Best Whatfix Alternatives for SaaS

Best-Whatfix-Alternatives-for-SaaS

Exploring alternatives to Whatfix? With plenty of choices available, it’s difficult to decide which one will be the right fit.

The crux of the issue is – to make the right choice, you need to account for your priorities: your different jobs to be done, your budget, and the size of the company. But don’t worry – we’re coming to help!

In this post, we’ll discuss exactly that – which Whatfix competitor is best depending on the different use cases.

Let’s dive in!

TL;DR

  • Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that helps enterprise organizations with onboarding, training, and supporting their employees or customers. It accomplishes this through in-app guidance and messaging to provide on-demand support whenever it’s needed.
  • The solution also lets you track analytics on all in-app guidance, collect user feedback, build out self-serve content, and automate certain flows. Whatfix even has integrations with Salesforce, Amplitude, Google Analytics, Slack, Confluence, and other platforms to maximize collaboration.
  • Whatfix is priced lower than its closest competitor (WalkMe) while letting you onboard both customers and employees to software applications. That said, there are a few clear scenarios where you might want to look for alternative solutions:
    • If you’re the type of customer who wants to “try before they buy”, then Whatfix isn’t going to be the right fit. The trial request form on their website is buggy, you’ll need to wait a month to hear back on your request, and you might end up with a demo instead of a trial.
    • Many customers have complained about the subpar support that Whatfix offers. There are multiple reviews on websites like G2 citing slow resolution times, high success manager turnover, and an overall lack of technical assistance from the Whatfix team.
    • Despite claiming to be built for enterprise organizations, Whatfix’s analytics capabilities leave much to be desired. If you’re looking for advanced analytics capabilities, then find alternatives like WalkMe, Userpilot, or Appcues.
  • Here are the top Whatfix alternatives you can consider:
  1. Userpilot is a product growth platform that drives user activation, feature adoption, and expansion revenue. It also helps product teams collect user feedback, streamline onboarding, and gather actionable insights from analytics. With Userpilot, you’ll be able to track both product usage and user behavior to get a holistic view of how customers use your product — which will guide future development, improve the user experience, and inform your growth efforts.
  2. Appcues is a robust product adoption and user onboarding platform for web and mobile apps. It enables product teams to create, implement, and test personalized in-app onboarding experiences. The platform also helps you announce new product features and collect customer feedback. What makes this platform even better is the fact that it offers no-code features that make it suitable for non-technical teams.
  3. HelpHero is a tool that enables businesses to build interactive, easy-to-follow product tours that help engage users from day one and speed up feature adoption quicker than ever. In addition, with HelpHero, you can easily create and customize walkthroughs without coding. You can use it to ensure users know what’s new and how to use it. The result – is less frustration and confusion and higher user adoption and retention.
  4. Help Scout is a help desk software solution designed to help businesses provide seamless customer support. The platform offers a broad spectrum of features, including shared inbox, live chat, and knowledge base, to manage and organize customer support interactions. Help Scout lets you assign customer conversations to specific team members and resolve urgent requests on priority. You can even set up workflows to automate routine tasks and speed up response times. Additionally, the live chat feature lets you communicate with customers in real time and provide immediate assistance. You also have the option to collect user feedback through microsurveys and NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys.
  • Interested in driving product growth without coding? Book a demo to see how we can help!

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What is Whatfix?

Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that helps enterprise organizations with onboarding, training, and supporting their employees or customers. It accomplishes this through in-app guidance and messaging to provide on-demand support whenever it’s needed.

The solution also lets you track analytics on all in-app guidance, collect user feedback, build out self-serve content, and automate certain flows. Whatfix even has integrations with Salesforce, Amplitude, Google Analytics, Slack, Confluence, and other platforms to maximize collaboration.

What are the main use cases for Whatfix?

Understanding the core functionalities and use cases of Whatfix is crucial for deciding whether or not it’s the right choice for you.

Without further ado, let’s see the primary scenarios where Whatfix is useful for your SaaS business!

Whatfix for user onboarding

User onboarding is a complex process that only the most flexible tools can pull off. Whatfix has its fair share of bugs and technical quirks but there are a few features that bolster its onboarding capabilities — namely its tours, checklists, and integrations.

Here’s an overview of Whatfix’s onboarding features:

  • Whatfix lets you create interactive product tours for both users and employees. This reduces the time to value (TTV), whether it’s for customers using your product or employees learning how to use a solution in the internal tool stack.
  • Onboarding checklists (known as task lists on Whatfix) give new users or employees a clear next step on their journey toward product adoption. Whatfix lets you create these checklists as widgets target specific segments, and group tasks under headers.
  • Whatfix’s gallery of direct integrations with tools like Salesforce, Amplitude, SurveyMonkey, and more helps you centralize all onboarding data. The onboarding metrics gathered and synced across tools can then help you streamline your in-app flows.

Whatfix for product analytics

Whatfix has a separate product analytics solution that is billed separately from its mainline digital adoption platform (but has no pricing listed on the website).

Here’s an overview of Whatfix’s product analytics capabilities:

  • Whatfix has both trend and funnel report types available which can help you see how your customers or employees use different software applications. This will show you which paths users take, which elements they interact with, and what browser/OS they use to do so.
  • Track user properties like the type of device they’re on, which browser they’re using, or where they’re from. Unfortunately, this data isn’t available for desktop-based applications.
  • Limitations: Whatfix analytics lacks clarity and scalability (especially on the entry-level plan). Those on the Standard plan can only tag 25 actions and there’s no indication of how much it will cost to lift that limit by upgrading.

Whatfix for self-service support

Providing self-service options for employees and customers is crucial for multiple reasons. Mainly, it speeds up the product adoption process while simultaneously reducing the workload for your support team. Whatfix lets you offer multiple types of self-service support.

Here’s an overview of Whatfix’s self-service support functionality:

  • In-App Guidance: Whatfix’s in-app guidance features can be used to show customers or employees how to use a particular application. These flows could go over specific processes, highlight individual features, or serve as a walkthrough for the overall onboarding sequence.
  • Contextual Help: You can use Whatfix to provide contextual support to users when they need it most, so they don’t need to take up your team’s time by submitting tickets. These self-help resources make the answer to common queries easily accessible from anywhere on the web.
  • Multi-Channel Support: Whatfix gives you the ability to provide technical support throughout every touchpoint your organization uses. This includes email, chat, social media, support platforms, or other channels that the company utilizes to assist users.

What are the pros and cons of Whatfix?

Pros of Whatfix?

Whatfix may not be as popular or widely adopted as competitors like WalkMe but it does have its fair share of benefits:

  • Pricing: While Whatfix does not publish the exact cost of its plans publicly, numerous reports from customers suggest an average entry point of $1,000/month. This is significantly cheaper than its closest competitor, WalkMe, which reportedly starts at closer to $10,000/month.
  • Automation: Whatfix Flows helps you automate repetitive tasks to save time. The Whatfix Flows dashboard also lets you analyze your existing flows and then use them to create entirely new automation in a single click.
  • Integrations: Whatfix’s third-party integration options make it easy to incorporate the solution into the rest of your tech stack. It integrates with Salesforce, Amplitude, Google Analytics, Slack, and more — providing a good selection of the top CRM, analytics, and communication tools.

Cons of Whatfix?

Whatfix offers a more affordable employee onboarding solution than its closest competitors but is limited by its lackluster analytics and support — along with its high-friction trial signup process for prospective customers.

Here are the key drawbacks of using Whatfix:

  • Whatfix is quite lacking in the analytics department — both in comparison to direct competitors like WalkMe as well as other onboarding solutions like Userpilot, Appcues, or Pendo. If detailed user data matters to you, you’ll want to consider alternatives.
  • Technical assistance (or the lack thereof) is arguably one of Whatfix’s largest weaknesses. While all plans promise to give you a customer success manager, most Whatfix users complain about the subpar support they provide.
  • While Whatfix has a trial request page on its website, this form is buggy and inconsistent. You can reach out to support to request a trial directly but resolution times can be upwards of a month — and, in the end, you may even be redirected to a demo call instead of a trial account.

What do users say about Whatfix?

Whatfix customers called the product promising but cited shallow analytics, buggy workflows, and high customer success manager turnover that negatively impacted their user experience.

“The available (original) analytics features were not providing us with the data that we required for our internal KPIs. The CSM team tried their best with offering a tailored Excel solution to solve this matter, however ideally this would have been included in the product.

Due to the wide variety of features in customising pieces of content/flows, the workflows could “break” easily when certain tags etc. were not set correctly. It could often take quite some time to figure out what the exact issue was, making it less easy to use.

The client-supplier relationship might benefit from more continuity in terms of the responsible CSM for the account. Over the course of the last 15 months, we’ve had 4 different CSM’s. I understand that there might be varying reasons for this, and the general support has been good, however it always takes a bit of time to get up to speed with a new CSM.”

Most negative reviews of Whatfix aren’t actually about the product but the people behind the platform.

“There is a lack of transparency with partners, and felt that input was not taken seriously.”

Does Whatfix fit your budget?

Whatfix doesn’t have public pricing listed on its website. It also charges separately for its product analytics solution but we won’t be going over those plans since we’re focusing on the digital adoption platform.

Here’s an overview of the three plans available for Whatfix web:

  • Standard: This includes core features like in-app guidance, contextual guidance, a multi-media knowledge base, and content aggregation capabilities. It also includes access to pre-built surveys and up to two integrations.
  • Premium: This includes additional features such as automatic content localization, automated flow testing, unlimited integrations, and single sign-on (SSO). You’ll also be able to build custom surveys while on the Premium plan.
  • Pro: This includes the features from previous plans as well as enterprise-exclusive options such as self-hosting. This plan is targeted towards customer-facing applications with a million or more users.

3 Reasons why you might need a Whatfix alternative

Whatfix is priced lower than its closest competitor (WalkMe) while letting you onboard both customers and employees to software applications. That said, there are a few clear scenarios where you might want to look for alternative solutions:

  • If you’re the type of customer who wants to “try before they buy”, then Whatfix isn’t going to be the right fit. The trial request form on their website is buggy, you’ll need to wait a month to hear back on your request, and you might end up with a demo instead of a trial.
  • Many customers have complained about the subpar support that Whatfix offers. There are multiple reviews on websites like G2 citing slow resolution times, high success manager turnover, and an overall lack of technical assistance from the Whatfix team.
  • Despite claiming to be built for enterprise organizations, Whatfix’s analytics capabilities leave much to be desired. If you’re looking for advanced analytics capabilities, then find alternatives like WalkMe, Userpilot, or Appcues.

Better alternatives to Whatfix

Considering alternative options to Whatfix can often lead to discovering more tailored solutions that better suit your needs. Here are the top Whatfix alternatives you can consider:

  • Userpilot is a product growth platform that drives user activation, feature adoption, and expansion revenue. It also helps product teams collect user feedback, streamline onboarding, and gather actionable insights from analytics. With Userpilot, you’ll be able to track both product usage and user behavior to get a holistic view of how customers use your product — which will guide future development, improve the user experience, and inform your growth efforts.
  • Appcues is a robust product adoption and user onboarding platform for web and mobile apps. It enables product teams to create, implement, and test personalized in-app onboarding experiences. The platform also helps you announce new product features and collect customer feedback. What makes this platform even better is the fact that it offers no-code features that make it suitable for non-technical teams.
  • HelpHero is a tool that enables businesses to build interactive, easy-to-follow product tours that help engage users from day one and speed up feature adoption quicker than ever. In addition, with HelpHero, you can easily create and customize walkthroughs without coding. You can use it to ensure users know what’s new and how to use it. The result – is less frustration and confusion and higher user adoption and retention.
  • Help Scout is a help desk software solution designed to help businesses provide seamless customer support. The platform offers a broad spectrum of features, including shared inbox, live chat, and knowledge base, to manage and organize customer support interactions. Help Scout lets you assign customer conversations to specific team members and resolve urgent requests on priority. You can even set up workflows to automate routine tasks and speed up response times. Additionally, the live chat feature lets you communicate with customers in real time and provide immediate assistance. You also have the option to collect user feedback through microsurveys and NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys.

Let’s see the features and functionalities of these tools for different use cases!

Whatfix vs Userpilot

There are many ways how Userpilot is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from Whatfix. Let’s explore the features of Userpilot, how it’s better than Whatfix, and how it may fall short too.

Userpilot for user onboarding

User onboarding is a crucial part of the customer journey as it speeds up the adoption process and increases retention rates. Onboarding is one of Userpilot’s core use cases along with product growth analytics and user feedback, so it has plenty of features that you can utilize.

Here are some Userpilot features you can use when onboarding new users:

  • No-code builder: Creating flows with Userpilot is as simple as installing the Chrome extension, selecting the UI patterns you’d like to use, and then editing the content/settings to suit your use case. You can also use templates to create modals, slideouts, tooltips, and driven actions.
    Create flow

    No-code flow builder in Userpilot.

  • Native tooltips: Userpilot lets you create native tooltips that show up when users hover over an element or click on an information badge. Since these native tooltips attach to the element itself, they aren’t page-dependent and will show up on any screen where that element is visible.
    Native tooltips

    Build native tooltips with Userpilot.

  • Advanced flow settings: With advanced condition settings, you can decide when, where, and who you’ll be triggering your onboarding flows. This helps you create contextual and personalized onboarding experiences that drive engagement and adoption.flow trigger settings
  • Onboarding engagement analytics: You can easily assess the impact of your onboarding flows, guidance, etc. by analyzing the engagement rate of tooltips, interactive walkthroughs, checklists, etc. In addition, you can also build reports (funnels, paths, etc.) or dashboards to track your core onboarding metrics i.e. activation, stickiness, drop-offs, etc. Flow analytics in Userpilot

Userpilot for product analytics

Product analytics lets you collect and analyze data about how users interact with your product so you can extract actionable insights. Userpilot lets you look at granular product analytics, such as which features have the highest adoption rates, and big-picture insights like trend reports. Here are Userpilot’s top product analytics features:

  • Feature tagging: Userpilot’s click-to-track feature tagger lets you view how many times a feature has been used and by how many users to measure its adoption. Users on the Starter plan can add up to 10 feature tags while those on the Growth or Enterprise tier can create unlimited tags.
    userpilot-element-tagging-feature-release

    No-code feature tags in Userpilot.

  • Event-tracking: Alongside no-code feature tags for feature engagement tracking, you can also track other events unique to your product using event-tracking. You can also create a group of events to track a specific process i.e. onboarding, subscription, etc.
    tracked-events-Userpilot

    Create tracked events to monitor server-side data.

  • Trends and funnels: Userpilot’s trends and funnels report lets you extract actionable insights from big data. You’ll be able to see which stage of an onboarding/conversion funnel most users drop out on and create trend reports with detailed breakdowns by user or period.
    Example of a trend report in Userpilot

    Example of a trend report in Userpilot.

  • Retention tables: This lets you gauge product performance – how effective it is at retaining users using cohort tables and retention curves.retention dashboards
  • Paths: You can generate and access path reports directly within the reporting builder in Userpilot, alongside funnels, trends, and retention reports. With Paths, you can have an overview of how users navigate your product features – offering invaluable insights into their interactions with your products.path analysis
  • User & Company profiles: Here you can view data related to a certain user/company to gain insights into their behavior and improve the overall user tracking experience. This helps you understand how they engage with your product or platform, better identification of areas of improvement, and tailor their offerings more effectively.
    user profile

    User profile with top event data that provides insights into what feature they regularly engage with.

  • Analytics dashboards (Product Usage, New Users Activation, Core Feature Engagement, User Retention, etc.): These dashboards enable you to keep track of your key product performance and user behavior metrics at a glance, without any technical setup required.product-analytics-dashboards
  • Analytics integrations: Userpilot integrates with some of the most popular analytics tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Analytics, and more. This makes it possible to sync product analytics both ways between the tools in your tech stack (two-way integration is only available for Hubspot at the time of writing, more to come).Userpilot native integration

Userpilot for self-service support

Here’s how you can use Userpilot to create a self-service customer experience:

  • No-code builder: Userpilot’s no-code resource center lets you add modules without writing a single line of code. Module options include links, videos, flows, custom JavaScript functions, and checklists. You can also group modules into sections to help users navigate the resource center.
     add modules in Userpilot RC

    Add different types of content to your resource center.

  • Module segmentation: Userpilot’s segmentation settings let you hide or show specific modules within your resource center based on audience settings. This makes it possible to create modules for different user segments and hide resources that aren’t relevant to other users.
    module-target-settings

    Help module visibility condition settings.

  • Resource center analytics dashboard: The dedicated analytics dashboard helps you see how many unique visitors your resource center gets, how many modules have been clicked, the overall click rate across your user base, and popular search terms. This will make it easier to gauge resource center performance and identify if anything is missing from your resource center.
    Userpilot-resource-center-content-analytics

    Resource center content analytics in Userpilot.

Pricing of Userpilot

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 pricing new april 2024
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, NPS feedback, and customization.
  • Growth: The Growth plan starts at $749/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).

Whatfix vs Appcues

There are many ways how Appcues is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from Whatfix. Let’s explore the features of Appcues, how it’s better than Whatfix, and how it may fall short too.

Appcues for user onboarding

Onboarding new users seamlessly is one of the primary use cases of Appcues. The platform offers a wide array of features to help you improve user activation, conversion, and retention.

Let’s take a closer look at how Appcues facilitates new user onboarding:

  • Drag-and-drop builder: Appcues’s no-code builder lets you create personalized onboarding tours and checklists to assist and educate new users. You can customize UI patterns like hotspots, modals, slideouts, and tooltips to guide users.
  • In-app user guides and product tours: You can use various UI patterns, such as hotspots and tooltips, to introduce new users to product features in a pre-defined sequence. Similarly, you can use checklists to guide users as they explore your app.

  • Checklists: You can also create checklists with Appcues (NOT available on the Essentials plan) and prompt users to take action. These are ok but have limited functionality (you can’t trigger JS functions or add gamification elements) compared to alternatives, such as Userpilot.
  • Segmentation: You can use one of the pre-defined audience segments or create customer segments based on plan tier, lifecycle stage, and other factors. It’s possible to target individual segments with personalized messaging and journeys.

  • Measure and improve: You can track in-app flow performance and measure events (limited to 5 on the Essentials plan) to identify areas of improvement.

  • Test and optimize: The newly introduced A/B testing feature lets you test different onboarding flows. You can compare the performance of different in-app sequences, identify the best-performing ones, and refine onboarding flows.

Appcues for product analytics

Besides creating onboarding journeys, Appcues also helps you monitor product adoption and user behavior. The best part here is that you don’t need any coding experience to set up product analytics on Appcues.

Note that since Appcues doesn’t focus on analytics, the features it offers are limited. If you need access to cohorts, retention analysis, funnels, paths or trends, you will need a different tool.

Appcues offers the following features for tracking product usage analytics:

  • Click-to-track: Available in Appcues Builder – the Chrome Extension, this feature lets you define and track new events by using feature tags, such as when a user fills a form field or hovers over a menu. It gives you insight into how users are engaging with your product’s UI.

  • Events Explorer: Available in Appcues Studio – the main dashboard, Events Explorer lets you validate and visualize various events, making it easier to measure product adoption and user engagement over a given period.

  • Appcues also offers integrations with analytic tools like Amplitude if you need more data tracking.
  • You can also track flow engagement analytics using Appcues, but this will only tell you how well your in-app guides are performing and how users engage with them.

Keep in mind that Appcues’s element detection algorithm isn’t the most powerful. Platforms like Userpilot do a better job at tracking user engagement for specific in-app elements, on top of offering more advanced analytics features like funnels, trends and cohort analysis.

Appcues for self-service support

Appcues is primarily designed as a tool to facilitate user onboarding through personalized product tours and walkthroughs. There are a few features you can use to provide self-service support, too.

These include:

  • Launchpads: With Launchpads, users can access various Appcues flows from a dropdown notifications menu. You can use them to create a robust resource center within your product. That, in turn, lets users troubleshoot common problems on their own.
  • Checklists: Checklists let you create contextual in-app walkthroughs that familiarize users with different product features. Combining them with other UI patterns like modals, hotspots, and tooltips can help enhance self-service support.
  • Pins: Pins appear as always-available tooltips and buttons that let you provide constant hand-holding to new users.

It’s worth noting that Appcues, as a standalone tool, can’t help you provide complete self-service support. You’ll need other elements, such as AI-powered chatbots and FAQs, to empower users.

Pricing of Appcues

Pricing for Appcues starts at $249 per month, with the platform offering three distinct tiers – Essentials, Growth, and Enterprise.

The total cost can vary depending on the number of monthly active users (MAU). For instance, the Essential plan starts at $249 per month for 2500 MAU but jumps to $299 for 5000 MAU.

Here’s a detailed glimpse of the different pricing tiers:

  • Essentials: It’s the basic tier that starts at $249 per month. It includes 3 user licenses and lets you add up to 5 audience segments. Some UI patterns, such as checklists, launchpads, and custom CSS support, aren’t available. Customer support is only available through email.
  • Growth: This tier starts at $879 per month (for 2500 monthly active users) and includes 10 user licenses. You can target unlimited audience segments and use the full spectrum of UI patterns. Additionally, you can access the Premium Integrations package, which includes integrations with Slack, Salesforce, Marketo, and Zendesk.
  • Enterprise: This is the most feature-packed tier and includes robust security controls like role-based access and activity logs. It’s also the only tier that comes with multi-account and localization support. Besides email and phone support, you also get a dedicated Customer Success Manager and Technical Implementation Manager. Pricing is available on request.

All three plans come with a 14-day free trial, where you can test unlimited flows and track up to 5 events. You can extend the trial by another 14 days by installing the Appcues SDK in your app. Additionally, you don’t need a credit card to sign up for the free trial.

Keep in mind that the above pricing plans are applicable to web apps. Pricing for Appcues Mobile is available on request.

It’s also worth noting that Appcues is pricier than some of the other product adoption tools available in the market, including Userpilot. For instance, Userpilot’s basic tier (Starter) lets you add up to 10 audience segments and includes the complete set of UI patterns.

Whatfix vs HelpHero

There are many ways in which HelpHero is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from Whatfix. Let’s explore the features of HelpHero, how it’s better than Whatfix, and how it may fall short too.

HelpHero for user onboarding

With HelpHero, you can create interactive, easy-to-follow product tours that help users get started and adopt new features quicker than ever.

Here’s a brief overview of HelpHero’s use case for user onboarding:

  • User Onboarding Checklists: HelpHero’s checklists are a powerful tool that can help boost user onboarding. It lets you display a list of tasks for users to accomplish, making it even easier and quicker to onboard and engage new users to your app.

  • Modals: HelpHero’s modals play a crucial role in product tours by providing interactive, contextual guidance. They enable users to ‘learn as they go’, directly within the product environment.

There are still other great features like multiple user onboarding UI patterns – on Userpilot, you can create tooltips, modals, slideouts, driven actions, banners, and hotspots. Each of them can be used individually or combined into a personalized onboarding experience.

Sign up for the Userpilot demo today.

HelpHero for product analytics

HelpHero’s analytics helps you understand how viewers are interacting with your tours, so you can identify opportunities for improving user experience.

  • Automatic Tracking: HelpHero’s built-in analytics automatically track key metrics such as the number of tours started, tours completed, and the progress users make through the tours.
  • Integration with External Analytics Tools: For those who prefer external analytics providers like Google Analytics or Mixpanel, HelpHero supports integration through its JavaScript API.

There are other important features like creating feature usage automatically. With Userpilot product analytics, you can make better decisions with actionable product analytics — understand user behavior across the product journey with powerful custom reports, and answer every product question. Try product analytics on Userpilot.

HelpHero for self-service support

Implementing a self-service approach will help you scale up without spending a fortune to maintain sufficient support quality.

Guided tours serve as a primer that introduces users to how a product works for the first time on HelpHero.

Outside of that, there are no self-help and knowledge repository integrations. Below is the little HelpHero offers in terms of self-service support:

  • Interactive Walkthroughs: HelpHero allows the creation of step-by-step guides within the app, leading users through various functions and features. These walkthroughs can be customized and triggered based on user actions.
  • Tooltips: It offers tooltip support, which provides contextual information when a user hovers over or clicks on specific elements in the app. This is useful for explaining buttons, features, or UI elements that take time to be intuitive.
  • Hotspots: HelpHero enables the integration of hotspots within the app’s interface. These attention-grabbing indicators prompt users to explore or discover new features often used to highlight updates or underused aspects of the application.

However, HelpHero doesn’t provide an in-app resource center, necessary for self-service support. If you are looking for a better option to optimize your support, you should look into alternatives, such as Userpilot.

Pricing of HelpHero

HelpHero’s pricing plan is based on the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Here’s an overview of the different pricing plans, including the free trial:

  • HelpHero free trial: free 14-day trial, no credit card required.
  • Up to 1000 MAU — $55
  • Up to 2500 MAU — $115
  • Up to 5000 MAU — $179
  • Up to 10000 MAU — $249
  • Up to 20000 MAU — $299
  • If you have more than 20,000 Monthly Active Users, you have to contact them.

Whatfix vs HelpScout

There are many ways in which HelpScout is different (and in a lot of ways better!) from Whatfix. Let’s explore the features of HelpScout, how it’s better than Whatfix, and how it may fall short too.

HelpScout for user onboarding

A frictionless onboarding experience plays a crucial role in converting free trial users to paid ones. It can also help drive feature adoption and user retention.

Unlike Userpilot, Help Scout doesn’t offer tools to design targeted product tours or walkthroughs to handhold new users. Nevertheless, it comes with a few features that can support your onboarding efforts. These include:

  • The Beacon tool lets you provide contextual support to new users. You can create a Beacon to recommend relevant knowledge base articles or encourage them to reach out to you via the live chat option. Additionally, you can customize the Beacon’s appearance to match your product’s branding.
    Help-Scout-beacon

    Beacon tool.

  • If you’ve created a Beacon, you can use the Messages feature that lets you gently nudge users to check out product tours or setup guides. You can even send them important announcements regarding new features or upcoming outages. Timely updates can be crucial to minimizing friction in the user journey.
    Help-Scout-messages

    Messages in Beacon.

  • The Docs features lets you build a robust knowledge base. You can create articles addressing common user queries or provide step-by-step instructions for different tools. You can even organize articles into different categories, making it easier for users to find relevant content.
    Help-Scout-knowledge-base

    Creating knowledge base.

HelpScout for product analytics

Help Scout’s analytics and reporting features are restricted to customer support performance insights. The platform doesn’t offer any tools to track custom events or set up conversion funnels. That makes it difficult to assess metrics related to product adoption and growth. A dedicated digital adoption platform like Userpilot would be a better fit for product analytics.

HelpScout for self-service support

Whether you want to improve product activation or minimize churn rates, delivering a seamless user experience is non-negotiable. Self-service support plays a crucial role in this regard. It gives users the confidence to navigate your product and get the hang of different features.

Also, it minimizes the volume of support tickets and lets your customer service team focus on more pressing issues.

Here’s how you can implement self-service support with Help Scout:

  • The Docs feature lets you build an extensive collection of knowledge-base articles. It can serve as a robust in-app resource center. You can group these articles into different categories, making it easier for users to find the information they need.
  • However, keep in mind that you’ll have to create a separate file for each article and upload it to Help Scout. The platform doesn’t offer a built-in WYSIWYG editor to write, edit, and format text. If you’re looking for such a feature, Userpilot would be a better fit.
  • Next, you can use the Beacon feature to recommend help center content to users. You can even send personalized recommendations based on where they are within your product or what actions they’ve taken on a page.
  • With the Beacon tool, you can also recommend other in-app experiences, such as product tours and onboarding checklists, to users. For instance, you can nudge first-time visitors to check out a welcome tour of your product.
  • Additionally, you can give users the option to contact customer support via live chat or email through a Beacon. It helps users seek assistance and troubleshoot problems in real time, which, in turn, minimizes friction.

Pricing of HelpScout

Help Scout offers three different pricing plans, with the total cost based on the number of users.

The plans include:

  • Standard: It starts at $20 per user per month (billed annually) or $25 per user per month (billed monthly). It includes 2 shared inboxes and 1 Docs knowledge base. Also, you’ll have to pay extra for in-app messaging if the total number of viewers exceeds 2000.
  • Plus: It starts at $40 per user per month (billed annually) or $50 per user per month (billed monthly). It includes everything in the Standard plan, along with advanced analytics, custom reporting, AI features, and integration with popular apps like Salesforce and HubSpot.
  • Pro: It starts at $65 per user per month and only offers an annual subscription. It includes everything in the Plus plan, along with concierge onboarding services, a dedicated account manager, and enterprise-level security and compliance.
Help-Scout-pricing

Pricing for Help Scout.

While the Standard plan is suitable for small teams with limited budgets, the Pro plan is a good fit for large businesses. However, keep in mind that pricing is based on the number of users, and the costs can quickly escalate as your team grows.

Help Scout offers a 15-day free trial that allows you to test various features and tools and determine whether it’s the right fit for your needs.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different competitors and alternatives to Whatfix. We’ve discussed a few above – but which one is the best?

The answer is “it depends” – but we strongly believe that if you’re a mid-market SaaS company looking for a great user onboarding and product analytics tool, Userpilot is the best option for you.

Hopefully, you found this post helpful. And if you need any help with how Userpilot is different, schedule a demo to get started!

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