Losing users after their first login?
It’s frustrating when new users struggle with your product and churn before seeing its value. This undermines all your acquisition efforts.
The real issue is generic onboarding that fails to guide users properly. It just doesn’t work for complex software products.
This struggle is common. A WalkMe report shows that only 7.2% of large U.S. firms fully achieve their digital adoption goals. This low success rate highlights a massive gap.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best B2B ecommerce platform helpful.
But what if you could personalize every user’s journey? A digital adoption platform is built to deliver tailored in-app experiences.
In this guide, I’ll review the best digital adoption platform options. I’ll help you find a tool that accelerates onboarding and boosts user retention.
You’ll discover how to create data-driven onboarding flows that turn new sign-ups into loyal, long-term customers.
Let’s dive in.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WalkMe → | Large enterprises & organizations | |
| 2 | Whatfix → | Enterprise-scale product managers | |
| 3 | Pendo → | Growth-stage tech companies | |
| 4 | Userpilot → | Growth-stage SaaS companies | |
| 5 | Appcues → | Growth-stage SaaS companies |
1. WalkMe
Is user adoption causing product team headaches?
WalkMe identifies where user workflows break and provides in-app guidance. This means you can create personalized, automated experiences.
This capability helps you manage change effectively as you implement new processes, software, and business priorities, improving software adoption and reducing friction for your users.
Deliver experiences that drive ROI.
WalkMe helps you get full visibility into the software running in your organization and how it’s being used, all within the context of tasks your people need to finish. You can then provide tailored in-app guidance.
This enables frictionless experiences across any workflow, boosting productivity. Additionally, WalkMe’s omnichannel support ensures your team gets consistent digital experiences on any device or platform. Plus, Contextual AI Assistance offers proactive help.
The result: accelerated onboarding and reduced churn.
While optimizing your software usage, understanding SaaS billing software can significantly impact your financial planning.
Key features:
- Workflow Analytics & Guidance: Gain insights into user behavior with workflow and form analytics, then provide in-app guidance and workflow automation to eliminate friction.
- Omnichannel & AI Assistance: Deliver consistent experiences across desktop, mobile, and web, complemented by Contextual AI Assistance for proactive user support.
- License Optimization & Integrations: Identify unused licenses and optimize software ROI, with seamless integrations across major applications like Salesforce and Workday.
Learn more about WalkMe features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: WalkMe is a strong contender for the best digital adoption platform, especially if your goal is to accelerate onboarding, reduce churn, and gain data-driven insights to optimize product UX, delivering a reported 3-year 494% ROI.
2. Whatfix
Struggling with user adoption and spiraling training costs?
Whatfix offers a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) that creates contextual, in-app guidance, product analytics, and interactive sandbox environments. This means you can effectively onboard new users and accelerate AI adoption.
You can drive user adoption and improve productivity, managing complex enterprise change efficiently. You’ll avoid wasted budget and ensure your software workflows are seamless.
Here’s how software clicks faster.
Whatfix helps you empower users with AI-powered in-app guidance, proactive user support, and on-demand assistance across web, desktop, and mobile applications. You can guide users through complex applications and processes with in-app Flows, Task Lists, Smart Tips, and Pop-Ups. This makes your guidance smarter, faster, and more contextual.
Additionally, Whatfix Product Analytics provides AI-powered, actionable insights by tracking user engagement with no-code event tracking. This allows you to analyze and engage within a single platform, using Funnels and Journeys to improve product experiences. Plus, Whatfix Mirror lets you create interactive sandbox replicas for hands-on IT training, complete with auto-captured analytics, without risking live software usage.
The result? Accelerated onboarding and reduced churn.
While we’re discussing software applications, understanding best app builder software is equally important for creating new tools.
Key features:
- AI-powered in-app guidance: Delivers contextual support and walkthroughs through Flows, Smart Tips, and Pop-Ups, making guidance smarter and more personalized for users.
- No-code product analytics: Tracks user engagement and workflow usage data effortlessly, enabling data-driven decisions to optimize product experiences without engineering dependencies.
- Interactive sandbox environments (Mirror): Creates replica web applications for hands-on, risk-free training, improving user proficiency and reducing training resource costs.
Learn more about Whatfix features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Whatfix is a comprehensive and data-driven best digital adoption platform for product managers seeking to personalize onboarding and retain users. Its AI-powered in-app guidance, robust analytics, and interactive training environments, including Mirror, help you increase user productivity by 72% and save an average of $950,000 in training resources, enabling you to optimize product UX and drive user adoption.
3. Pendo
Are your digital adoption efforts falling short?
Pendo directly addresses your need for accelerating onboarding and reducing churn with its Software Experience Management (SXM) platform. This means you can understand user behavior and deliver personalized in-app experiences.
If you are struggling with low product adoption or workflow friction, Pendo allows you to analyze, assess, and act to improve user journeys across web, mobile, and SaaS applications. You need better software experiences.
Pendo helps you pinpoint issues and optimize workflows without requiring engineering resources. This allows you to improve company productivity and lower support costs. You can visualize user behavior with session replay and deliver timely guides to boost feature adoption. Additionally, Pendo AI analyzes your data to suggest improvements, enhancing your software experience with just a few clicks. This comprehensive approach helps you reduce churn and gather data-driven insights.
The result is boosted revenue, reduced costs, and minimized risk.
Key features:
- Analytics and Benchmarks: Uncover user behavior trends and compare product adoption, feature engagement, and user retention against industry peers to identify improvement opportunities.
- Guides and Orchestrate: Deliver personalized, no-code in-app guides to boost feature adoption and automate communication journeys based on user behavior for effective onboarding.
- NPS and Listen: Measure user sentiment with in-app and email NPS surveys, capturing and analyzing feedback to connect user needs directly to your product roadmap.
Learn more about Pendo features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Pendo stands out as a best digital adoption platform for Product Managers at growth-stage tech companies, as evidenced by iRobot cutting engineering time by 75% and doubling in-app engagement. Its no-code platform streamlines the entire software experience lifecycle, from user insights to personalized in-app guidance, ultimately driving revenue growth and minimizing risk.
4. Userpilot
Struggling to personalize onboarding and retain your SaaS users?
Userpilot offers robust solutions for user engagement and feedback, designed to help you drive adoption and prevent churn. This means you can [guide new users to value quickly] and help existing users discover new features contextually, addressing your product growth and retention goals.
Here’s how to boost your user activation.
Userpilot solves your product challenges by leveraging user insights and in-app engagement. This means you can easily understand user behavior and sentiment at scale.
For example, their [Product Analytics allow you to track usage] and generate custom reports, while their User Feedback tools capture sentiment with contextual Microsurveys. Additionally, Session Replay lets you visualize user journeys to identify and fix confusing UI elements. Plus, if you’re building for mobile, Userpilot for Mobile lets you onboard users and track metrics on native devices with a DIY editor and no coding needed.
The result: accelerated onboarding and reduced churn.
Key features:
- User Onboarding: Guide new users and help existing ones discover features contextually to reduce time-to-value and boost activation.
- Product Analytics & User Feedback: Understand user behavior through custom reports and gather sentiment at scale using contextual Microsurveys.
- Session Replay & Mobile Experience: Visualize user interactions to fix UI issues and deliver tailored experiences on native mobile devices with a DIY editor.
Learn more about Userpilot features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Userpilot is positioned as a top-tier Digital Adoption Platform, enabling you to drive product growth by personalizing onboarding and retaining users. With features like comprehensive product analytics, user feedback tools, and session replay, Userpilot helps product managers at growth-stage tech companies accelerate onboarding and reduce churn.
5. Appcues
Are you losing users before they see value?
Appcues helps you scale personalized engagement through in-app messages, emails, and push notifications. This means you can onboard, activate, and retain users without relying on developers.
Your SaaS business might be struggling with retention, and this problem often starts on day one of a user’s journey. Appcues combats this by combining product usage data with robust messaging.
Here’s your solution.
Appcues is your all-in-one platform for user engagement. It helps you activate users sooner and keep them coming back by delivering native-looking messages inside your app.
It allows you to automate user journeys across channels using workflows, send personal emails triggered by user actions, and nudge users with targeted mobile alerts through push notifications. This also includes collecting feedback at scale with NPS and custom surveys, and empowering users with self-service support.
Additionally, Appcues provides product usage data, allowing you to capture every action from clicks to completions with code-free event tracking. You can trigger messages instantly based on user behavior and engagement, ensuring every nudge feels personal and timely. Plus, you get clear insights showing which messages hit the mark to boost metrics like activation and retention.
The result is increased user activation and retention.
Key features:
- Multi-channel messaging: Create in-app messages, emails, and push notifications from one place, tailoring workflows to keep users engaged and personalize interactions based on behavior.
- Product usage data: Track every user interaction code-free to trigger messages based on behavior and engagement, ensuring personalized communication at the moment it matters.
- Insights & reporting: Gain clear insights into message performance and its impact on key metrics like activation and retention, allowing you to optimize campaigns with experiments.
Learn more about Appcues features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Appcues stands out as the best digital adoption platform for product managers at growth-stage SaaS companies, enabling tailored in-app experiences and data-driven insights. With a 2100% increase in feature adoption seen by Litmus, it helps activate new users, convert free trials, and drive feature adoption by combining robust messaging with product usage data for personalized engagement.
6. UserGuiding
Struggling to personalize user onboarding at scale?
UserGuiding helps product managers create effective in-app experiences to drive adoption and product strategy.
This means you can easily build entire onboarding flows right on top of your web app using their Chrome Extension, with one-click publishing to update all content.
Here’s how to boost product adoption.
UserGuiding provides a comprehensive toolkit for product teams to handle all tasks in one place, from creating product tours to managing user feedback. This allows you to effortlessly create user onboarding experiences and streamline feature rollouts.
Additionally, UserGuiding offers in-app tools like modals, tooltips, and hotspots to highlight new or unused features, improving product-wide adoption. You can also build a Knowledge Base, utilize an AI Assistant for 24/7 multilingual support, and set up Resource Centers to scale your in-app self-service help, reducing support load. Plus, UserGuiding’s product usage analytics and in-app surveys generate insights for a data-driven product strategy, enabling you to personalize in-app experiences with segmentation features.
The result is maximized expansion and minimized support needs.
While UserGuiding helps manage user experiences, if you’re looking to centralize digital assets, my guide on best creative management platforms is essential reading.
Key features:
- Effortless Onboarding Creation: Use the UserGuiding Chrome Extension for a 15-minute setup and quickly build interactive product tours, onboarding checklists, and announcement modals on your web app.
- Data-Driven Product Strategy: Leverage product usage analytics, in-app surveys, and NPS surveys to collect real-time user feedback, analyze behavior, and personalize in-app experiences through segmentation.
- Scalable Self-Service Support: Create a Knowledge Base, train an AI Assistant for instant help, and use Resource Centers to offer in-app support, significantly reducing support load and costs.
Learn more about UserGuiding features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: UserGuiding stands out as a best digital adoption platform for product managers at growth-stage tech companies, offering codeless customization, robust analytics, and rapid implementation. Its comprehensive toolkit, from product tours to AI-powered support, helps achieve goals like a 550% increase in trial conversions and a 47% feature adoption rate, ensuring a strong ROI.
7. Spekit
Struggling with inconsistent user adoption and content chaos?
Spekit tackles these issues head-on by automating content and change management within your existing workflows. This means your product managers can ensure consistent messaging and training.
Their platform allows you to sync and centralize content from your existing data sources, preventing information silos and content decay. It’s time to streamline your onboarding and continuous enablement processes.
Here’s how Spekit delivers on its promise.
You can convert knowledge into targeted playlists for product launches or onboarding journeys, ensuring your users get the right information at the right time. Additionally, Spekit delivers answers and content right where your users are working, whether in Chrome, Slack, or email. Deliver instant answers and relevant content recommendations directly within your team’s tools like Chrome, Slack, and email, eliminating context-switching for users.
The platform provides proactive, relevant content recommendations with Spekit Sidekick, ensuring your product teams deliver precise messages. This helps accelerate deal velocity by letting you spin up custom-branded Deal Rooms in seconds. The result? You’ll gain powerful insights by measuring every content interaction to identify and address knowledge gaps quickly.
This empowers your users instantly.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best product design software helpful for creating intuitive user experiences.
Key features:
- AI Content Assistant and Centralized Hub: Automate content and change management by syncing existing data sources and using AI to fill content gaps, creating playlists for onboarding and launches.
- Just-in-time Assistant: Deliver instant answers and relevant content recommendations directly within your team’s tools like Chrome, Slack, and email, eliminating context-switching for users.
- Analytics & Insights: Gain visibility into content interactions and knowledge gaps, allowing you to automate content governance, ensure accuracy, and measure the ROI of your enablement efforts.
Learn more about Spekit features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Spekit is a strong contender for the best digital adoption platform because it directly addresses user onboarding and retention challenges through AI-powered, just-in-time knowledge. Its focus on centralized content management and actionable analytics, as shown by an “eight-figure pipeline boost,” makes it ideal for product managers at growth-stage tech companies.
8. Apty
Struggling with software adoption and user retention?
Apty addresses this by making complex enterprise software easy to use, focusing on cross-application compatibility for apps like Salesforce or Workday.
This means you can accelerate onboarding and ensure your teams adopt new workflows with zero guesswork, improving data accuracy by 30%.
Unlock real business results.
Apty helps you turn user behavior and process data into personalized, real-time guidance directly within your applications. This includes AI-driven workflows that enforce standard operating procedures and eliminate busywork, saving your team hours every week.
Apty Pulse provides diagnostic views of your tech stack, measuring user engagement and identifying underutilized applications. Additionally, their GenAI-powered help offers a unified assistant across all platforms, providing instant, conversational guidance regardless of where your employees are working. You can also monitor user actions to catch data-entry errors and track adoption bottlenecks.
Your software will become a business accelerator.
Key features:
- Smart On-Screen Guidance: Provides real-time, step-by-step nudges, just-in-time prompts, and process tips to reduce friction and boost productivity.
- Cross-App Workflows: Automates and prescribes tasks across various applications, streamlining completion and enforcing critical standard operating procedures.
- Behavioral Insights & Validation: Monitors user actions, identifies data-entry errors, and pinpoints adoption bottlenecks to improve performance and compliance.
Learn more about Apty features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Apty emerges as a strong contender for the best digital adoption platform, especially for product managers aiming to boost software utilization and user retention. It provides substantial ROI, with a leading toy manufacturer achieving 90% Workday utilization in 60 days, alongside 50% faster onboarding and 30% fewer errors.
9. Userlane
Struggling with software adoption and user retention?
Userlane’s Agentic Assistance and AI-powered insights help you understand and improve the value of your enterprise applications.
This means you can discover exactly which applications and AI services your employees actively use, while also minimizing unauthorized, redundant, and underutilized application licenses.
This enables you to optimize software usage and drive adoption effectively.
Here’s how Userlane helps you empower your people and realize measurable results.
You can leverage AI insights to identify user challenges, optimize adoption, and reduce inefficiencies across your applications. Userlane enhances software adoption through in-app Agentic Assistance, delivering context-sensitive help and guidance right when users need it.
Additionally, Userlane integrates with existing support channels and offers robust [platform reporting and analytics], allowing you to gain deep insights into app discovery and user behavior. This comprehensive approach supports use cases like employee training, digital transformation, change management, and customer onboarding, ensuring your users master complex processes and boost productivity.
The result is increased software ROI and higher employee productivity.
Before diving deeper into Userlane’s features, you might also be interested in my guide on [visual product customization software] for enhancing user experience.
Key features:
- Agentic Assistance and AI-powered insights: Optimize software usage by understanding user behavior, identifying challenges, and delivering context-sensitive in-app guidance for improved adoption and efficiency.
- Application discovery and Shadow IT assessment: Gain immediate cost savings by identifying unauthorized, redundant, and underutilized application licenses to optimize your software investments.
- Comprehensive reporting and support integration: Utilize platform reporting and HEART analytics to track adoption, plus integrate with your existing support channels for a unified user experience.
Learn more about Userlane features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Userlane stands out as a strong contender for the best Digital Adoption Platform due to its AI-powered insights and Agentic Assistance, which significantly reduce training time by 83% and increase new hire quota by 136% for companies like Spring Venture Group, proving its ability to optimize software usage, accelerate onboarding, and drive measurable ROI.
10. Gainsight
Struggling with fragmented user experiences and churn?
Gainsight’s Product Experience (PX) platform helps improve user adoption with in-app engagements and meaningful product analytics. This means you can proactively guide users to value and deliver elegant product experiences.
With PX, you get AI that acts, not distracts, empowering you to spot risk, surface upsells, and scale personalization without the fluff. You can move beyond generic lists to optimize your product’s UX.
Deliver a unified customer experience now.
Gainsight’s CustomerOS offers a single operating system to orchestrate customer retention and growth, allowing you to centralize your customer data. This helps your team deliver a seamless customer journey, from first login to long-term loyalty.
You can scale onboarding, boost adoption, and monetize customer education with Skilljar by Gainsight. Additionally, Staircase AI provides real-time, AI-powered customer engagement insights across all conversations. This integrated approach ensures every touchpoint feels intentional, aligned, and built around making your customers stick, ultimately accelerating onboarding and reducing churn.
You’ll drive retention and expansion effortlessly.
Key features:
- Product Experience: Improve user adoption through in-app engagements and meaningful product analytics, helping you proactively guide users to value.
- CustomerOS: Unify customer data into a single operating system to orchestrate retention and growth, providing clarity across your customer journey.
- Skilljar by Gainsight: Scale onboarding, boost adoption, and monetize customer education, empowering you to deliver comprehensive customer education programs.
Learn more about Gainsight features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Gainsight is the best digital adoption platform for product managers at growth-stage tech companies, offering robust product analytics, in-app engagements, and a unified CustomerOS. Its ability to provide real-time insights and scale onboarding helps companies like Dealerware achieve rapid scalability, ensuring users quickly find value and remain loyal.
Conclusion
Still losing users after their first login?
I understand the frustration. Choosing a DAP feels overwhelming when you need to justify ROI and avoid a tool mismatch that wastes your entire budget.
A WalkMe report shows 95% of European companies improve productivity through the right tech adoption. Choosing a proven platform helps deliver measurable business impact, not just more features.
Here is the platform I recommend.
After reviewing all these options, WalkMe stands out. It helps you build personalized, automated journeys that guide users and eliminate friction across any workflow.
Its ability to provide full visibility into your software stack is a game-changer. Using the best digital adoption platform like WalkMe truly accelerates onboarding and reduces churn.
I suggest you request a free demo of WalkMe to see how its in-app guidance can immediately transform your product experience.
Your user retention rates will thank you.
