It’s hard enough to get potential customers to try out your SaaS product. And, even then, once users are engaged with your product, it’s just the beginning. If you want to get more people demoing your platform while also boosting the adoption and retention of users, Userpilot has what you’re looking for. You can provide better product trials and onboard new users in the most efficient way possible.
Userpilot: The Good and the Bad
Understanding human behavior is something we are still trying to figure out. Understanding human behavior within your SaaS product, however, might just be a little bit easier. Userpilot is a tool that helps you learn what’s working and what isn’t in your platform and its UI. That way, you can immediately address shortcomings to improve user adoption and retention. Create better sales demos and a better overall product. While Userpilot can deliver these unique benefits, it also has some shortcomings that may detract from your organization’s ability to use it.
What Userpilot Is Good At
Userpilot does a lot right. This platform makes it easy to get more users into a demo of your SaaS products, collect and analyze user data, and boost the overall experience for prospective and current users of your software alike.
Build a better demo UI easily
Userpilot’s clean interface makes navigating the platform a breeze, with a left-hand sidebar that provides easy access to its main sections: People, Growth Insights, Engagement Layer, and User Feedback.
For creating a more interactive experience on your product demos, you’ll want to head straight to the Engagement Layer feature (we’ll cover the other three sections as we go along).
Within it, Userpilot lets you build highly customizable in-app experiences using overlays that you can place right on top of your product demo UI. Craft tailored touchpoints that guide users, promote features, and drive product adoption.
It’s easy to add elements to the demo interface, as Userpilot employs a builder that evokes those of popular drag-and-drop site builders you may already be familiar with.
After a quick installation of Userpilot’s Chrome extension, you can select from templates or build overlay flows, spotlights, and tracked events from scratch. Overlay flows allow you to choose from slideouts, modals, tooltips, or user-triggered actions. These can sequentially walk users through key processes and actions in your software, while spotlights like hotspots and banners can highlight key pages or features.
The templates, conversely, provide an easier starting point while still offering some degree of customization over images, colors, and content.
Userpilot offers robust targeting options so you can reach specific users with the right message when they arrive at a particular portion of your software or they complete a specified action. Target the flows you build in Userpilot based on user behavior, personas, or account traits.
Help users get the hang of your software
Create tailored onboarding experiences that get new users ramped up quickly in Userpilot. One of its standout features is the ability to build context-based tips, prompts, and checklists that appear within your application and guide users through key workflows.
In essence, Userpilot streamlines onboarding in a user-centric way that gets new users comfortable with your platform in quicker, less-stressful fashion.
We enjoyed the checklists, as they are particularly handy for walking users through the steps they need to complete to get fully activated. New users can make progress and watch boxes get checked as they move forward, while you get the assurance that they’re hitting the crucial touchpoints for correctly learning the software.
Userpilot delivers a bunch of ways to incorporate modern best practices into your software onboarding process. Use introductory surveys to welcome new users and get initial data for personalizing their experience. By using data that Userpilot gathers from inputs like these, you can segment users into persona-based groups, then build a unique onboarding flow for that persona.
For example, you may ask if they would identify themselves as a power user of similar software. If yes, automatically direct them to a more advanced onboarding process that skips over the basics and dives deep into the really geeky features. Or, if they’d call themselves more of a novice, have that input initiate a more 101-level onboarding flow that delivers detailed guidance through all the basics.
Userpilot lets you easily adjust the messaging and features highlighted to match each persona’s needs, using the builder we described earlier.
But, honestly, onboarding processes can’t cover everything or guarantee a new user retains all the new information they just received. So, Userpilot also lets you build in-app guidance that helps users navigate features during day-to-day use of your software.
This anticipatory assistance keeps them moving forward versus getting frustrated and contacting support or, worse, changing their mind about using your platform at all.
This is particularly great for complex features that you know typical users struggle with, or for new features or changed elements of your UI that might confuse even long-time users. Guide them through these with overlays that can direct users to help articles or separate tutorial videos.
Subtle tooltips can direct users to try out new features when they seem ready based on their in-app behavior. You can use prompts to highlight specific UX improvements during a user’s first session after an update.
Or, when releasing a major update, display an eye-catching banner to make sure users notice the changes. You can even tailor announcements to different user segments to send the most relevant information.
These great features from Userpilot help make any learning curve related to your software so much gentler on users of all experience levels. Everyone’s onboarding experience becomes a breeze while you continually support their enablement long after.
Learn everything about users’ in-app behavior
Within the People section of your Userpilot dashboard, you can seamlessly track individual users or whole companies. Meanwhile, the Growth Insights section neatly displays analytics on feature adoption, events, churn risk, and more in bold, eye-catching graphics.
The dashboard also provides an overview of general behavioral metrics like daily, weekly, or monthly active users and events. You can segment data by personas or custom filters to compare activity across user groups.
One powerful view that we particularly liked shows engagement analytics for specific UI elements and outlines the page and event effectiveness. This reveals how users interact with each component, highlighting usability issues.
See which product elements drive the most engagement. Userpilot maps users’ journeys, so you can pinpoint exactly where users are churning or converting.
Beyond these analytics, you can utilize tags in Userpilot to analyze product usage further. Custom tags let you track engagement in particular sections of your software without having to mess with code.
For example, you may want to track how often new users click the “Get Started” button during an onboarding flow. Simply select that button within the UI and add a tag. Now you’ll get data on how often each user clicks that button during their journey. You can further segment this by persona, plan type, or other attributes to uncover usage patterns.
The more tags you implement, the clearer your product analytics become. You can view the tag data both at the individual user level and aggregated at the account level. Track user journeys versus overall feature adoption trends.
With these targeted insights, you can iteratively refine journeys to boost engagement. Easy access to actionable usage data helps you prioritize opportunities to better serve users.
You can also gather qualitative user feedback from within your software by utilizing in-app microsurveys. With just a few clicks, add targeted NPS or custom surveys throughout your product experience.
You can select from 14 pre-made templates or build your own surveys to fit your needs. Contextual surveys during onboarding, after key workflows, upon cancellation, and other situations provide you with even more insight that your business can act on.
Surveys are delivered in your software’s UI via modal popups, slideouts, or embeds. You have full design flexibility and can segment the appearance of these surveys so only specific user groups are the ones giving feedback.
Userpilot organizes all survey responses and NPS data within its interface for easy access and analysis. Imagine quickly gathering feedback on new features from engaged power users or uncovering reasons for churn from canceled accounts. Userpilot enables gathering rich insights directly within your app without friction.
Boost conversions…
By tracking in-app behaviors, like we described above, you can experiment with targeted messaging that converts more trials into paid customers.
For example, if the data shows successful upsells happen more often after users complete key workflows, you can prompt them with special offers after they achieve a milestone in their onboarding process.
Userpilot also helps you uncover which user segments are most receptive to upgrades based on their feature usage and engagement patterns. You can double down on creating personalized upgrade prompts tailored to your best converting classes of users.
Combine this with behavioral data to make sure that upsells pop up at the exact right time or to spotlight premium features when demo or free trial users could benefit from access to them the most.
These help you snag more conversions and revenue through information gathering, but what about improving conversion rates through changing your software’s UI and UX? That’s where the built-in A/B testing features come in.
Through them, Userpilot allows you to continually refine your trial conversion strategy. Experiment with alterations to the onboarding flow, feature differences for free and paid users, the layout of software elements, and more.
Using the visual editor, you can quickly build two variations of any flow to test for an optimal outcome (or no particular goal at all). Then, set the length of time the test will run and which user segment should populate your testers. Userpilot will automatically split those users into an A and B group and serve one variation or the other to each.
Once a result has been reached or the timeframe has been met, you can see results on how each performed and draw out findings about conversions, activation, or retention from those results.
For example, you could test how a personalized modal popup works to encourage free trial users to sign up for a paid plan versus an animated alert. Or, try different feature tooltip placements to spot which one boosts overall usage.
The best part is that anyone on your product team can build and analyze A/B tests without engineering support. You have the flexibility to rapidly experiment and refine the user journey based on feedback.
Userpilot empowers you to continually optimize activations and conversions as your product evolves. And that’s just one half of the equation here.
…And user retention
Long after onboarding, you can keep your users aware of and enabled to use your product’s most valuable features and newest updates.
By creating targeted in-app tips, spotlights, and prompts, you can both draw attention to key conversion points for users who haven’t become customers yet and empower active users along their journey, spurring their long-term retention.
Using the combination of features and benefits we’ve outlined above, you can keep supporting users so that they become raving fans of your SaaS solution. Use persona segments and behavioral data to address reasons why users are ignoring one of your key features or remove friction points from routine usage. Leverage A/B testing to inform you of which direction to take the next product update.
On top of that, by tracking user behaviors, you can identify when and where users may be at risk of churning and create tips, prompts, updates, or UI changes to eliminate that risk.
If you’ve lost some users along the way, don’t worry. Userpilot can help you build re-engagement campaigns for inactive users. Create a win-back segment and build a more personalized, effective flow for those wayward users.
Tapping into the full power of Userpilot, you gain the ability to constantly improve your product so that every conversion you make from an effective demo becomes a lifelong advocate for your software.
Userpilot’s Potential Drawbacks
Although Userpilot can do a lot, from onboarding your new users to improving the UX for your customers, some elements of its interface felt clunky, as though they were still a work in progress. Beyond that, there are a few other sticking points that might give you pause before you commit to a Userpilot plan.
You’ll have to install Userpilot on your own
Userpilot is an incredibly powerful platform once you’ve implemented it. But, getting it initially set up does require some technical work.
There are a few options for installing Userpilot directly into your SaaS codebase. You can manually insert Userpilot’s JavaScript snippet into every single page of your application. This gives you precise control over tracking, but could be tedious for large apps.
Another option is to use the NPM wrapper for more automated inclusion of the Userpilot code. The wrapper streamlines getting Userpilot injected across your pages.
You also have the choice to integrate with Segment or Google Tag Manager for turnkey tracking. These platforms make implementing various analytics services like Userpilot simpler.
Userpilot provides code snippets and instructions for all these integration approaches. However, for non-technical users unfamiliar with code, actually getting Userpilot installed could pose a challenge.
Additionally, to tap into Userpilot’s visual editor for building in-app user experiences, you need to install its Chrome extension. This adds a small, extra step before you’re able to access the full power of the platform.
While we don’t expect many SaaS teams to be lacking in developers or IT-minded folks who can handle Userpilot’s implementation, it’s worth noting that this isn’t a simple plug-and-play solution. Be prepared to take some time with getting Userpilot all set up on your software and some extra time after that to double-check for any issues.
Some features are a bit clunky
Userpilot is packed with features and options for customization, which can lead to some difficulties in getting oriented for first-time users. In our experience using the platform, a few areas felt a bit clunky and awkward.
Building in-app experiences with the overlay editor was unintuitive at times. Simple actions like closing a formatting bar required clicking a tiny pink check mark, as opposed to the ability to just click outside the box to close it (like you’d see in WYSIWYG website builders). Small UX speed bumps like this slowed down our ability to create flows and tweak elements.
We also experienced some sluggishness while constructing spotlights, flows, and tracked events. While it was minor, running into this UI lag over and over again could get really frustrating if you were trying to build out an elaborate sequence.
In general, the editor can become overwhelming if you try to build a lot of experiences up front. You end up with tons of open tabs for different spotlights, flows, and the like, which quickly clutters the workspace.
We found Userpilot requires some ramp up time to get familiar with all the platform’s capabilities and to navigate some of the speed bumps inherent to the software at this time.
Missing some useful features
Userpilot offers robust analytics and onboarding capabilities, but we did notice some functionality missing that would have enhanced the experience.
First, there is no way to schedule flows, announcements, or other in-app experiences. You have to manually activate and deactivate anything, so you’re on the hook for doing this whenever you want to roll out new features or create limited-time experiences. The ability to schedule spotlights, tooltips, and messages would be a massive time-saver.
Additionally, Userpilot’s A/B testing felt limited compared to other leading solutions. You can only compare variations of specific flows, and you can’t test multiple flows against the same audience simultaneously. You also can’t target tests to multiple user segments or customize your A and B groups.
While Userpilot delivers on its core premises, these few features are missing that would really take it up to another level. Userpilot, much like its customers, is constantly improving its software, so perhaps we’ll see some of these included in future updates.
Templates aren’t great out of the box
Userpilot offers some templates to get you started on overlays and surveys, but they are relatively basic and you’ll likely need to customize them extensively to match them to your branding and goals.
This isn’t much of a knock against Userpilot, as the fact that there are templates at all is helpful. Just prepare to still spend time tailoring spotlights, announcements, and flows to match your style and messaging.
Additionally, you have limited control over how the overlays appear within your product UI. There aren’t as many options for sizing, transitions, and placement as you might expect.
Survey templates are restricted to just 14 basic options for common use cases. If you want to build fully custom surveys, your question types are also limited. You can only choose from open text, Likert scale, multiple choice, and text/URL prompts.
No way to contact Userpilot
Surprisingly, Userpilot does not offer any direct channels for contacting their support team or sales reps as a non-customer. The only way to speak to someone is to request a product demo. There is no live chat, phone number, or even a contact form on their website to get in touch.
During our product testing, we ran into a few issues that led us to get quick answers from Userpilot’s team. But, with no clear way to speak to someone in real time, we felt a bit frustrated and limited.
For SaaS products, having direct access to customer service is practically a must-have these days. Not offering any sales or support contact options on its website is an oversight that could turn away potential customers of Userpilot.
We understand Userpilot may want to qualify leads through demos. But they should also provide alternative contact methods for those that just need a quick question answered or specific issue resolved.
Userpilot Plans and Pricing
For as complex and unique as its software is, Userpilot’s pricing is pleasantly simple—if not super transparent. There are three plans on offer, but only the lower user thresholds of the entry-level tier have publicly available pricing. Let’s get into what rates we can share and the features you’ll get on each plan level.
Starter
Userpilot’s Starter plan provides a good entry point for its software that growing startups and small dev teams can take advantage of. If your software has fewer than 2,500 monthly active users, you’ll pay just $249 per month when billed annually ($299 when paid month-to-month).
Pricing rises to $349 per month annually, or $399 month-to-month, for up to 10,000 active users. From there, pricing is dependent on a custom quote.
On this tier of Userpilot, you get the ability to identify and monitor individual users, build up to 10 custom segments to analyze user groups, and gain insights across user accounts.
For product analytics, Userpilot Starter allows unlimited event tracking, up to 15 click-to-track feature tags, tracking and analysis for 15 key pages, and implementation of custom events for full flexibility.
Plus, you’re getting some of the core highlights we listed above, such as:
- UI overlays like flows, spotlights, and checklists via the Engagement Layer tool
- NPS surveys with up to 250 responses allowed per month
- User targeting based on attributes and behavioral data
- Analytics and reports on engagement, results, and more
- One year of data retention
The Starter plan also provides multi-domain capability, five seats, 2FA security, and email support.
For early-stage SaaS companies looking to understand their users and optimize journeys, Userpilot’s Starter plan delivers robust capabilities without excessive cost. The included features support major growth at reasonable rates.
Growth
Userpilot’s Growth plan builds on the Starter plan with enhanced capabilities for scaling companies. Pricing is customized based on needs, but here is an overview of what the Growth tier includes in terms of features.
Adding to everything in the Starter plan, Growth unlocks unlimited user segments, feature tagging, goals, and survey responses. It also expands the number of seats to 15 and extends data retention to three years.
But the real bonuses here are the advanced features you now get access to. Get deeper engagement with users by embedding resource center elements into your UI. Enhance targeting with content triggered by in-app events or custom instances. You can even localize content in up to 10 different languages.
It’s also on this tier that you unlock A/B testing and experimentation capabilities. Altogether, Userpilot’s Growth plan opens the door to really knowing your user base and what resonates with them in your software.
Customer support is elevated on this plan, with phone-based support, priority troubleshooting, and a dedicated success manager. And, non-U.S. companies can utilize the option for a European Union data center.
Overall, Userpilot’s Growth plan equips rapidly expanding companies with enhanced capabilities like experimentation, sophisticated user targeting and personalization, and scalable support.
Enterprise
Userpilot’s Enterprise plan goes above and beyond the previous two tiers. Pricing, again, is only available via custom quote, but you can be assured that you’re getting the following advanced features in this plan.
At this level you can bring as many team members into Userpilot as you’d like, with customizable roles and permissions.
You’re also getting unrestricted access to third-party integrations, unlimited localization, and custom data retention duration.
Compliance and security are at the forefront here. You’re getting SAML SSO and security logs, plus SOC 2 Type 2 and GDPR compliance assurances and customized legal agreements.
Userpilot Enterprise also provides dedicated infrastructure, isolated from other customers, for increased performance and security.
Essentially, the Enterprise plan equips large, complex SaaS companies with a highly customized deployment of Userpilot built to meet their specific usability, scalability, security, and compliance needs.
Contact Userpilot to discuss an Enterprise solution optimized for your organization and use cases.
Final Thoughts
Userpilot is an excellent option for product teams, customer success managers, and marketing managers at SaaS companies who want to improve their product. Understand users’ behavior, increase product adoption, and improve onboarding with Userpilot’s powerful product analytics and in-app experience builder.
While pricing isn’t transparent, we think any SaaS company who can see the benefits of more personalized demos and onboarding could be able to justify what Userpilot might cost. You’re likely to earn back your spend by way of better conversion rates and increased user retention.
