10+ Best Customer Onboarding Software Tools in 2023

In this article, we will explain Customer Onboarding software, its best tools, benefits, types, and steps for effective customer onboarding:

We will discuss various facts with some expert advice and FAQs. We have provided a list of the best customer onboarding tools with their reviews. A comparison table is drawn for the top five software and at the end conclusion, we have summarized the review process.

Customer onboarding is a systematic and planned approach where the journey of the customer from knowing the product to purchasing it is well planned and managed.

This includes introducing the products and services to the customer and helping them in signing up and checking out. It is to teach them about the value of products by providing tooltips, interactive walkthroughs, or a help center widget.

Customer Onboarding Process and Benefits

Benefits of an effective customer onboarding:

• Improves activation rate.
• Boost customer retention and product adoption.
• Faster problem solving with help center widget.
• Lower support costs with better product adoption and increased revenue.
• Lower churn rate.
• Better customer experience.

Types of customer onboarding software:

• Interactive on-screen guidance: It is this type of customer onboarding, customers are given interactive on-screen guidance using tooltips, hotspots, product tours, NPS surveys, and more. It helps in connecting with huge-amount of clients and encourages customer interaction and participation.
• Learning management systems: Under this type of customer onboarding software, instructive courses, training programs, or learning processes are offered to the clients. It helps in enhancing learning, saving time, improving clients’ knowledge, and enabling them to access learning materials.
• Knowledge basis: These are the knowledge-based software that customers use self-guided with available how-to articles, video tutorials, documents, presentations, and FAQs. It helps avoid the wastage of time of clients in connecting with any salesperson.

Steps for the customer onboarding process:

• Sign-up process: Here’s the first step of customer onboarding, provide a brief, easy-to-fill form at the beginning to let them connect with you instantly.
• Welcome, email: After the signing up step, you need to connect with the customer through email where you should thank them and share resources to direct them to the product.
• First log-in: In this step, the customer shows a clear interest in the product, so the log-in process should be clear, positive, and engaging to get started.
• Integration, invitations, and data import: After logging in, the customer needs to integrate it with other tools and their team members. So you should automate the optional integration process and share links and add emails from team members to invite them to the process.
• Product walkthrough: Provide walkthroughs so that it may be easy for them to know the product completely. You should provide them with a skip option and a watch later option, in case they don’t need it at that point.
• Follow-up email: After the successful sign-up and login process, you need to engage the customer. So for that, send follow-up emails containing helpful tips, resources, social proof, and more.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q #1) Why is customer onboarding important?

Answer: Customer onboarding is important as it helps in improving the activation rate of customers, boosting retention and feature adoption, improving customer experience, lowering the cost, and increasing revenue.

Q #2) What are the first steps in the client onboarding workflow?

Answer: The steps for a successful client onboarding workflow can be:

• Gain knowledge about the client’s needs.
• Outline the client’s desired outcomes and goals.
• Provide a brief to the team on the client’s desired outcomes and objectives.
• Connect with the client through call, message, or email.
• Make regular follow-ups.

Q #3) How do you automate customer onboarding?

Answer: We can automate by creating an introduction and nurturing emails and messages that can be sent automatically. It saves time and resources.

Q #4) Which tool is used for customer onboarding?

Answer: There are many customer onboarding tools. The best of them are:

• monday.com
• UserGuiding
• Inline Manual
• Whatfix
• Userlist

List of Best Customer Onboarding Software

Here is a list of the top client onboarding software:

1. monday.com
2. Jotform
3. UserGuiding
4. Inline Manual
5. Whatfix
6. Userlist
7. Apty
8. GuideCX
9. Process.st
10. Userpilot
11. WalkMe

Comparison of Top Customer Onboarding Solutions

Detailed reviews:

#1) monday.com

Best for managing everything in one workspace.

monday.com is a flexible and intuitive project management software. This ensures efficient customer onboarding from starting to its end by providing templates to gain visibility of progress, tracking the tenure, and aligning the team.

It includes emails and activities, automation, and customizable templates or dashboards. It helps in getting closer to the customer through ways like email sync, email tracking, email templates, and activity management.

Features:

• Tracks communication with customers through email sync, email tracking, etc.
• Easily track performance with features like dashboards, sales forecasting, activity tracking, and more.
• Organize data with features including importing data, merging duplicate data, and lead capture.
• No-code automation feature is there to save selling time.
• Integrates with tools like Dropbox, Outlook, Slack, Zoom, and so on.
• With different available templates, you can gain visibility into the entire sales process.

Pros:

• Pre-built spreadsheet templates make it easier to kick start the work.
• Coordinate the project in one location.
• Generates alerts and notifications through its automation feature.
• 24/7 customer support is available.
• It’s an easy interface with various tutorials.

Cons:

• Limited reporting capabilities.
• Limited integration.

Verdict: monday.com is highly recommended for managing customer onboarding, as it is one central platform with full client onboarding and onboarding progress tracking. It’s best for automation and centralized client communication.

Pricing:

• A 14-day free trial is available.
• Plans are categorized as under:-
  • Individual- $0 per month
  • Basic- $8 per month
  • Standard- $10 per month
  • Pro- $16 per month
  • Enterprise – Contact for pricing.

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#2) Jotform

Best for Template-Based Onboarding.

Jotform is a different kind of an on-boarding software. In the sense that it offers you different kinds of templates to manage and maintain your employee, HR, and client information list. All the templates are easily customizable. The templates can be auto-populated with data. The data updates automatically. The spreadsheets can be managed and downloaded from any device.

Features:

• Client Onboarding
• Employee Onboarding
• New Tenant Checklist
• HR Onboarding
• Project Onboarding

Pros:

• Tons of templates to choose from
• Highly customizable
• Free to use

Cons:

• Limited in features when it comes to on-boarding management.

Verdict: While you may not get a full-fledged customer onboarding software, Jotform still delivers spreadsheet templates that can be used to manage and maintain important data regarding customers for free.

Price:

• Forever Free Plan available
• Bronze: $39/month
• Silver: $49/month
• Gold: $129/month

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#3) UserGuiding

Best for easily creating beautiful product walkthroughs.

UserGuiding is a reasonable user onboarding software that includes services related to product engagement, feedback collection, reporting & targeting, customizations, integrations, support, and more.

It is globally recognized and trusted by famous brands, including OLX, Canopy, Premise, and many more. This helps the user in providing walkthroughs and does not require any coding. It provides services like hotspots, customization, goal tracking, onboarding checklist, and many more.

Features:

• Provides analytics tools to create more effective products.
• Ensures a good customer experience with segmented product tours.
• The Net Promoter Survey is available to measure user insights and satisfaction.
• Enables users to track their progress with goal tracking features.
• Enables you to design the onboarding process without any coding and technical knowledge.
• Other services include resource centers, onboarding checklists, and so on.

Pros:

• Enables the employees or customers to perform actions or tasks skillfully with walkthroughs.
• User-friendly guided creation process by non-technical people.
• Reduce churn rate by using interactive walkthroughs.

Cons:

• Pricing is high comparatively.
• The live chat option is not available on the website.

Verdict: UserGuiding is best for creating user-friendly walkthroughs, custom guide audiences & provision scheduling, and interactive onboarding solutions. Some users face difficulty in implementation and customization due to a lack of technical know-how.

Pricing:

• A 14-day free trial is available.
• Basic plan- $99 per month
• Professional plan- $399 per month
• Corporate plan- $699 per month.

Website: UserGuiding

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#4) Inline Manual

Best for improving customer adoption and product experience.

Inline Manual is a digital adoption platform established in 2012 to improve user experience and product adoption to make the onboarding process smooth.

It includes solutions related to user onboarding, staff training, and enterprise. It is packed with services like walkthroughs, tooltips, an in-app help center, feedback, customization, targeting branching, and many more. It is GDPR and ISO27001 compliant.

Features:

• Supports users by guiding them through walkthroughs and tooltips.
• Provides in-app help centers with content search and quick access buttons, and so on.
• Helps in getting feedback from customers through NPS and instant feedback.
• Advanced CSS customization is available with custom buttons and variables.
• Helps in targeting the users effectively by creating segments and automatically launching the content.
• Other features include branching, automation, management, multilingual, and many more.

Pros:

• Customer support is good.
• Provides utmost security with GDPR compliance.
• Helps in understanding the customers in a better way through feedback and NPS surveys.

Cons:

• Fewer options are available to customize user data analytics.
• Improvements in the admin interface are suggested.

Verdict: Inline Manual is best for its customer support. It is recommended for in-app marketing, regular feature updates, and downtime announcements. Some users report some issues with minor bugs.

Pricing:

• Standard Pro- $158 per month
• Enterprise – Contact for pricing.

Website: Inline Manual

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#5) Whatfix

Best for empowering individuals and organizations through digital adoption.

Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that provides solutions related to employee onboarding, performance support, and user onboarding. It was launched in the year 2014 and had 500+ customers globally.

It has offices in the USA, India, UK, and Melbourne. The services include automation, integration, personalization, user feedback, content creation, and many more. It delivers on-demand support, guidance, and training.

Features:

• Boost user adoption by highlighting key application features.
• Reduces overhead costs by providing user self-service solutions.
• Provides one-click flow automation and updates content quickly.
• Improves user retention through measuring and understanding analytics data.
• Personalized onboarding experience by segmentation feature.
• Engage new users through interactive product tours and contextual guiding.

Pros:

• Customer support is excellent.
• User-friendly and easy interface.
• Advanced customization is available.
• Continuously developing features and improvements.

Cons:

• Old-school callouts and carousels are present.
• Improvements in UI/UX, analytics, and automatic translation are suggested.

Verdict: Whatfix is best for its features like automation, step-by-step guidance, etc. It reduces training time, support queries, and cost. Some users report a lack of some analytical features in it.

Pricing:

• A free trial is available.
• Contact for pricing.

Website: Whatfix

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#6) Userlist

Best for onboarding, engaging, and nurturing customers and marketing leads.

Userlist is a SaaS email automation platform with services like user onboarding, lifecycle email, marketing email, in-app messaging, segmentation, and many more.

It was started in 2017 to help SaaS companies with email marketing automation. Tracking account-level activities, segmenting companies, and sending powerful email campaigns are some things it helps with. It assists in onboarding customers, engaging, and nurturing them.

Features:

• Sends behavior-based campaigns with their simple HTTP API.
• Customizes messages with liquid tags and snippets for maximum impact.
• Helps in sending only relevant information to the customers based on their behavior data.
• Enables client-side tracking along with server-side tracking.
• Provides free planning worksheets for a much easier start.
• Other services include built-in templates, ready-to-go libraries, and more.

Pros:

• Easy to use interface with helpful guides.
• Good customer support.
• Various customization options for drafting messages are available, including liquid tags and snippets, to make them more appealing and effective.

Cons:

• The mobile application is not available.

Verdict: Userlist is best for increasing the activation rate of customers by using behavior data. It is recommended for its features like segmentation, user management, user onboarding, and more. Some users suggest having more details in the reporting over time.

Pricing:

• A 14-day free trial is present.
• $99 per month for up to 5000 users.

Website: Userlist

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#7) Apty

Best for converting free trial users into loyal customers with intuitive walkthroughs.

Apty is a proactive digital adoption software that helps in building engaging onboarding flows, increasing user adoption, and decreasing onboarding and training costs.

It can easily integrate with all web and mobile applications. It was earlier named as LetzNav, but in July 2019 it became Apty. Leading brands, including Hitachi, Mary Kay, Phillips, and more trust it. It helps in assisting customers, aligning workflows, adapting analytics, and accelerating digital adoption.

Features:

• Enhance user onboarding with guided tours and walkthroughs.
• Provides actionable insights on user behavior that improves the onboarding experience.
• It provided impactful product tours to empower users.
• A segmentation feature is available to provide a personalized onboarding experience.
• Helps in quickly creating content, communicating with users, and improving user engagement.
• Other services include contextual guidance, in-app training, self-service tools, and more.

Verdict: Apty is best for providing intuitive walkthroughs that enable 60% faster product adoption and an 80% increase in user engagement and customer retention. Other recommended features include in-app guidance, analytic tools, and so on.

Pricing:

• A free trial is available.
• Free evaluation plan – Free
• Custom plan – Contact for pricing.

Website: Apty

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#8) GuideCX

Best to make onboarding faster, easier and better.

GuideCX is the number 1 rated client onboarding software founded in 2017. It provides various customer onboarding solutions, including client interaction, engagement and visibility, service & training, and more.

It serves industries like SaaS, health, finance, education, automation, and more. It is packed with powerful features like advanced resource management, advanced time tracking, a navigator reporting engine, and so on.

Features:

• Advanced time tracking is available to have a watch on employees working.
• Ensures better client interaction, engagement, and visibility with features like no customer login requirements, mobile app access, and more.
• Efficient project and task management through group task tracking, timeline view, Gantt chart, etc.
• Helps in effective branding with features like a white-label project portal, individual projects, and automated emails sent from your domain.
• It provides free onboarding training sessions to clear queries.
• Other services include live chat support, phone support, business reviews, etc.

Verdict: GuideCX is recommended for customer onboarding, project management, and task management. It is best for its features like navigator reporting engines, complete control over visibility settings, and more. Some users report issues in putting filters, it gets removed itself.

Pricing:

• Professional – Contact for pricing.
• Premium – Contact for pricing
• Enterprise – Contact for pricing.

Website: GuideCX

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#9) Process.st

Best for securing, engaging, & retaining customers on a single platform.

Process.st is a client onboarding software for continual business growth. It is trusted by famous brands like GAP, Spotify, Airbnb, Accenture, and many more.

It helps in creating workflows, keeping track of client onboarding, encouraging team collaboration, integrating with other apps, and collecting & storing customer data. Various pre-made templates and checklists are available, especially for SaaS customers. This can be used for new client setup, employee onboarding, monthly reporting, and so on.

Features:

• Accessible anytime and anywhere from the desktop as well as from the phone.
• Helps in creating and keeping track of the client onboarding process and decisions.
• Encourage team collaboration for effective onboarding by assigning tasks, adding columns, and more.
• Integrate with more than 1000 applications to send important customer data daily.
• Provides instant insights through checklist dashboards.
• Other services include conditional logic, structured documents, collaborative workflows, approvals, and more.

Verdict: Process.st is recommended for client onboarding with sustained growth. It is best for its services like conditional logic, creating procedure documents, collaborative workflows, and so on. It is best for medium and large-sized businesses.

Pricing:

• A free trial is available.
• Free- $0 per month.
• Pro- $25 per month.
• Enterprise – contact for pricing.

Website: Process.st

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#10) Userpilot

Best for product growth, marketing, management, and UX designs.

Userpilot is a leading onboarding software for SaaS that unlocks growth opportunities for businesses at every stage of the user journey. It is trusted by more than 500 famous brands, including Adobe, Osano, Prowly, Treatwell, and many more.

It provides various user onboarding solutions like customer retention, product adoption, account expansion, and so on. It is helpful in product growth, marketing, management, and UX designs.

Features:

• Provides products including growth insights, engagement layer, and user sentiments.
• Increases new user activation at scale through onboarding checklists.
• Boost feature adoption by continuously updating and highlighting the latest features.
• Increases product stickiness and reduces churn rates by providing on-time assistance, introducing features at the right time, and gathering in-app feedback.
• Helps in expansion by unlocking growth opportunities and upsells through in-app experiments & marketing and evaluating feedback.

Verdict: Userpilot is recommended for providing effective solutions, including user onboarding, in-app marketing, scale self-service, and more. It is best to boost user adoption through behavior-driven product experiences.

Pricing:

• A 14-day free trial is available with no credit card required.
• Traction- $249 per month
• Growth- $499 per month
• Enterprise- $1000 per month

Website: Userpilot

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#11) WalkMe

Best for simplifying the online user experience.

WalkMe is a powerful digital adoption platform that uses patented technology to design data-driven user experiences. It is trusted by leading enterprises including Adobe, HP, Thermo Fisher, Twilio, and many more. It provides solutions for employees, customers as well as products.

It is packed with customer onboarding solutions including customer retention, Streamlined onboarding, visibility to customer experience, and more. It helps in boosting the conversion rate and retention rate of customers with digital adoption technology.

Features:

• Builds customer retention through simplified processes.
• Ensures personalized onboarding experience for every customer.
• Enables you to have a look over customer experiences through WalkMe Analytics.
• Helps in creating, editing, and managing apps through WalkMe editor.
• Other services include WalkMe players, surveys, segmentation centers, user management, security, and many more.

Verdict: WalkMe is recommended for maximizing customer experience through empowering and engaging them. It is best for its DAP technology, automation, security, integration center, and workstation.

Pricing:

• A free trial is available.
• Basic plan – Contact for pricing.
• Custom plan – Contact for pricing.

Website: WalkMe

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Other Noteworthy Software

#12) Customer.io

Best for tech-savvy marketers to control, craft, and send emails, notifications, and messages to customers.

Customer.io is a messaging software to create and send data-driven emails, notifications, and messages. It is trusted by 4000+ companies including Asics, IMAX, The Knot, and many more. Customers give feedback and it uses their shopping patterns. It helps in re-engaging inactive customers through drip campaigns and motivates them to purchase more.

It helps in onboarding new users, welcoming them, nurturing them, and increasing conversion rate by sending personalized emails and messages.

It enables you to create strategies for every kind of message from workflows to transactional messages with logic (time delays, time windows, or after a specific action is taken by the customer).

It includes features like segmentation, messaging, data & integrations, metrics & analysis, and so on.

Pricing:

• A 14-day free trial is available.
• Basic- $150 per month.
• Premium- $995 per month.

Website: Customer.io

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#13) Appcues

Best for boosting product adoption with no-code onboarding flows.

Appcues is a digital adoption software that builds segmented onboarding tours, keeps customers happy, and helps in measuring & improving the onboarding process.

It was founded in 2013 and currently operates in 13 different countries. It is an easy-to-use interface that enables its users to get started without any friction and hassle. It improves user onboarding by increasing user activation and personalization and improving paid conversions.

It provides insights to improve the user experience through NPS and in-app feedback. It assists in user onboarding, feature adoption, insights, NPS & Surveys, and announcements.

Pricing:

• Essentials- $249 per month
• Growth- $879 per month
• Enterprise – Contact for pricing

Website: Appcues

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#14) Nickelled

Best for easily creating guided tours, tooltips, banners, and more.

Nickelled is a cloud-based customer onboarding software that helps in creating guidance tours, tooltips, banners, and more for businesses. It was founded in 2014. It includes solutions for L&D professionals and businesses.

For businesses, it helps in onboarding new customers, increasing user satisfaction, reducing churn rates, and improving feature adoption. It is loaded with powerful features like customization, analytics, integrations, segmentation, and so on.

It can be operated from anywhere from desktop, mobile, or tablet with zero dev time, zero downloads, and optional JavaScript. It provides easy billing options with world-class support.

Pricing:

• A free trial is available.
• User onboarding- $299 per month.
• User onboarding premium – contact for pricing.

Website: Nickelled

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#15) ClientSuccess

Best for deriving customer retention and growth across the entire company.

ClientSuccess is a customer growth platform that enables SaaS users to grow an existing customer base through solutions like onboard, adopt, renew, grow, and so on. It is trusted by industry leads including Peek, Symphony Talent, Reward Gateway, Syndigo, and more.

It builds the customer journey from onboarding to adopting the products and from making them engaged to grow each account.

It was awarded the SIIA CODiE Award for “Best Customer Success Management Solution. This is best for StartUps, Agencies, and SMEs.

The key features of ClientSuccess are communication management, account alerts, and health scores.

Pricing:

• A free trial is available.
• Contact for pricing.

Website: ClientSuccess

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Conclusion

Through the research, we concluded how essential customer onboarding software could be. It not only helps in customer onboarding but improves activation rate, boosts customer retention & product adoption, solves problems faster with the help center widget, lowers support cost with better product adoption and increased revenue, lowers churn rate, and provides a better customer experience.

Here, we have discussed various customer onboarding tools. Every software comes with its distinct features and pricing plans, but serves the common purpose of easing the customer onboarding process.

Suggested Reading =>> Comparison of the Best Onboarding Software

Some are good at boosting customer retention like – Nickelled and WalkMe. Some are good at providing analytics like – UserGuiding, Whatfix, Apty, etc. This way, they all provide different sets of features to ease the onboarding process.

Our Review Process:

This article has been researched for 36 hours with 20 tools in which the top tools were shortlisted as mentioned above.