An effective product tour promotes product adoption. Here are the 10 best product tour software options for building engaging tours.

The product tour software industry has blown up during the last decade, and for a good reason. Over 85% of individuals say they prefer to buy from a product or service that invests in educational onboarding content for new users, which is why implementing product tour software is so important.

These tools empower teams to build new user onboarding experiences to increase engagement and improve a product's usability. Interactive product tours are a fantastic way to welcome and onboard new users, announce new features, and guide users to their aha moments faster. When done right, product tours fit effortlessly in the user experience of a product to increase product adoption, user activation, and user retention. 

Let's cover a few more reasons why it's crucial to invest in the right product tour software: 

Why do you need product tour software? 

Today, first-time users expect a product to guide them through the initial setup and tell them how the different features will fulfill their needs. With the right software, product tours can help teams:

  • Save time: Some software options help create product tours faster with code-free builders and templates designed for non-technical users

  • Retain users: Investing in product tour software can increase retention rates because users are more likely to stay with products once they’re fully onboarded. 

  • Save team effort: Your dev team can focus on improving the product instead of building product tours from scratch. Misused team effort can result in wasted money, but investing in onboarding won't. 

The 10 best product tour software options to consider 

With so many options out there, here are our top 10 recommended product tour software solutions you can trust. The tools on this list allow you to build compelling onboarding experiences quickly and with zero code required.

1. Lou

Lou is a digital adoption platform (DAP) that allows you to engage and notify users proactively and drive product adoption, all without writing a single line of code. With features like onboarding checklists, NPS and surveys, and announcements, this platform guides users to complete necessary actions within your product step-by-step. And no code required means you don't have to burden your already-busy development team; simply build beautiful experiences ready to ship in minutes. 

Effective user onboarding is one of Lou's specialties. You can scale self-serve user onboarding with interactive product tours, complete with personalized designs for native experiences within your UI. Custom themes make creating on-brand experiences fast, giving you complete control over color, font, size, location, corner radius, and more. Add images, videos, and gifs for a more engaging learning experience. 

Pros

  • Simple to install and use

  • Integrates with Segment, Amplitude, Mixpanel, and other analytics providers

  • Powerful built-in analytics with support for user targeting

  • User tracking with no code required

  • User-friendly experience 

  • Wide range of product experience options

  • Comes with a free trial and a free version 

  • All-in-one, effective solution

  • Fastest installation time

  • Users love us—check out our G2 reviews here. 

Cons

  • Compatible on mobile web, but not on native mobile apps

  • Does not have a template for onboarding surveys, but does have NPS surveys and customizable micro surveys 

Price

  • Starting at $0 per month

2. Appcues

Appcues offers a variety of smart onboarding tools and UI patterns to create a personalized user experience, like modals, tooltips, and checklists. It has a robust integration suite across popular software, including Hubspot, Slack, Zendesk, and Salesforce. There are many options to segment and target users, like persona, plan, account, and lifecycle stage. 

Pros

  • Simple to install and use

  • Integrates with a multitude of software products, including Salesforce, Slack, and HubSpot Powerful built-in analytics with support for user targeting

  • User tracking with no code required

  • Wide range of product experience options

  • Will support mobile apps by late 2022

Cons

  • Expensive 

  • Can be bundlesome to manage

Price

  • Starting at $249

3. Pendo

Pendo is a mobile app and web-friendly, allowing companies to set up product tours across platforms. It offers product experience options like lightboxes and banners and also boasts extensive analytics features to support user segmentation and designing product tours for diverse user personas. 

This platform also helps prioritize and manage customer feedback, which by itself is pretty handy. However, the UI is heavily analytics-focused and not optimized explicitly for tour creation and miscellaneous onboarding objectives. 

Pros

  • Web and mobile app-friendly

  • Wide range of product experience options

  • Integrates with Segment, Amplitude, Mixpanel, and other analytics providers

  • Numerous activation methods

  • Powerful built-in analytics with support for user targeting

  • Offers a free trial subscription with limited features

Cons

  • More focus on product analytics over product experiences

  • Overly complex UI results in unnecessarily clunky UX

  • Needs a developer to fine-tune onboarding design and targeting

  • Ambiguous pricing for paid plans

Pricing

  • Custom quote

4. Chameleon 

Chameleon is an appropriate name for a product that is great for customization. Its biggest strength is its personalization options and backs it up with a solid suite of product tour tools, including hotspots, labels, and micro surveys. While the platform offers its own analytics, it also integrates with trusted solutions like Amplitude. 

Pros

  • Integrations with Segment, Slack, Amplitude, and more

  • Powerful built-in analytics

Cons

  • Not very intuitive UI

  • Flow segmentation and targeting lack key features

  • Limited resources for support and consultation

Pricing

  • Plans starting at $279 a month

5. Intercom

Intercom is a customer communications platform that helps companies take an omnichannel approach to user experience. Its core offering includes a live chat platform, but it also has a product tour add-on users can implement to introduce users to a product and build guided experiences. Its product tour features are recommended for products already using Intercom's tools. 

Pros

  • Good for linear tours

  • Aesthetically pleasing video messaging features

  • Suitable for those already using Intercom tools

Cons

  • The product tour capabilities are only included as an add-on to a "standard" Intercom account

  • Customization is limited and requires dev resources 

Pricing

  • Starter plan starts at $74 but you’ll have to pay $199 per month for the product tour add-on

  • Between $59-$999 for the standard Intercom subscription

6. Userguiding

UserGuiding is a platform that allows companies to create product tours and walkthroughs with no coding knowledge. You can customize designs to ensure consistent brand identity and to create a native experience within your interface. Some notable features include segmentation, allowing you to personalize the experience of a product's users and group them according to their needs and demographics. They also offer hotspots to give users quick tips about product features. 

Pros

  • User tracking with no code required

  • Create native experiences within a current UI

  • Lots of educational content for easy installation and setup  

Cons

  • Analytics is not as robust as other options

  • Navigating the UI can be overly complex and cumbersome

  • No feature-based pricing 

  • Need dev resources to implement advanced features 

Pricing

  • Monthly billing starts at $99 a month

  • $69 a month if billed annually 

7. Userflow

Userflow offers standard features such as tooltips with no-code tracking, user progress checklists, and integration with various platforms like Mixpanel and Amplitude. It complements these features with more aesthetic options, allowing companies to customize avatars, fonts, and colors. These features are backed with powerful built-in analytics for optimizing product tours based on user behavior. 

Some customer reviews highlight Userflow's steep learning curve, as the UI design tends to be less intuitive. From a pricing perspective, the entry-level plan is very restrictive compared to higher tiers, and there is a significant price jump between the two. 

Pros

  • No-code event tracking

  • Customizable colors, avatars, and fonts

  • Integrates with Slack, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Zapier, and others

  • Excellent analytics features

Cons

  • UI design can be confusing and not friction-free

  • Significant price jump from the restrictive "Startup" subscription to the more feature-rich "Pro" version

  • Does not support native mobile apps

Pricing

  • Monthly billing starts at $200 a month

8. Userpilot

Userpilot specializes in offering robust product tours. The platform contains features crucial to creating a quality tour, including slideouts, tooltips, and videos. Userpilot provides some analytics, allowing teams to set and track goals, A/B test product tour flows, and segment users. 

Pros

  • No-code event tracking

  • Simple to install and use

  • The ability to A/B test tours and flows 

Cons

  • Doesn't support mobile apps

  • Limited resources for support and consultation

  • Limited analytics compared to other competitors

Pricing

  • Plans starting at $249 a month

9. Whatfix

Whatfix is trusted by large companies like Western Union and Cisco, which speaks to their credibility. The software is easy to install and activate via a Google Chrome extension and a snippet of Javascript. The user interface is easy to navigate, and it's simple to build interactive product tours with modals, hotspots, videos, and more. 

Whatfix's main strength is as an onboarding tool for employees. This means it's a fantastic solution for any business needing to address their employees and customers. However, the platform's focus on worker onboarding means their customer-centric tools feel limited in comparison. In-app design and styles leave something to be desired, too. 

Pros

  • Wide range of product experience options

  • Simple to install and use

  • Offers interactive walkthroughs 

Cons

  • Focused on employee onboarding rather than customer onboarding

  • Fewer design styles and themes than other options

Pricing

  • Custom quote

10. WalkMe

WalkMe is one of the oldest platforms on this list, building a decade-long reputation as a DAP for enterprises looking to onboard both customers and employees. WalkMe's product tours can be segmented to give different users unique experiences. Its tooltips and modals round out its various product experience offerings. The platform also has a no-code editor that teams can use for creating tours. However, some say it's not very intuitive or user-friendly, and sometimes building tours requires the assistance of WalkMe's support team. 

WalkMe is heavily focused on employee training, so its customer product tour tools aren't as robust or refined as other user-centric software platforms. Lastly, pricing requires a custom quote, which can sometimes be much higher than many competitors on this list. 

Pros

  • Wide range of product experience options

  • Supports mobile apps

  • Lots of name recognition & strong brand reputation 

Cons

  • Works better for employee onboarding over customer onboarding

  • One of the most expensive product tour software options 

Pricing

  • Custom quote

Which product tour software should you choose? 

As you can see from this guide, many fantastic product tour software options are available on the market.

Before making a final decision, assess their main functionalities and features and compare the pros and cons against your company's needs and budget. 

And if you want to see Lou's features in action, then create a free account with Lou today!

Published on August 31st, 2022