platform or website.

The visual editor offers an extensive library of design templates, fonts, colors, and images that you can choose from to create an engaging user experience. You can also enhance the user experience by adding interactive elements like clickable buttons, videos, and animations.

A notable feature of Appcues’ visual editor is the real-time preview capability that displays the final product as it’s being developed. This feature empowers you to make necessary adjustments before going live, ensuring the best possible user experience.

3. Targeting and segmentation

Appcues’ targeting and segmentation capability is intended to assist you in generating personalized user experiences based on specific criteria such as user behavior, demographics, and preferences. This feature empowers you to direct specific groups of users towards personalized experiences, resulting in improved engagement and enhanced conversion rates.

The user segmentation and targeting feature allows you to develop user segments based on various factors, including user behavior, location, device, and other characteristics. This allows you to aim personalized experiences at specific user groups tailored to their unique needs and preferences.

4. Analytics and reporting

Appcues’ analytics and reporting capability is an all-encompassing tool that permits you to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your experiences. This feature lets you scrutinize user behavior, engagement rates, and conversion metrics, providing valuable insights into how users engage with your product.

Appcues’ analytics and reporting feature offers an array of metrics and data points, including click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and engagement rates. This empowers you to understand which experiences resonate with users and drive the highest engagement and conversions.

Appcues’ also analytics and reporting feature provides detailed user behavior data, including how users navigate a website, which pages they visit, and the duration spent on each page. This data can help pinpoint areas that may be causing friction and optimize the experiences accordingly.

5. Integrations

Appcues’ integration capability is designed to assist businesses in integrating their experiences seamlessly with other software and tools they may already be using. This feature allows you to link Appcues with third-party applications, including customer relationship management (CRM) software, email marketing tools, and more.

Appcues’ integrations feature enables you to harness the power of your current software stack to enhance user experiences and drive higher engagement rates. For instance, by integrating Appcues with their CRM software, businesses can create personalized user experiences based on demographic data, purchase history, and other customer data points.

In addition, by integrating Appcues with their email marketing tools, users can generate personalized experiences that are activated by specific email campaigns. This can enhance engagement rates and drive conversions by providing users with a smooth and customized experience across multiple touchpoints.

TIP: Explore the best Appcues DAP alternatives.

Pendo features

1. Product usage analytics

Pendo’s product analytics function delivers valuable insights into user interaction with your product. This function helps track user behavior, including which features are being utilized the most, which are being ignored, and which are creating confusion. With this data, you can enhance your product for a better user experience and detect areas that need improvement.

The product usage tracking feature also offers a visual representation of user behavior over time, making it easy to identify trends and patterns. This enables you to determine how your product is utilized, identify areas for refinement, and discover which features function correctly.

2. In-app messaging

Pendo’s in-app messaging feature enables you to communicate with users in real time while they use your product. Using this feature, you can send personalized messages to specific user segments, such as new users or those who haven’t utilized a particular feature. These messages can contain essential updates, alerts, or tips to enhance their product experience.

The in-app messaging feature also includes analytics that allow you to evaluate the performance of your messages, including metrics like click-through rates and user engagement. This data empowers you to fine-tune your messaging strategy and improve communication with your users.

3. Product tours

Pendo’s product tour feature is ideal for new user onboarding and guiding them through the essential features of your product. With this feature, you can create interactive tours that showcase how to use different features and navigate your product’s interface. The tours can include images, videos, and text to provide a comprehensive overview of your product.

Pendo’s product tour feature is highly customizable, enabling you to tailor each tour to specific user segments or use cases. Additionally, you can embed the tours directly within your product, ensuring that users can access them when they need them.

Detailed analytics are provided on user engagement with each tour, including completion rates and time spent on each step. This data allows you to optimize the tours for maximum impact and identify areas for improvement.

4. Feedback collection

With Pendo’s feedback collection feature, you can effortlessly gather user feedback to enhance your product. You have the flexibility to collect customer feedback in various ways, such as surveys, polls, and in-app feedback forms. Moreover, you can tailor these tools to suit your requirements and target specific user groups.

By utilizing this feature, you can access comprehensive analytics on user engagement with each feedback collection method, encompassing response rates and sentiment. This valuable information enables you to prioritize feature development initiatives based on user feedback.

TIP: Explore the best Pendo DAP alternatives.

Appcues

Read 254 reviews on G2

Pendo

Read 1,779 reviews on G2

Meets Requirements

89%

87%

Ease of use

87%

84%

Quality of Support

92%

88%

Good Business Partner

93%

91%

Audio/Visual Walkthroughs

88%

85%

Related Resources

WalkMe vs Whatfix: Ultimate DAP Comparison

How DAPs Empower Employees With Better Software Training

13 Best Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) in 2024

Comparing Appcues vs. Pendo Use Cases

DAP usage can be categorized into two primary types: employee experiences and customer experiences.

Employee experiences focus on motivating employees to use internal applications such as CRM, ERP, and HCM. These use cases include in-app onboarding, training, and providing continuous support based on employee roles to ensure effortless adoption.

On the other hand, customer experiences aim to enhance the usage of customer-facing applications. The use cases in this category consist of solutions for user onboarding, customer support, and other scenarios that aid in driving customer adoption.

Employee Experience (EX) Use Cases

	APPCUES	PENDO
Employee Onboarding	Interactive onboarding experiences should be created to guide employees through different aspects of their role, such as company culture, policies, and procedures. Appcues provides personalized onboarding experiences that can be customized for each new employee based on their role, location, or other relevant factors. The analytics and reporting feature in Appcues provides valuable insights into employee engagement and progress during the onboarding process. This information enables HR to identify areas for improvement and modify onboarding strategies accordingly.	Use interactive tutorials and on-demand support to help new employees quickly get up to speed in their new roles. Provide contextual guidance to help new employees navigate complex systems and processes, reducing onboarding time and resources. Utilize performance support capabilities to help employees overcome any obstacles encountered during onboarding.
Employee Training	Develop engaging training modules featuring videos, images, quizzes, and interactive elements for your most-used software, tools, or procedures. Personalize training experiences with segmentation and targeting features based on employee skill level, department, etc. Track progress and engagement with analytics and reporting to improve training strategies and ensure maximum effectiveness.	Utilize interactive tutorials and simulations to help employees quickly learn new skills and workflows, reducing training time and resources. Provide on-demand support to improve knowledge retention and performance, ensuring employees get the help they need when they need it. Use analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of training initiatives and optimize them accordingly.
Performance Support	Develop on-demand performance support tools such as checklists, quick reference guides, and job aids for key information or instructions. Provide real-time in-app guidance with contextual nudges and tooltips, helping employees navigate workflows, reducing errors, and increasing efficiency. Track employee usage of performance support tools and in-app guidance through analytics and reporting, identifying areas that need additional support.	Leverage performance support capabilities to help employees overcome any roadblocks or issues, increasing productivity and job satisfaction. Utilize WalkMe’s analytics tools to identify areas where employees may need additional support or training, leading to improved performance and productivity. Provide personalized guidance to help employees work more efficiently and effectively, increasing performance and productivity.
IT Support	Develop interactive guides for employees to learn new software, tools, or systems, customized for different user groups or job roles and easily accessible anytime. Design interactive guides for troubleshooting common issues and resolving bugs, walking employees through each step with visuals and animations for a more engaging experience. Create interactive guides for learning about security and compliance policies and best practices.	Utilize self-service support capabilities to enable employees to find solutions to their IT problems independently, reducing the volume of support requests. Offer interactive tutorials and on-demand support to help employees quickly and easily resolve IT issues, decreasing downtime and improving productivity. Use the analytics feature to identify patterns in IT support requests and optimize your IT support processes accordingly.
Change Management	Develop interactive guides and walkthroughs that explain changes, including new processes, tools, or systems, and tailor them to specific employee groups. Offer real-time guidance and support for employees navigating new software, such as tooltips, nudges, and interactive walkthroughs that demonstrate specific feature usage and provide helpful tips and information.	Leverage WalkMe to guide employees through implementing new policies with step-by-step guidance and support. Provide targeted guidance to help employees adjust to system changes and learn how to use new systems effectively. Offer support during organizational changes by guiding employees through new workflows and helping them navigate new systems and processes.
Digital Transformation	Provide interactive tutorials and walkthroughs to help employees transition smoothly to new tools. Send targeted messages notifying employees of changes or updates, ensuring everyone is informed and on the same page	Provide personalized, in-app guidance to accelerate digital adoption and help employees learn new tools and technologies more efficiently. Enhance user engagement by gaining insights into how users interact with digital tools and systems.

Customer Experience (CX) Use Cases

	APPCUES	PENDO
Customer and User Onboarding	Provide step-by-step guidance during onboarding to help customers understand the key features of your product and learn how to use each one effectively. Tailor onboarding experiences to different customer types based on their unique needs, preferences, and behaviors. This can help improve engagement and adoption rates, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.	Personalized onboarding capabilities can increase customer retention and loyalty by ensuring the success of new customers with your products or services. The implementation of in-app guidance and walkthroughs can decrease the time and resources necessary for customer support by helping customers to quickly familiarize themselves with your product.
Customer Self-Support	In-app messaging allows for real-time communication with customers within your product, offering assistance and support. This feature can provide targeted tips, answer FAQs, or notify customers of relevant updates or changes. Integration with existing knowledge bases or support centers can provide customers with a centralized location for self-service support. This can include searchable articles, FAQs, and other resources directly within your product interface to empower customers to efficiently and quickly resolve any issues.	Guided walkthroughs and tutorials that provide step-by-step guidance can enable customers to self-serve and independently resolve issues. In-app messaging and notifications can help customers quickly locate answers and support resources. Personalized self-service support can be delivered through contextual help, enabling you to address customer issues in a customized and efficient manner.
User Engagement Monitoring	Behavioral analytics enables monitoring customer engagement with your website or product and gaining insights into their usage, and identifying areas of confusion. Customers can be segmented into groups based on their common characteristics or behaviors, which can be used to create targeted messaging and engagement strategies tailored to the specific needs of each group.	Gain insight into customer engagement by monitoring user behavior and tracking usage metrics. Identify areas where customers require additional support or training by analyzing feature usage data. Understand customer satisfaction and discover opportunities for improvement by analyzing user feedback.
Product Analytics	Monitor usage of different features in your product to prioritize development efforts and determine which features need to be improved or retired. Use funnel analysis to identify areas of improvement in the customer journey, such as where users drop off, and take action to address them. Conduct A/B testing with a subset of users to compare different variations of your product and determine which one performs better.	Identify areas for feature updates by analyzing customer behavior and determining where they encounter obstacles. Evaluate the effectiveness of messaging and onboarding efforts by tracking adoption rates of new features and comparing them to previous launches. Personalize customer experiences and enhance overall satisfaction by segmenting users based on behavior and demographics.
Customer and User Feedback	Engage with customers directly within your product using in-app messaging to offer real-time assistance and support. This feature can be used to provide targeted tips, answer frequently asked questions, and keep customers informed about updates and changes. Provide customers with a centralized location for self-service support by integrating your product with your existing knowledge base or support center. This empowers customers to find searchable articles, FAQs, and other resources quickly and efficiently.	Identify pain points and areas for improvement by gathering feedback and ratings from customers on specific features or areas of the product through in-app messaging. Gather feedback from customers at significant touchpoints in their journey, such as after onboarding or when they have reached a specific milestone, by creating surveys. Proactively address negative experiences by tracking customer engagement and identifying trends in feedback.
Digital Transformation	Develop tailored onboarding experiences for customers, facilitating their digital transformation journey by providing resources and support they need to get started. Offer in-app guidance and training to customers, assisting them with using new features and tools as they are released. Update customers with important information, product changes, and developments in real-time via in-app notifications, keeping them engaged and informed throughout the digital transformation process.	Identify areas where users may require additional training or resources during a digital transformation by monitoring user behavior. Personalize onboarding experiences based on user roles and responsibilities to facilitate a successful transition to a new system or process. Provide insights into which areas may require additional attention or resources by tracking adoption rates of new digital tools.

Appcues pricing

Appcues provides a variety of pricing plans that are tailored to meet users’ specific needs and support requirements. To enable users to try out the software before subscribing to a paid plan, Appcues offers a free trial period.

The pricing plans are based on the number of monthly active users (MAUs) and can be billed annually or monthly. Appcues offers three plans, including Basic, Growth, and Enterprise, each with progressively advanced features and support. This means Appcues can become quite expensive for applications and product teams that are expecting to scale with high user growth.

Appcues also allows customers to choose custom pricing plans that cater to their unique requirements. Users can also opt for add-on features such as translating user flows into multiple languages and personalized training sessions, which attract an additional fee.

Pendo pricing

Pendo provides various pricing alternatives for its digital adoption platform (DAP) to cater to the unique requirements of diverse organizations. The pricing structure is centered on a subscription model that factors in the number of users and the specific features requested.

Pendo offers a free trial period that enables organizations to test the platform before subscribing to a paid plan. Following the trial period, organizations can select from several plans, such as Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise, with each plan offering progressively advanced capabilities and assistance.

Appcues vs. Pendo: What Do Customer Reviews Say?

	APPCUES	PENDO
Capterra	4.8 out of 5 stars “It’s limited to relatively basic exports. This is particularly annoying when it comes to surveys done through Appcues.”	4.5 out of 5 stars “No control over the data visibility can be frustrating to use any of the reporting they build for you.”
G2	4.7 out of 5 stars “Reporting takes a bit more time to learn without guidance. Also, being able to filter or export more detailed information about the users would be amazing.”	4.4 out of 5 stars “The first thing I find not so optimistic about Pendo is the complexity of configuring and customizing the platform; it requires more time and effort on the part of the users so that it can be fully utilized.”
Gartner Peer Insights	No ratings or reviews available	4.1 out of 5 stars “We have recently started using Pendo to track our users and understand their journeys and pain points, it’s an ‘okayish’ experience so far mostly from an ease of use standpoint. While there are lot of functionalities, the tool learning time and deployment is tough.”
GetApp	4.8 out of 5 stars “It’s missing a way to easily analyse your data and to see where your users drop off (only available through third-party integration).”	4.5 out of 5 stars “Sometimes Pendo can be tricky with older code bases or with iframes, and rarely the guide builder behaves erratically so it’s hard to tell how much you’ve saved.”
TrustRadius	8.6 out of 10 stars “Appcues works well for building in-app walkthroughs, modal windows to pop up information to users, and collect feedback from users. It’s very easy to use, but it can be cumbersome at times and you do run into roadblocks that force you to create workarounds. For more purposes Appcues works great.”	8.2 out of 10 stars “Pendo is great for getting to know your customers, gathering feedback about your products, getting them to onboard in your products. I think room for improvements is the reporting/dashboards side, you can get so much data into Pendo, it would be useful to have some templates or easy guides about what reports to setup, how to read the data.”

Whatfix: The Ultimate Winner Among Appcues And Pendo

Appcues boasts that their platform “helps teams build user-centric products without code,” allowing you to create targeted messages and tooltips for your users. On the other hand, Pendo offers “a complete platform for product teams,” with features such as in-app messaging, analytics, and user feedback. But which tool is more effective at improving user engagement and retention?

After comparing Appcues and Pendo, it is clear that both platforms offer impressive capabilities when it comes to improving user engagement and retention. However, a new player in town stands out from the crowd – Whatfix.

Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that helps enterprises to accelerate user adoption and reduce training time. With features like in-app guidance, self-help resources, and personalized user journeys, Whatfix provides a complete user onboarding, engagement, and support solution.

Interactive walkthroughs

One of the standout features of Whatfix is its ability to create interactive walkthroughs that guide users step-by-step through complex workflows. This not only helps users to learn the product faster, but also reduces the need for support tickets and calls, saving valuable time for both users and support teams.

Advanced analytics and reporting

Another feature that sets Whatfix apart is its analytics and reporting capabilities. With detailed insights into user behavior, Whatfix allows product teams to understand how their users interact with their product, identify areas for improvement, and measure the impact of their onboarding and engagement efforts.

Adoption anywhere

Whatfix offers a platform for enterprises to produce interactive walkthroughs, tutorials, and guides that assist users in adopting new software applications, tools, and procedures. These guides are accessible from any location, at any time, and on any device. What’s more, the DAP solution provided by Whatfix streamlines the process for businesses to design customized, contextual, and interactive guidance that caters to the distinct requirements of various user groups.

While Appcues and Pendo are strong contenders in the user engagement space, Whatfix offers a comprehensive solution that can take your user onboarding and engagement efforts to the next level. With features like interactive walkthroughs, advanced analytics, and seamless adoption, Whatfix provides a complete digital adoption platform that can help your enterprise to achieve its goals faster and with less friction.

Experience an effortless and personalized way of learning new software applications with Whatfix today.

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What Is Whatfix?

Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides organizations with a no-code editor to create in-app guidance on any application that looks 100% native. With Whatfix, create interactive walkthroughs, product tours, task lists, smart tips, field validation, self-help wikis, hotspots, and more. Understand how users are engaging with your applications with advanced product analytics.

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