10 Best WalkMe Alternatives [Updated for 2023]

WalkMe was one of the first digital adoption solutions on the scene, initially focusing on training sales teams on how to use Salesforce.

Since its founding in 2011, WalkMe has gone on to build up an impressive breadth of features, also acquiring products that offer analytics, session replay, and other functionality. WalkMe is excellent for internal training (onboarding employees) for internal applications, such as CRM systems (think Salesforce, Oracle, etc.) and other enterprise-oriented training. It has become one of the leading digital adoption platforms.

On the other hand, self-service UX and product-led growth have become key trends within SaaS and more products care about helping their end-users successfully use their products in a scalable way. Great UX design, free trials, and self-service user onboarding have replaced outdated methods such as sales calls, in-person training, and docs full of screenshots. Cutting-edge companies need solutions that make it easy to build native-looking in-product experiences, without sacrificing security, customizability, and reliability. 

There are now a great set of WalkMe alternatives for those frustrated by WalkMe’s clunky UX, high-effort learning curve, and jack-of-all-trades approach. Each tool has its own strengths and weaknesses – in this guide, we’ll give you a fair overview of the tools you should try out if you’re walking away from WalkMe.

Before we begin, let’s look at what WalkMe does well and also, what it's lacking. First, its advantages

✅ Internal training on custom-built versions of enterprise applications (Salesforce, Workday, SuccessFactors, etc.)

✅ On-premise deployments (for products not yet fully in the cloud) or companies that don’t typically use third-party cloud providers

✅ Great for companies outside of the technology or SaaS industry (e.g. manufacturing businesses with “digitization” teams or IT departments) who are unaware of alternatives

✅ Enterprise customers with low (but highly valuable) monthly active user bases that are moving from in-person or face-to-face training into more interactive training

🤨 You need a platform that fits in with your product-led growth stack and strategy. WalkMe’s integration package lacks FullStory, Mixpanel, and Amplitude – to name a few.

🤨 Your company is scaling and you need a flexible yet affordable pricing plan that grows with you. WalkMe’s entry-level plan starts at $9,000 a year and you’ll need to commit to an annual plan before you see the benefits.

🤨 If you’re moving fast and need multiple team members to create in-product announcements – WalkMe may not be the best fit. Third-party reviews complain about the steep learning curve and feel the UI is outdated.

Looking for a new Product Adoption Platform to help you increase product usage metrics or a new digital adoption solution with more intuitive employee onboarding options? We’ll walk you through the top three WalkMe alternatives for product adoption, best on-budget solutions, and best alternatives for internal usage – each with a TL;DR to get you to the good stuff quickly. 

First up, the top three WalkMe alternatives we recommend you sign up for today and evaluate; Appcues, Pendo, and Chameleon. Need to make a decision ASAP? Here's a quick overview of the key differentiators. 

All of Chameleon’s plans come with five fully customizable, no-code products. Let’s look at them in some more detail:

• Tours are powerful flows for in-product guidance and new feature launches. Use banners, modals, hotspots, and more to announce changes or guide users.

• Microsurveys are contextual and targeted in-product surveys that are triggered based upon user actions – they enable you to build continuous feedback into your product throughout the user lifecycle

• Launchers are highly customizable in-product widgets that you can use as checklists or help menus to deepen user engagement and feature discovery

• Tooltips provide in-line help to unblock users and are dynamically deployed wherever you discover users need more info

• HelpBar makes your whole knowledge base easily searchable from within your product and allows users to quickly find answers in you help content, blog articles, or developer docs when they need them the most. It’s the latest addition to Chameleon’s set of products, currently in Beta, and it’s free.

Where Chameleon is a good fit

✅  You need complete control over the design and placement of your in-product experiences. Chameleon is built to blend in and look 100% native, and you have precise targeting of where they appear included on all plans – you choose when and where experiences are seen – based on user actions, or what people are seeing on the page.

✅ You've built up a solid product-led tech stack already and need robust integrations. With Chameleon, 20+ integrations are included; every plan includes Mixpanel, Heap, Amplitude, FullStory, and Slack integrations (to name a handful!).

✅ You need an easier to use, WalkMe alternative. Chameleon releases new features biweekly to improve their user experience and has a wealth of resources, webinars, and guides to help you get started quickly.

Where Chameleon may not be the best fit

🤨 Your analytics set-up is limited – consider Pendo as a solution if you're not ready to commit to a solution such as Mixpanel or Amplitude yet.

🤨 You want to run messaging on external applications e.g. Salesforce. We can't show Experiences on domains you don't own. Pendo's "Adopt" product is what you're looking for.

🤨 You need to run your in-product messaging on a native mobile app. You can still send usage data from your mobile apps to Chameleon, to allow you to target web users based on their mobile activity, or launch Experiences in mobile apps that are wrapped versions of a web app. Try Pendo, Braze, or Airship.

With Appcues, their product is split into four categories:

• Flows: these are used for onboarding and feature announcements. Flows are comprised of modals, slideouts, tooltips, and hotspots

• Checklists: pop-out widgets where you can add “to-dos” for users. Each checklist item can launch a URL or a “Flow” (Growth Plan only)

• Surveys: in-app Net Promoter Score surveys are Appcues’ main survey feature

• Events Explorer: Appcues recently launched click-tracking as an add-on, so that non-technical teams can define events from the Appcues app, and enable event tracking which can be used to trigger Flows and Checklists.

They've done an excellent job at making the product easy to use and they have a wide range of resources to help you get started and find further inspiration for your use cases – kudos!

Where Appcues is a good fit

✅ You need event tracking included as you look for a WalkMe alternative. Appcues is a great tool if your analytics suite is limited e.g. you only have Google Analytics.

✅ You need a wide variety of UI patterns. While Appcues has its three main products; they are broken down into many other elements like tooltips, modals, and lightboxes. Their templates are easy to get started with.

✅ Your focus is on "first-party product adoption". You don't want a tool to onboard your employees – you've got your eyes set on product-led growth.

Where Appcues may not be the best fit

🤨 You need A/B testing and plan to experiment with your in-product experiences – but keep in mind that Appcues deprecated A/B testing for new accounts. It's still doable, but you'll need to add Optimizely to your tech stack to do so. This is something both Pendo and Chameleon offer natively.

🤨 Your product is built in a Single Page Application (SPA). Third-party reviews speak of issues surrounding identifying elements within a SPA; AngularJS in particular. Give Chameleon a go.

🤨 You have plans for more than just collecting Net Promoter Score (NPS) from your customers. Appcues is a strong choice if NPS is important to you, but if you want more customization from your surveys e.g. CSAT, CES, and variable endings (e.g. if someone is unhappy, launch a Calendly booking form from your survey thank you step), then try Chameleon or Pendo.

Pendo comes with a set of in-product experiences to help you communicate product updates with your users or employees and gather feedback. With Pendo, you can:

• Create product tours – known as “in-app guides”, that can be triggered based on user behavior

• Gather feedback from users – they have a wealth of in-app surveys largely focused on gathering product feedback to fuel your roadmap or to measure customer satisfaction through NPS style surveys

• Analyze user behavior with their analytics features and build up a Product Engagement Score (PES)

Where Pendo is a good fit

✅ You want a modern product adoption solution that integrates well with web apps and mobile apps.

✅ You need to educate both your users and employees on how to use software. Pendo is the closest WalkMe alternative here on that front.

✅ You want one tool for your analytics and in-product experiences. Pendo does a good job of blending the two if your current analytics setup is limited.

Where Pendo may not be the best fit

🤨 You have a product analytics solution like Mixpanel or Amplitude already – you’d be duplicating your efforts. Try a tool like Chameleon that has two-way integrations with your favorite tools.

🤨 You need more flexibility with your in-product experiences and the way in which users engage with them. Appcues and Chameleon offer more UI patterns such as banners.

🤨 Pendo's pricing is a tricky one and it can get very expensive quickly. Third-party reviewers complain about pricing, that it's too high and increases steeply. Appcues and Chameleon both offer "startup-style" plans.

Not able to afford the price tag of WalkMe or the next best alternatives? We’ve got you covered.  

If you’re crunched for budget, Userpilot is probably the best value tool there is. For what is a considerable savings, Userpilot is still able to deliver adequate user experience building. Userpilot’s main features consist of the following:

• Create user onboarding flows with various UI elements such as tooltips, modals, slideouts, checklists and banners. 

• Product analytics tools for tracking user behavior are included, but they are not as advanced as other tools that solely commit to product analytics. 

• In-app surveys for collecting user feedback on NPS and various other metrics and instances of user experience.

Where Userpilot is a good fit

✅ You need a tool that gives you a wider variety of UI patterns for user onboarding than WalkMe. 

✅ You want a no-code tool you can use without any technical background or a development team to support you. 

✅ You want a less costly option that can get the basics of user onboarding done. 

Where Userpilot may not be the best fit 

🤨 Your product is built in a Single Page Application (SPA). Userpilot depends on page reloads or page refreshes to update and trigger new flows. Since a single-page application doesn’t reload after a URL change, Userpilot’s support for SPA is very limited. 

🤨 You want strong integrations with other products. Userpilot’s integrations are only one-way and they have a limited set of tools they can integrate with. 

🤨 You have a native mobile app. Userpilot doesn’t run on native iOS/Android mobile apps. 

Even among the budget options, UserGuiding’s pricing stands out. At $69 per month, UserGuiding provides a solution for growing teams whose resources may be more constrained. And for the price, they get a pretty good deal with the following features: 

• Resource Center: in-app widgets where resources like blog posts, webinars, and help center articles are always accessible.

• NPS Surveys: in-app surveys for collecting NPS feedback from users. 

• Onboarding Checklist: a checklist that guides users throughout the onboarding process. 

• Hotspots: static info-boxes for giving users feature tips. 

Where UserGuiding is a good fit

✅ You need a no-code solution at a lower budget which still gives good value. 

✅ You want to deploy fast and also have robust support. 

✅ You are looking for a more basic onboarding solution without much need for depth. 

Where UserGuiding may not be the best fit

🤨 You need advanced UI patterns for a wider variety of use cases. 

🤨 You are looking for a tool that integrates broadly with other products. UserGuiding’s integrations are currently limited to only seven: Slack, Google, HubSpot, Woopra, Mixpanel, Intercom, and Segment. 

🤨 You are looking for a tool that is more technically reliable and doesn’t affect your product’s performance. 

If you're looking to get the basics down without all the bells and whistles that come with WalkMe, then Inline Manual could be your alternative. It comes with various features for creating employee onboarding and training such as walkthroughs, modals, and help centers. It also allows you to create in-app surveys as well. Best of all, compared to WalkMe, Inline Manual is quite affordable, starting at $158 a month with pretty much all the core features accessible.

Where Inline Manual is a good fit:

✅ You want a tool for creating interactive walkthroughs and self-service support.

✅ You want a no-code tool that you can easily customize.

✅ You want a product with a clearer sales process.

✅ You want something more affordable.

Where Inline Manual may not be the best fit:

🤨 You want a mobile training and onboarding tool.

🤨 You want a tool that provides detailed analytics and reporting.

🤨 You want more extensive integrations with popular internal software like Salesforce.

For teams that are able to tinker a lot more with code, there is Intro.js. This is the super budget DIY option, because the catch is that you need a developer to install this. For the doubtful, you can rest assured – it is trusted by well established companies like Amazon, SAP, and Nestle. 

Intro.js does provide everything you need to get going, such as step-by-step guides and feature introductions, but it lacks various other essential UI features for onboarding like checklists and help menus. It’s basically a middle ground between coding your own solution and a using a no-code tool. 

Where Intro.js is a good fit

✅ You have dev resources available for building onboarding experiences, as well as maintaining them. 

✅ You want a super low-cost with options that can be deployed quickly (provided you have developers to do this).

✅ You’re a small team only looking for basic use cases fo your user onboarding. 

Where Intro.js may not be the best fit

🤨 You are looking for a no-code tool to allow teams with no coding skills to create user flows on their own. 

🤨 You need advanced UI patterns that you won’t have to code yourself. 

🤨 You’re a large organization with a complex product looking to deploy reliably for thousands of MTUs. 

Are you looking for a tool strictly for internal usage and not really for user growth via product adoption? While WalkMe is a good tool for digital adoption for your team, as well as training for your employees, it is quite dated and there are other better alternatives. 

Apty is a digital adoption software that can help you build employee onboarding and training processes. Apty’s look and feel is much more modern than that of WalkMe’s, and it is much easier to use. Just a simple extension installation – and Apty layers over the product.

It is also much less costly than WalkMe, though pricing is still custom and you’ll need to talk to their team. However, a big plus is that Apty has a free trial available, and not only that, it lets you use the software for 45 days for free to evaluate whether it’s right for you. 

Where Apty is a good fit

✅ You want a tool for employee onboarding that can get more value than WalkMe at a lower price. 

✅ You want a tool that also brings in good analytics and segmentation capacity. 

✅ You want a no-code solution that requires no technical knowledge for implementation, and offers a wider variety of integrations than WalkMe. 

Where Apty may not be the best fit

🤨 You want to collect user feedback. Apty does not offer in-app surveys, which means you won’t be able to get feedback in order to iterate and improve the user experience. 

🤨 You have native mobile apps. Unlike WalkMe, Apty doesn’t support mobile apps on iOS and Android. 

🤨 You want something that’s very customizable. Despite WalkMe’s requirement for technical knowledge, it also offers deeper customization of experiences than Apty’s no-code platform. 

On the surface, WalkMe and Whatfix may look similar. They both cater to large enterprise-grade companies with digital adoption needs. They can both be used to set up user onboarding and employee training.

But where they differ is in the details. Whatfix is more intuitive and easy to use than WalkMe, and it integrates better and more broadly with other tools. 

In a nutshell, Whatfix is a great WalkMe alternative if you’re looking for a tool for internal usage. 

Where Whatfix is a good fit

✅ You are a large company looking for a digital adoption platform focused on internal usage that is easier to use and understand than WalkMe.

✅ You want something less technically challenging than WalkMe, and you also want high quality support. Whatfix’s G2 score on quality of support is 9.8 compared to WalkMe’s 8.8. That is a considerable difference.

✅ You need to integrate with many different tools. Whatfix has a more robust integration capacity with tools such as analytics, LMSs, and support tools than WalkMe. 

Where Whatfix may not be the best fit

🤨 If you need analytics features, Whatfix is very much lacking in that area. If you want something more in-depth you’ll have better luck going to best-in-class product analytics tools like Mixpanel and Heap. 

🤨 If you need advanced contextual onboarding that personalizes user experience. Whatfix does offer this, but it is very limited. 

🤨 You want custom branding options without a need for coding. Whatfix’s styling is limited, and it relies heavily on CSS. So if you don’t know CSS, you’ll likely find it frustrating to match the experiences to your style. 

If you want something that is more specific to building interactive guides for internal education, then Stonly may be your answer. Stonly is easy to use, customizable to a good degree, and integrates with several important platforms such as Zendesk, Salesforce and Intercom. Best of all, it comes at a low price tag of $99 per month, so if affordability and internal training are both on your mind, then Stonly could be your answer.

Where Stonly is a good fit:

✅ You want a tool for creating step-by-step guides for customer support and training purposes.

✅ You want a user-friendly interface that requires no coding knowledge.

✅ You want to create knowledge bases.

✅ You want something more affordable.

Where Stonly may not be the best fit:

🤨 You need advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.

🤨 You want mobile guides.

🤨 You want advanced customization and targeting capacities

Before you move toward considering a WalkMe alternative that would be the best fit for your needs, you have to know what needs aren’t going to be fulfilled by WalkMe. So make sure to understand everything you would like for a product adoption or a digital adoption tool to have. 

Do you need something for internal use, or something for user growth? Are you looking for something that fits better with your budget? Do you want a jack-of-all-trades or a best-in-class? Once you know all these details, the right alternative will surface.