Written by
Benjamin Daniels
9 mins read
31 product onboarding tools to help you create the ultimate SaaS experience
A whopping 97% of companies find onboarding crucial for growth. So why are nearly 40% still unhappy with their current approach? Well, one reason is the lack of investment in the right product onboarding tool! So, what should you do? To help you get started we’ve gathered 31 top onboarding tools and examples to improve your SaaS experience!
Don’t miss out on the #1 driver for retention and growth: onboarding. Here is what you’ll learn:
- What is user onboarding?
- Why you should use user onboarding tools
- How to evaluate a great product onboarding tool
- Top product onboarding tools for the best SaaS experiences
- #1 DIY product onboarding tools with JavaScript and JsQuery
- #2 Single sign-on (SSO) tools
- #3 Video onboarding tools for the SaaS experience
- #4 Personalized demonstration & screen recording tools
- #5 Email communication works better with these tools
- #6 Trigger-based campaign tools
- #7 Transactional email tools
- #8 A/B testing is easy with these tools
- #9 NPS tools
- #10 Knowledge base tools
- Choosing the right product onboarding tool
- FAQs
What is user onboarding?
In our last article, we noted that onboarding begins with customer awareness. Ideally, it then ends in product adoption! The greatest SaaS examples accelerate time-to-value throughout the onboarding experience. Above all, a product-led SaaS experience drives users towards value to increase engagement and diminish churn!
Why you should use user onboarding tools
A product onboarding tool can be detrimental to a great SaaS experience. In other words, empowering product or growth teams with specialist tools helps to boost product adoption and retention!
After all, a great UX is what everybody wants. Moreover, surveys show that it’s your customers that expect a great onboarding experience!
- 86% of people are more likely to stay loyal to a business that invests in post-purchase onboarding content.
- 80% of users have uninstalled an app because they didn’t know how to use it.
- Over 90% of customers feel that companies could do better at onboarding!
How to evaluate a great product onboarding tool
A product onboarding tool should boost product adoption and user retention
Which product onboarding tool you pick depends on what you aim to achieve – but they should all boost your product adoption and user retention. For starters, the right tool can craft a frictionless onboarding flow that results in a streamlined SaaS experience.
In short, that means fewer unnecessary steps that create churn. Not to mention an improved feature discovery process that raises the value of your product, and in turn, retention. Now that’s what we call product-led growth!
Better adoption means less support (and support costs)
Driving in-app product adoption reduces the need to provide customer support. Certainly, the SaaS experience in itself will clarify your key features and demonstrate their value. For example, through welcome emails, product tours, and contextual support content. That sure beats 1-2-1 meetings that demand your time and money!
Top product onboarding tools for the best in-app SaaS experience
StriveCloud is app gamification excellence (Paid)
Let’s face it, most SaaS examples are boring and easy to forget. But it doesn’t have to be that way! StriveCloud’s gamification platform helps you enrich your SaaS experience with features such as point rewards, leaderboards, challenges, and in-app communities.
A gamified user journey is built on motivational psychology. Here, the SaaS experience triggers action and rewards engagement. It’s the ideal product onboarding tool to keep users motivated. Think of challenges, gamified checklists, and out-of-the-box reward systems including points, achievements, badges, prizes, and more! In fact, StriveCloud customers see an average 58% increase in Daily Active Users!
Features
- Modular user interface builder – Page builder, RSS feeds & gamification blocks
- User segmentation – personalized in-app experiences based on user behavior
- Reward store – with payment, shop integrations & currency exchange
- Achievements system – with milestones, rewards, points, progress-tracking, and more
- Leveling system – based on user engagement & desired actions
- Messaging system – for notifications and mailings
- Analytics – custom dashboard on product usage & user behavior
Pricing
Our pricing is completely based on your results! So, how does it work? We know every SaaS is different, so we base our value on your growth metrics. For example monthly active users, or the number of activations.
Want to learn more? Check out our pricing page, or talk to an expert!
Implementation
If you’re a bit overwhelmed by learning how to build your own gamified SaaS experience, don’t be! Our team of experts is here to help you get from strategy to implementation. After a series of workshops, we create a plan based on your goals, story, and target audience. Then, we simply set up and connect our software so you can start testing! Every feature is tested & rolled out gradually to guarantee the best results!
Chameleon is a one-stop shop for onboarding improvements (Paid)
Chameleon is a product onboarding tool designed to help customer improve their SaaS experience. They tackle the whole onboarding process in a contextual and relevant way. For instance by transforming your product tours, tooltips, launchers, and micro-surveys. Above all, there’s no coding required!
#1 DIY product onboarding tools with JavaScript and JsQuery
Intro.js is the ultimate open-source JS library (Paid for commercial users)
Intro.js allows you to create a wide range of onboarding elements without having to code them yourself. Their open-source library has many items similar to top SaaS examples, such as product tours, progress bars, and more! Additionally, their website allows you to customize code so you can make it your own. Above all, Intro.Js is easy-to-use and only packs 10kB without extra dependencies!
Hopscotch is both open and flexible (Free)
Every app developer can use Hopscotch. It is a super customizable framework that lets you build simple welcome tours for new users in either JSON or HTML5. Freely accessible and with instant results, Hopscotch is easy to use and flexible in implementation.
Shepherd is a simple and reliable JS library (Free)
Looking for a simple interface to create guided user journeys? Shepherd is the app for you. One of Shepherd’s best selling points is that it is constantly maintained by developers, allowing you to make the most of their product’s consistency, modularity, and high performance!
#2 Single sign-on (SSO) tools
Auth0 enables a frictionless SSO (Freemium)
Auth0 makes logging in as smooth and secure as possible. In short, Auth0 allows customers to activate users faster and drives growth with social logins. Because of its flexibility and freemium model, Auth0 is the right fit to improve any SaaS experience.
Zluri is a package manager designed to boost the onboarding SaaS experience (Paid)
Zluri – “Save one third of your SaaS spend”.
Few apps are better placed to support SaaS sign-on than Zluri. The app gives IT teams more control over their stack. Additionally, it helps users manage their entire business from just one handy dashboard.
#3 Video onboarding tools for the SaaS experience
Bonjoro is a unique video messaging platform (Freemium)
Video content is more than just webinars and tutorials. With Bonjoro, you can send personalized video messages that aim to convert, retain, and grow your customer base. Ultimately, this helps improve the SaaS experience during onboarding by putting a human face on your product and building trust!
Demio are interactive webinar experts (Paid)
Many SaaS examples use webinars to drive onboarding. That’s where Demio comes in. It is a simple, no-download webinar app that comes with all the marketing tools you require to generate better results every time.
Wistia creates video tutorials designed to maximize user engagement (Freemium)
Today 65% of people say video is their preferred way of getting to know a new product or service. So, that makes video tutorials an indispensable tool! Wistia makes creating video tutorials easier. With customizable brand identity, CTAs, and a great analytics system Wistia allows you to identify dips in user engagement and optimize your videos accordingly.
#4 Personalized demo & screen recording tools
Hotjar uses recordings to power your analytics (Freemium)
What if you could see what your users see? Well, that’s what Hotjar offers. In short, Hotjar records user sessions to analyze user behavior. By tracking how users interact with your product, Hotjar empowers you to tweak and optimize every step of your onboarding.
Loom is a quick and easy screen recorder (Freemium)
Loom’s simplicity and functionality quickly made it the favorite of over 200,000 businesses. When using Loom, you can switch between recording the screen only or adding your webcam. That’s one way to create a more dynamic and human onboarding SaaS experience.
Zumvie lets you set up fully-clickable demos (Freemium)
Zumvie is a true clickable demo builder. Basically, you connect Zumvie to your product and you can start building clickable demos. You get to determine the starting point and can even restrict certain areas within your product. And the best part? Users don’t even need to sign up to try out your demo! Their website includes a few SaaS examples such as Webflow, Dropified, and more.
#5 Email communication works better with these tools
Close lets you deliver a scalable human experience (Paid)
Automated emails are efficient – but they don’t create the most effective onboarding. Pitching itself as the perfect middle ground, Close combines the speed of automation and the power of the human touch to improve the SaaS experience. Furthermore, Close boasts that its approach can increase conversion rates by 67%!
Mailchimp is still king at email communication (Freemium)
There’s a reason Mailchimp was rated #1 of email SaaS examples in 2022. Well, there are many reasons – from its range of awesome templates, handy automation, and powerful analytics. Not to mention Mailchimp’s multi-step journey tools and smart targeting of onboarded users to register for newsletters when their interest is highest!
Vero builds rich segments to target multi-channels (Paid)
Done effectively, personalization and segmentation are incredibly powerful. Vero is proof of that! Arguably, they boast some of the most accurate and dynamic user segmentation of all email SaaS examples. With Vero, you can leverage in-depth insights gleaned from user activity to achieve better results with their all-in-one email builder.
#6 Trigger-based campaign tools
Customer.io responds to users in real-time (Paid)
Each user is on their own personal journey – and Customer.io agrees! To illustrate, they sent a staggering 8.2 billion messages last year. With its intuitive UI, Customer.io lets you act with confidence as you tailor your email campaigns to different segments based on real-time events.
Drip helps to build, grow & scale email marketing (Paid)
Drip is used by 30,000+ marketers to create dynamic trigger-based emails. Their product not only arms you with comprehensive analytics and insights, but it also gives insight into every trial customer. By triggering the right message at the right time you maximize conversion and retention!
Userlist accelerates the AHA moment (Paid)
When it comes to trigger-based campaigns, Userlist is the definitive product onboarding tool. Designed for SaaS, their easy-to-use platform empowers marketers with accurate lead management tools and behavior tracking. The outcome? Userlist helps you create email campaigns with an impressive level of effective personalization.
#7 Transactional email tools
In other words, transactional emails are emails sent after a specific action by a person. This differs from trigger-based campaigns as they are more defined in scope. Essentially, transactional emails come in a few main types:
- Welcome emails. Your first impression!
- Confirmations. To notify users a key action is completed, such as a purchase, an upgrade, or simply an upload/export of user data.
- Notifications. New features? Hosting a webinar or event, maybe?
- Reminders. Whether it be a trial deadline or an upselling opportunity, these emails remind users that the clock is ticking.
Mailjet is a sleek and professional email creator (Freemium)
Sophisticated, yet intuitive. Mailjet has a great UI that allows you to create and send beautiful emails without any code! Above all, their product is great for A/B testing, email personalization, and team collaboration.
SendGrid is said to be the best in the biz (Freemium)
According to Zapier, SendGrid is the best transactional email service in 2022. Indeed, some of the world’s top SaaS examples trust them, from Spotify to AirBnB. Their platform offers expert insight reports, templates, and testing comparisons for the best SaaS experience.
SendinBlue has a reliable and intuitive product (Freemium)
You can count on SendinBlue for transactional emails. Besides conversion and personalization features, they have one of the most reliable and speedy SMTP infrastructures in the industry! In other words, they work hard to make sure your email reaches its intended recipient! Not to mention, SendinBlue offers its expertise at the best value for money compared to the other SaaS examples mentioned. That always helps!
#8 A/B testing is easy with these tools
HubSpot: A/B testing for email marketing (Freemium)
The secret behind leading email SaaS examples is about discovering exactly what works best for your target audience. To perfect your emails in granular detail, Hubspot’s email marketing software runs A/B tests to reveal which CTA or subject line clicks best.
Furthermore, its analytics can divulge which user segments and hyperlinks have the highest user engagement – allowing you to double down on success!
Google Optimize will supercharge your startup (Free)
Free and intuitive, Google Optimize is great for beginners. As it is a Google product, there is also in-depth integration with Google Analytics which allows you to do even more advanced tracking and reporting. Create simple multivariate tests and learn!
Optimizely excels at SaaS experience optimization (Paid)
Onboarding needs to be to the point because attention spans are short – yet the list of things you need to do is long! So what can you do?
With Optimizely, you can A/B test your SaaS experience to make it as lean and effective as possible. Have no doubt, Optimizely offers enterprise-grade software with a full-stack solution to unlock your SaaS potential.
#9 NPS tools
A ‘Net Promoter Score’ can confidently reveal if your SaaS experience is resonating with users. To quickly describe an NPS, it is a feedback method where users rate how likely they are to refer people to your SaaS from 1 to 10. Depending on their rating, users can be placed in 3 segments:
- Promoters – 9 to 10. Future loyal advocates!
- Passives – 7 to 8. Users are satisfied, but you’re missing the “it factor”.
- Detractors – 0 to 6. These are likely churners who need customer support.
InMoment takes NPS to the next level (Freemium)
Formerly Wootric, InMoment specializes in monitoring customer satisfaction and happiness. They claim to be the “The Tool for Winning Lifelong Customers” and their customizable NPS surveys and analytics tool back that up. Indeed, you can track user happiness in real-time and even create automatic measures of user feelings!
UserGuiding builds insightful NPS surveys (Paid)
Improving your SaaS experience with UserGuiding requires no technical knowledge, making product adoption easy and speedy. Moreover, their NPS surveys are fully customizable and adaptable to user segments. Not to mention, NPS features are just one part of their all-in product onboarding tool.
#10 Knowledge base tools
Freshdesk is your omnichannel support solution (Freemium)
To build up your knowledge base, Freshdesk allows you to manage in-app chat support, as well as all other channels like email and social media. Imagine that you can track every customer conversation, prioritize certain leads, tag topics, and automatically send users to the right place, all from 1 product onboarding tool.
Helpshelf combines all support into one widget (Paid)
With Helpshelf, there’s no need to check all support channels individually. Instead, their handy and well-designed widget is at hand. What’s more, Helpshelf is affordably priced for enterprising startups at $25 per month.
Jivochat elevates the SaaS experience through chat (Freemium)
JivoChat takes live chat and chatbots to the next level. Its platform not only allows for live chat on your website, but also connects to channels like Instagram, Whatsapp, and many more. So basically, users can reach you from their preferred platform. On the other hand, you’ll get all messages in 1 centralized app!
Zendesk is your all-in-one support suite (Paid)
Zendesk is a full-fledged customer support stack. Besides 360° messaging and communication, you can also build knowledge bases and communities. Still not convinced? With customers expecting responses in 10 minutes, you could benefit from the SaaS experience that Zendesk offers: integrated support channels, a ticketing system, as well as personalization tools that make users feel attended to.
Choosing the right product onboarding tool
No product onboarding tool offers a one-size-fits-all approach. In practice, you need to experiment with different tools in order to find the most efficient solution for each problem. Indeed, when onboarding is so crucial to creating retention, this is important!
So when you pick a tool, it must first complement what you already have. That is to say:
- A clean and succinct onboarding flow that demonstrates value effectively
- Tracking the right KPIs
- Your own bespoke growth strategy
- And much more!
In short, if you want to create the best SaaS experience, ask yourself if your chosen tool enhances the choices your team has already made. Only that way can you put your customers on the road to product adoption and generate sustainable growth!