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11 Best Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) in 2023
- July 12, 2021
Levi Olmstead
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In the past decade, software has improved the standard of living in nearly all areas of our life. From business software to personal apps, we use dozens of tools a day to improve our productivity.
However, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the software we interact with. If you’re not familiar with how to best use a software app, you can become frustrated and ultimately decide you’re no longer going to use that piece of software. Many times this is because of a lack of proper training on how to best use the software,
For businesses onboarding expensive enterprise software, proper digital adoption is critical to the success of the organization. This is where a digital adoption platform can help.
What are the best digital adoption platforms (DAPs) in 2023?
- Whatfix
- Pendo
- Appcues
- Apty
- WalkMe
- UserPilot
- ChurnZero
- Gainsight PX
- UserGuiding
- Userlane
- Spekit
A Buyer’s Guide to Digital Adoption Platforms in 2022
What Is a Digital Adoption Platform?
A digital adoption platform (or DAP) is instructional software that sits on top of another piece of software application to help train and guide users on how to use the software, directly in the app.
As software expands to improve business processes across organizations, so does the need for users proficient in how to use these apps. Gartner predicts that by 2025, “70% of organizations will use digital adoption solutions across the entire technology stack to overcome still insufficient application user experiences.”
Some common use cases for DAP software including:
- Employee Adoption: Creating better employee experiences for in-app onboarding, training, learning, development, and performance support – as well as driving the adoption of new process changes and digital transformation projects.
- Customer Adoption: For in-app customer onboarding and self-service support – helping to reduce time-to-value, retain customers, and deflect support tickets.
- Product Adoption and Analytics: For capturing product analytics to make data-driven decisions for creating better user onboarding flows, feature announcements, gathering feedback, driving product adoption, and creating overall better platforms.
Features of Digital Adoption Platforms
DAPs offer a broad and robust feature set, which most platforms offering the following as a baseline:
- Overlay technology: DAPs integrate directly over cloud and desktop applications.
- No-code content creation and management: The core functionality of DAPs are their ability to enable non-technical team members to create in-app learning experiences such as product tours, interactive walkthroughs, task lists, tooltips, knowledge bases, and more.
- Contextual self-help support: DAPs also provide the tools to create in-app performance and product support, allowing end-users to search an embedded self-help wiki for answers to their contextual issues, at the moment of need.
- User behavior analytics: DAPs enable teams to capture product analytics on the effectiveness and adoption of products and features, helping to improve and test user flows to create better, personalized product experiences and measure overall digital adoption.
- Automated multi-format content creation: With a DAP like Whatfix, organizations can automatically repurpose in-app content into various other content formats such as videos, PDFs, slide decks, and more.
- Real-time feedback: With a DAP, organizations can collect real-time feedback, in the flow of work, on their in-app content and product flows.
11 Best Digital Adoption Platforms in 2023
Here are the 11 best DAP software tools in 2023 based on real-user reviews from review websites such as G2, Capterra, and GetApp.
1. Whatfix
Price: Get a Personalized Quote
Whatfix is a leading digital adoption platform that allows organizations to get the most value out of their software applications with tools to create in-app guidance, provide on-demand self-help support, and capture and measure product analytics.
With Whatfix, organizations can improve employee onboarding and training, provide real-time performance support, lower the impact of change management and digital transformation, and get the most ROI from enterprise software investments with better digital adoption rates.
It is also a fantastic solution for product teams looking to capture behavioral analytics, create onboarding flows, reduce time-to-value, announce new features, gather product feedback, and improve overall product adoption and experience.
Whatfix provides many user adoption and learning features for better software adoption, including:
- In-app content creation and personalized learning flows
- Intuitive content creation for employee and user training, without coding experience
- On the job learning tools and self-service support knowledge centers
- Easy-to-create in-app guided walkthroughs, tutorials, tooltips, help desks, knowledge centers, etc.
- User training analytics to understand user usage and progress metrics
- Supported by the most popular and widely used software platforms such as Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Workday, and many more web apps.
Ready to get started with Whatfix?
2. Pendo
Price: N/A – Contact for a custom quote
Pendo is a product experience DAP solution aimed primarily at product teams looking to improve the adoption of their software.
With Pendo, product teams can use real-user analytics to determine where pain points are happening in an app. It also includes digital adoption features for training new employees, continuous employee development, self-service support, and more.
Pendo’s DAP features include:
- In-app training with walkthroughs
- Personalized continuous training workflows
- User analytics for understanding confusion points
- User feedback tools for understanding feedback at scale
Explore the best Pendo alternatives now.
3. Appcues
Price: Starts at $249/mo
Appcues is a DAP focused on improving user onboarding and using data to improve product adoption. One of Appcues biggest selling points – as is across all digital adoption platforms – is its ability to build and measure user onboarding flows without developers.
Appcues focuses on three problems of the onboarding process and provides in-app guidance and support tools to solve them. Those are creating personalized and branded adoption flows, delivering the right onboarding experience to the right user at the right time, and growing adoption with actionable insights and data.
Appcues’ DAP features include:
- No-code onboarding and adoption workflow builder
- User segmentation for contextual in-app messages based on user behavior
- Custom dashboards and data visualizations to track and measure adoption processes
Explore the best Appcues alternatives now.
4. Apty
Price: N/A – Contact for a custom quote
Apty is a digital adoption platform aimed at powering enterprise software adoption. With Apty, enterprise organizations can build virtual learning workflows and self-service knowledge centers to proactively onboarding, train, and develop employees on their software stack.
Apty’s DAP features include:
- Customizable in-app tooltips and walkthroughs
- Training and analytics features for measuring employee adoption
- On-screen guidance
- Explore the best Apty alternatives now
5. Walkme
Price: N/A – Contact for a custom quote
Walkme provides organizations to improve user adoption for their employees and customers with no-code user adoption and training content creation tools – without the need to code or change a program’s software.
Walkme allows companies to create in-app tooltips, walkthroughs, and more, allowing end-users to learn how to use an app within the flow of work.
WalkMe’s DAP features include:
- On-screen guidance with the help of balloons and tooltips
- Helpdesk integration
- Customizable widgets, surveys, and other branded content features
Explore the best WalkMe alternatives now.
6. UserPilot
Price: Starts at $249/mo
UserPilot is a digital adoption platform specifically designed for product teams to improve the user experience and adoption of their platforms.
With UserPilot, product teams can create personalized in-app workflows and messages, helping to improve areas of issue that are giving users trouble. It also provides product teams with key insights and metrics into user sentiment, user experience, and more – allowing them to take actionable measures to improve these areas of their product.
UserPilot’s DAP features include:
- Product use analytics and segmentation
- In-app content creation such as tooltips and pop-up messages
- User feedback features to capture qualitative user data
Explore the best UserPilot alternatives now.
7. ChurnZero
Price: N/A – Contact for a custom quote
ChurnZero is built with SaaS customer success teams in mind, and is considered a customer onboarding software designed for reducing customer churn. While it’s not a complete DAP, it still provides digital adoption features that allow it to be included in this list.
Its main features are built for SaaS customer onboarding teams – with tools designed to improve customer onboarding and product adoption, ultimately leading to more customer renewal and upsell opportunities.
ChurnZero’s DAP features include:
- In-app communications and product walkthroughs
- Command center featuring customer health scores and customer segmentation
- Customer survey creation tools
8. Gainsight PX
Price: N/A – Contact for a custom quote
Gainsight PX is an add-in product to the Gainsight suite and is a product experience software. Gainsight PX allows product teams to collect data to fully understand how users are engaging with their product with in-app usage analytics and surveys.
It takes this one step further by empowering product teams with the tools to create in-app engagement experiences such as product walkthroughs and in-app guides during the onboarding process.
Gainsight’s DAP features include:
- In-app usage analytics and reporting
- User surveys for collecting feedback
- In-app onboarding flow creation
9. UserGuiding
Price: Starts at $82/mo
UserGuiding is built specifically for organizations to improve their customer onboarding process by increasing user adoption and creating loyal customers.
UserGuiding allows onboarding teams to create no-code in-app flows and tutorials, personalized for different personas, such as checklists and pop-up messages.
UserGuiding’s DAP features include:
- No-code in-app messaging creation
- Customer feedback and survey tools
- User segmentation for personalized content creation
10. Userlane
Price: N/A – contact for custom quotes for SMB and enterprise packages.
Userlane is a DAP that helps companies drive the adoption of new software investments and change projects with in-app guidance. With Userlane, IT teams can create self-help support content and in-app guidance for employees to better understand the software and utilize those technologies better.
Userlane’s DAP features include:
- Click path recorder and editor
- Interactive guides
- Virtual assistants
- Behavioral analytics and audience segmentation
Explore the best Userlane alternatives now.
11. Spekit
Price: Starts at $3,000/year for its basic package for companies under 25 employees.
Spekit is a digital adoption platform that was built for driving Salesforce adoption. It has since evolved into a DAP that helps companies drive the adoption of all its technology and software investments with in-app guidance on on-demand support creation tools.
Spekit’s DAP features include:
- No-code in-app guidance creation for employee enablement
- Employee feedback gathering tools
- Self-help knowledge base creation tools
- Analytics on software and feature adoption.
Explore the best Spekit alternatives now.
Drive adoption of your internal software and end-user applications and reach your potential with Whatfix
Whatfix empowers organizations by removing the barriers between software users and productivity. With Whatfix, analyze and automate your digital processes, utilize guided walkthroughs and in-app training content, and embed on-demand self-help support wikis.
4.6/5
Whatfix has been used to onboard new customers, post in-app product release notes, and notify users of best practices as they use our product. Great in-product training tool that feels native, [with] analytics to give insight to how well customers are interacting with your tips and training pop-ups.
Chase P.
Product Manager at ArbiterSports
Product Manager at ArbiterSports
Whatfix empowers organizations by removing the barriers between software users and productivity. With Whatfix, analyze and automate your digital processes, utilize guided walkthroughs and in-app training content, and embed on-demand self-help support wikis.
See how Whatfix is empowering organizations to find true software ROI by exploring our customer stories.
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