The 42 Best User Onboarding Tools for Your SaaS

If you don’t have the time or the staff to be able to conduct in-person training or training workshops, video onboarding can be the next best thing to give you a competitive advantage.

Loom allows you to record yourself, the screen or both.

This onboarding tool can make the process easier and quicker by allowing your potential customers to watch a short video rather than read an entire manual.

Website: Loom

Best For: User onboarding videos

Tool #2: LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds helps you teach new users how to make the most out of your product with online courses. You can capture leads with value-added training, then nurture them by teaching them on how to use your product and become expert users.

A customer training portal can reduce costs by:

Automating support and lessening incoming tickets
Automating customer training
Automating user activation
Providing personalized and automated onboarding
Training new hires and partners

Easily create online courses and ensure customer success with your academy.

Website: LearnWorlds

Best For: User education

Tool #3: Intercom

Intercom allows businesses to communicate with their customers on their website, inside the web, and mobile applications, as well as by email.

Intercom lets you set up in-app messages to guide users along the onboarding process and even allows you to send targeted emails based upon actions the user made or a progress point they may have stopped at.

Website: Intercom

Best For: In app prompts and targeted emails

Tool #4: FullStory

Fullstory goes beyond traditional website analytics and allows you to search through different data points from your customers’ experience.

Pixel perfect playback allows you to see exactly how users interact with your platform but FullStory goes beyond that with analytics, click maps and more. It is considered a must-tool for every professional building a go-to-market plan.

Website: FullStory

Best For: Pixel Session Replay

Tool #5: Autosend

Autosend allows you to send trigger-based emails, SMS, and push messages to web and mobile app users.

Autosend is a simple all-in-one tool that helps you automate messages for your users as they hit milestones of the buying process within your website or application.

Website: Autosend

Best For: Triggered messages

Tool #6: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation plus CRM.

ActiveCampaign also allows app messaging directly on your software.

Take your time back with sales and marketing automation.

Use their simple workflow to take of the tasks no one has time for.

Website: ActiveCampaign

Best For: Marketing Automation

Tool #7: Userlane

Userlane is a customer onboarding automation and retention platform that mature SaaS-companies embed in their software solution.

The platform is a guidance layer that goes on top of any browser-based software applications to provide customers with a fully interactive onboarding experience.

Userlane guides new and existing customers through new processes they need to navigate in a software solution with interactive on-screen guidance.

The platform has been developed to enable SaaS companies to provide the most personalized UX to their end-users so that they achieve results and are successful immediately.

Userlane is unlike tooltip solutions that simply present elements in the UI or suggest pop-ups with some instructional information: The solution provides a fully interactive experience so that users are guided to success instantly and can navigate any software application like a pro right from the very beginning.

Website: Userlane

Best For: customer onboarding and retention

Tool #8: Hopscotch

Hopscotch makes it super simple for developers to add product tours to their platforms.

Create tours over multiple pages of your website or application and customize your language to support customers anywhere in the world.

This tool is a great innovation for user engagement.

Website: Hopscotch

Best For: Product Tours

Tool #9: Nickelled

Improve your onboarding experience while decreasing the time it takes by showing users the most important processes they need to know through Nickelled’s walkthrough guides.

Help navigate users through critical events in your app without plugins or javascripts.

Make sure your users see the value in your platform from day one and address their pain points.

Website: Nickelled

Best For: Walkthrough Guides

Tool #10: Tour My App

Tour My App is another code less in-app guide to help you reflect your value proposition faster and easier.

These days users don’t want to take the time to read a long manual from a sales team and even watch a video.

The easiest and most efficient way to engage your users is through in-app guided tours.

Tour My App lets you create fully interactive tours while completely customising them.

You also get metrics on your tours to see how effective they are.

Website: Tour My App

Best For: In-App Guides

Tool #11: Wistia

Wistia is a business platform for video hosting.

It allows you to create a more personalized user experience for your target customers by creating a play-by-play video of your app in action.

These videos can help bring personalization to your brand, making it easier for customers to connect with you, and can also help break down complicated processes.

Their soapbox feature makes it so simple to create a video. All you need is yourself, a webcam and a Google Chrome extension! It is highly recommended for new products that need to add a simple onboarding process in their marketing strategy.

Website: Wistia

Best For: video tutorials

Tool #12: Inline Manual

Through the onboarding process, Inline Manual lets you create tailored tutorials for first-time users and allows you to reinforce your marketing efforts through guided actions.

Beyond that it allows you to set up customer support articles inside your app and send support emails related to areas your target markets are struggling with within your app.

Website: Inline Manual

Best For: Walkthrough guides

Tool #13: LeanPlum

The campaign composer feature inside LeanPlum allows you to create and send messaging campaigns across marketing channels, helping you drive engagement and increase revenue for your marketing plan.

Access customer onboarding analytics to see the optimal time to send your messages and set a frequency cap to reduce unsubscribes due to over messaging to new markets.

Website: LeanPlum

Best For: Messaging Campaigns

Tool #14: Auth0

Getting users into your app and engaging with it is the ultimate goal.

Achieve this quickly without losing the security of your application by using AuthO.

AuthO implements single sign-on capabilities including social media through Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

AuthO offers 100+ pre-built rules for you to use or you can completely customise it by writing your own code. A must in any new product marketing strategy that focuses on user experience.

Website: AuthO

Best For: Single Sign On (SSO)

Tool #15: Customer.io

Customer.io allows you to segment your audience based on real-time events and then send tailored messages to different audiences, through targeted emails, push notifications and sms.

Instead of scheduling email messages to customers at the same scheduled time, let customers receive the message on their own time depending on actions they’ve taken inside your webpage or application.

Website: Customer.io

Best For: Trigger based emails

Tool #16: Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s awesome templates, handy automation, and a powerful analytics tool really make them stand out in the email marketing industry.

There’s no monkeying around with their software.

The easy to use design tool allows anyone to design a message like a pro and the best news is that you get access to all of this for free!

Website: Mailchimp

Best For: Email marketing

Tool #17: Close.io

Technology and the use of machine learning software is the way of the future but some people still believe in the power of a good human interaction.

This is exactly what Close.io believes.

They offer a personalised email sent from an actual human, no automated messages here, and even a phone call with the first 5 minutes of your customer signing up.

Calling can be a pain point nowadays but Close.io takes all the work out of it with their automated calling and predictive dialing.

Website: Close.io

Best For: CRM with sales automation

Tool #18: Optimizely

Every consumer will interact with your platform differently and that is why A/B testing is so important.

Optimizely lets you test, learn and deploy winning product experiences every time.

Eliminate the guesswork, test your ideas and know exactly what is working with your users and what isn’t.

Website: Optimizely

Best For: A/B Testing

Tool #19: WhatFix

WhatFix allows you to create interactive walkthroughs inside your application.

Give your users the power during their customer journey by delivering a personalised journey in real time.

This platform is great because it’s very secure, GDPR compliant and delivers help to your users in many different formats to ensure you are reaching every customer in their preferred method.

Website: WhatFix

Best For: In-app guides

Tool #20: Zapier

Zapier is a tool that allows you to connect different apps, automate workflows and spend less time in repetitive tasks that take too much time.

If you want a better user onboarding for your customers, you should definitely check what Zapier can do for you.

Website: Zapier

Best For: Automate workflows

Tool #21: Segment

Take control of your customer data with the help of Segment.

By integrating with over 100 different apps, Segment allows you to centralise all of your customer data and is reportedly easier to use than Amplitude, Kissmetrics and Mixpanel.

Website: Segment

Best For: Collecting and Analyzing Customer Data

Tool #22: Apptimize

Test different versions of your app using Apptimize. Apptimize takes pride in coming from mobile roots and specialises in the mobile platform.

Besides that, they also help you feel confident about new feature releases by allowing you to gradually roll out new features to select users and roll them back if needed.

Apptimize doesn’t stop at mobile though, explore these features across platforms.

Website: Apptimize

Best For: A/B Testing

Tool #23: Funnelytics

Website: Funnelytics

Best For: Funnel Visualization

Tool #24: Amplitude

Amplitude lets you gain deep insights on your consumers behavior.

Track an unlimited number of in app events and run experiments to create the best customer experience and achieve long term retention.

Website: Amplitude

Best For: Product Analytics

Tool #25: Mixpanel

Easily analyse your users behavior across several platforms, run tests to a higher conversion rate and use personal messages to increase retention.

Mixpanel gives you the information you need to make business changing decisions.

Website: Mixpanel

Best For: Product Analytics and User Surveys

Tool #26: Tutorialize

Although they aren’t currently taking new registrations, check back soon to take advantage of their services.

Tutorialize is completely customisable, through CSS or the HTML directly, to easily guide users through your site or application.

For those less technically savvy, you can also engage with these features through a Google Chrome extension.

Website: Tutorialize

Best For: On-page Tutorials

Tool #27: TalentLMS

Let your LMS look and feel how you always wanted with TalentLMS’s custom features.

Save time with their easy to use platform and eLearning courses that can be built in minutes.

It also constantly offers you support through complete integrated software and it is always free!

Those two things alone make TalentLMS a system to look into.

Website: Talentlms

Best For: Cloud Based Learning Management System

Tool #28: Userpilot

Create the best customer experience by triggering in-app actions at exactly the right time during each unique customer journey with Userpilots’ code free software.

Pave the exact path to those revenue returning moments.

Effectively onboard each user seamlessly by removing the forced actions in preset app or site walkthroughs but still highlight the most important features through pre-defined checklists.

Website: Userpilot

Best For: In-app Triggered Actions

Tool #29: Hotjar

Easily track not only what pages users are visiting on your site but what area of each page through intricate heatmaps.

Try it free and uncover valuable insights to implement meaningful optimizations to your website or application.

Conversion funnels allow you to guide users down a pre-set checklist that leads them to the most beneficial actions and an increase in revenue.

Website: Hotjar

Best For: Heatmaps

Tool #30: Autopilot

Automate repetitive tasks through Autopilot’s creative visual software.

Establish personal relationships with every customer by creating unique personalised messages.

Along with marketing automation, Autopilot also offers email and content marketing, lead management as well as product integration.

Website: Autopilothq

Best For: Marketing Autopilot Software

Tool #31: Gainsight

Gainsight combines insights from multiple sources to help gain a deeper understanding of what each client needs and provides data to help proactively deliver the best user experience.

Gainsight also keeps your touchpoints unified for your customers so all your client-facing departments can be on the same page when dealing with the on-boarding process.

Website: Gainsight

Best For: Customer Analytics

Tool #32: Totango

Onboarding is one of the most important parts of any client experience.

Totango steps in and analyzes which trial users are active and engaged with the programmes, which leads to higher conversion rates, a better overall onboarding experience and an overall increase in revenue.

Website: Totango

Best For: Customer Retention Software

Tool #33: Inspectlet

Google Analytics offer great analytical insights but go beyond with qualitative insights from Inspectlet.

They record video of every user action that lets you see every mouse movement, scroll, click, and keypress on your site.

Once you can understand your user’s patterns, you can increase your overall conversion rate by pinpointing why they are leaving a page.

Track your audience with different filters and get a whole new understanding of the visitors to your website.

Website: Inspectlet

Best For: User Action Playback

Tool #34: UsabilityHub

Improve the overall UX of your apps and websites by testing and researching your platform through Usabilityhub.

UsabilityHub helps improve your website functionality by offering a comprehensive set of tools that helps uncover design issues early.

They also help identify the effectiveness of the links on your website, optimize messaging on landing pages, and gather information from users through forms to ensure quality control.

Website: Usabilityhub

Best For: User Testing Platform

Tool #35: UserTesting

UserTesting is a dynamic tool that allows you to record each customer session and how they are interacting with your app.

You can track what they do, but also hear them think aloud as they walk through their user onboarding journey.

UserTesting combines multiple reporting techniques to provide a clearer insight to your customers which then leads to a better customer experience.

Website: UserTesting

Best For: User Testing

Tool #36: Qualtrics

Qualtrics is a simple to use web-based survey tool that conducts survey research, evaluations, and other data collection methods.

They have numerous questions and survey templates to choose from, built-in dynamic reporting tools, and an easy to use interface to make forms that people want to interact with.

Website: Qualtrics

Best For: Customer Experience Management

Tool #37: Qualaroo

Qualaroo automates user research and gathers quality user feedback with personal targeting and sentiment analysis.

Automated surveys don’t do the trick anymore, you have to reach out to your users individually at the right time with the right questions.

You can segment your customers however you like, schedule exactly when you want questions to pop up, and get clients hot takes at each step of the onboarding process.

You can also incorporate Qualaroo with your favorite tools like Salesforce, MailChimp, Google Analytics and more.

Website: Qualaroo

Best For: User surveys

Tool #38: Typeform

Engage your audience with Typeforms’ easy to use forms and surveys that create an interactive experience for your clients.

Their conversational format stops one sided communication and helps you get more honest responses from customers, all without having to add code to your website.

Choose from multiple beautiful designs and create an easy to use, mobile-friendly form for your website.

The forms can also anticipate different question types as you start typing them out making for a simple setup.

Website: Typeform

Best For: User Forms & Surveys

Tool #39: Drift

In-site or in-app chat software are innovating how businesses connect with potential leads in real-time by allowing you to connect directly with customers when they are interested in a product.

Drift cuts down the time between when the client expresses interest and the business converting the sale, overall improving the communication between business and client.

Website: Drift

Best For: Chat software

Tool #40: Clearbit

Clearbit is a data provider that offers a variety of different products, APIs and solutions to help with all stages of business. Increase sales and reduce fraud by gathering more demographic information from your customers journey. Gain more than email addresses during the onboarding process.

Website: Clearbit

Best For: Analyzing Customer Data

Tool #41: User.com

User.com is a full-stack marketing automation software for turning your visitors into happy customers.

User.com allows you to gather information about your prospects, communicate with them via live chat, chatbots, gather contact information by using popups, send automated emails and SMS and much more.

The tool makes it easy to create automated paths where you can pinpoint the moments your leads receive messages. It will save your time and make sure your communication is consistent.

Right now available in Freemium Starter Pack – 100% free, includes modules like: Chat, CRM, Knowledge Base and Calendar.

Website: User.com

Best For: Full-stack Marketing Automation Tool

Tool #42: Appcues

I saved the best for last.

Educate your new target customers by guiding them through the user onboarding flow using prompts and cues.

Appcues is code-less making it very user-friendly.

Personalised messages create a great customer journey from the start.

Website: Appcues

Best For: App prompts through onboarding

Tool #43: UserGuiding

UserGuiding helps companies to improve product adoption by designing interactive user onboarding flows. Non-technical people can create step by step product walkthroughs, without any coding.

UserGuiding also provides analytics to track the performance of the tours, segmentation to create more personalized experiences, NPS for capturing feedback, and onboarding checklists for a wholesome onboarding experience. From Red Ventures to Young Capital, thousands of companies trust UserGuiding.

Website: UserGuiding

Best For: App prompts through onboarding

Now It’s Your Turn

So there you have it.

You now know what are the top user onboarding tools for your SaaS business.

Before I leave you, I need to tell you one last thing:

Tools are important but in order for them to be effective, a great product is needed.

What this means, is that to move the needle you need a truly amazing product.

Then, and only then, your user onboarding tools will be effective.

Now it’s your turn:

Which of these tools are you going to use first? Is it Loom or maybe Appcues?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below!

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