Best
Onboarding Software
for 2025 and Beyond
Buyer’s Overview
SaaS companies today fight tooth and nail to acquire customers. Yet, after investing heavily in sales and marketing, many watch their hard-won customers slip away due to poor onboarding experiences. The first few weeks of a customer's journey can make or break their long-term success with your product - and ultimately, your relationship with them.
The stakes have never been higher. According to Wyzowl's 2024 research, 86% of customers say they're more likely to stay loyal to a business that invests in onboarding content, while 88% of customers say their decision to remain with a company long-term depends on the quality of onboarding. This reality has pushed organizations to fundamentally rethink their approach to onboarding.
"Organizations increasingly recognize customer onboarding as a function in itself: 60% of teams either have an independent and well-defined customer onboarding function or are in the process of setting up one."
Similarly, for employee onboarding, disengaged employees in the US cost their employers $450 to $500 billion each year, making it hard to ignore the impact of a considered and engaging onboarding approach.
This shift from treating onboarding as an afterthought - both for customers and for employees - to viewing it as a critical business function has driven rapid evolution in onboarding tools and approaches.
Understanding Different Types of Onboarding Solutions
1. Customer Onboarding Tools
Creating engaging customer onboarding experiences has become critical for SaaS businesses. Whether you're helping users understand product features or managing enterprise implementations, the right onboarding approach can dramatically impact adoption rates and customer satisfaction.
- Interactive product tours and walkthroughs
- Contextual help and tooltips
- Feature announcements and user analytics
Best for: Progressive feature discovery and activation
- Product demonstrations and tutorials
- Feature walkthroughs
- Best practices guides
Best for: Visual learners and complex workflows
- Customer journey orchestration
- Milestone tracking
- Resource management
Best for: High-touch onboarding with multiple stakeholders
Quick Comparison: Customer Onboarding Software Types
| Type | Best For | Key Tools |
|---|---|---|
| In-App Guidance | Product adoption | Pendo, UserPilot, AppCues |
| Video Tutorials | Visual learning | Clueso, Camtasia, Loom |
| Project Management | Enterprise clients | Rocketlane, Dock, GuideCX |
2. Employee Onboarding Tools
Employee onboarding presents unique challenges compared to customer onboarding - organizations need to efficiently transfer knowledge about company culture, internal processes, and various tools while maintaining consistent quality across different departments. According to Gallup, only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding, highlighting the need for better solutions. Employee onboarding tools address different aspects of bringing new team members up to speed:
- AI-powered video presentations
- Training material creation
- Virtual meeting platforms
Best for: Company-wide policies and cultural alignment
- Step-by-step guides for internal tools
- Process documentation
- System walkthroughs
Best for: Software and workflow training
Quick Comparison: Employee Onboarding Software Types
| Type | Best For | Key Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Company Practices | Cultural training | Clueso, Synthesia, Zoom, Teams |
| Technical Training | Tool adoption | Clueso, Whatfix, Tango |
Top Customer Onboarding Softwares Compared
Video-Based Onboarding Solutions
Video tutorials remain the most effective way to demonstrate complex workflows and ensure users truly understand your product. However, teams often struggle between choosing quick, simple recordings that lack professionalism, or sophisticated editing tools that require significant time and expertise.
Video-Based Solutions: Quick Overview
| Features |  | Camtasia | Loom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional Voiceovers | .svg) | Manual | .svg) |
| Documentation Generation | | | |
| Content Updates | | Manual re-recording | Manual re-recording |
| Multi-language Support | | Manual | |
| Learning Curve | Low | High | Low |
| Enterprise Security | SOC2, ISO 27001 | SOC2, ISO 27001 | Basic SSO |
| Creation Time | Minutes | Hours | Minutes |
1. Clueso
Clueso represents the next evolution in onboarding content creation, combining powerful AI capabilities with professional features that transform simple recordings into polished, branded content. While traditional tools require choosing between speed and quality, Clueso automates the entire workflow - from script enhancement to professional voiceovers and instant documentation. What takes hours in other tools takes minutes in Clueso, making it ideal for teams who need to create and maintain professional onboarding content at scale.
Key Features:
- AI script enhancement and professional voiceovers
- Automatic article generation with screenshots
- Multi-language support with AI translations
- One-click branding and customization
- Easy content updates without re-recording
- Built-in knowledge base hosting
- Enterprise-grade security features
What Users Love
"Clueso has been a game changer in creating our user education content. We’re now generating high-quality user guides 10x faster.”
Ready to upgrade your customer onboardings?
2. Camtasia
Camtasia stands as the traditional powerhouse in video creation. Where Clueso focuses on automating the entire content creation process, Camtasia provides a robust video editing suite. But this comes with complexity - teams often need dedicated training and technical expertise to utilize its full feature set. While it excels in creating highly polished videos, its steep learning curve and time-intensive editing process can be an overkill for teams needing to create and maintain large volumes of onboarding content.
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Features
- Full video editing suite
- Extensive effects library
- Multiple audio tracks
- Custom transitions
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
3. Loom
Where Clueso and Camtasia focus on creating polished onboarding content, Loom emphasizes quick, informal video communication. Originally designed for internal team messaging, Loom has evolved to include basic features for customer-facing content. Its strength lies in speed and simplicity - perfect for quick updates or simple explanations. However, this simplicity comes at the cost of professional features - teams often find themselves needing additional tools to create the kind of polished, branded content modern customers expect.
Features:
- Quick recording via browser extension
- Basic editing capabilities
- Cloud storage
- Viewer insights
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
In-App Guidance Platforms
While video tutorials excel at demonstrating complex workflows, in-app guidance helps users discover features in context. These tools serve different but complementary purposes in your onboarding strategy. They typically appear as a series of tooltips or modals that highlight specific UI elements.
In-App Guidance Platforms: Quick Overview
| Features | Pendo | UserPilot | AppCues |
|---|---|---|---|
| Event-based guide triggering | | | Enterpise only |
| Mobile Support | Limited | Limited | |
| Native analytics | | | |
| Knowledge base linking | | | Enterpise only |
| A/B Testing | Advanced | Basic | Basic |
1. Pendo
Pendo approaches onboarding from a data-first perspective, combining analytics with in-app guidance. Unlike content creation tools like Clueso that focus on comprehensive product education, Pendo specializes in understanding user behavior and creating targeted tooltips. While powerful for feature discovery, teams often find themselves needing additional solutions for creating actual training content and documentation.
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Features:
- Interactive walkthroughs
- User analytics
- Feature adoption tracking
- Custom messaging
- A/B testing
- Usage patterns
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
2. UserPilot
UserPilot positions itself as a simpler alternative to Pendo, focusing on quick implementation of product tours and feature announcements. While it makes creating custom in-app guidance easy, and provides detailed analytics for product usage, it doesn’t support the actual creation of onboarding guides and videos.
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Features:
- Code-free UI analytics
- User segmentation
- Resource center
- Simple implementation
Pros
Cons
3. AppCues
AppCues strikes a middle ground between Pendo's complexity and UserPilot's simplicity in the in-app guidance space. However, like other tools in this category, it focuses solely on in-product experiences, requiring teams to use separate solutions for creating tutorial content and maintaining documentation.
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Features:
- No-code builder
- UI element tooltips & feature discovery
- Flow analytics
- Goal tracking
- Theme customization
Pros
Cons
Onboarding Project Management
These tools focus on orchestrating the human side of onboarding, particularly valuable for companies with complex implementation processes requiring significant customer interaction.
Onboarding Project Management Platforms: Quick Overview
| Features | Rocketlane | Dock | GuideCX |
|---|---|---|---|
| Client Portal | | | |
| Project Templates | | | |
| Content hosting | | | |
| Content creation | | | |
1. Rocketlane
Purpose-built for managing high-touch customer onboarding, Rocketlane excels at coordinating complex implementation projects. While tools like Clueso handle the content creation aspect of onboarding, Rocketlane manages the project management and client communication aspects. This makes it complementary rather than competitive with content creation platforms.
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Features:
- Customer portal
- Project templates
- Time tracking
- Document collaboration
- Milestone tracking
- Integration capabilities
Pros
Cons
2. Dock
While Rocketlane focuses on project management, Dock approaches onboarding from a client portal perspective. Think of it as a resource hub for all resources and communications shared with a client - right from the deal stage to onboarding to renewals. That said, it requires teams to create and maintain all the actual onboarding content using other tools. This makes it a good complement to content creation platforms like Clueso rather than a standalone onboarding solution.
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Features:
- Sales deal rooms & client spaces
- Project tracking and visibility
- Document sharing
- Meeting scheduling
- Custom branding
Pros
Cons
3. GuideCX
GuideCX combines elements of project management and client portals but focuses specifically on implementation tracking. Like other tools in this category, it handles the coordination aspects of onboarding well but requires separate solutions for creating the actual training content and documentation that drives successful implementations.
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Features:
- Implementation tracking
- Task automation
- Client communication
- Resource sharing
- Progress reporting
- Team collaboration
Pros
Cons
Top Employee Onboarding Softwares Compared
Company Practices & Cultural Training Tools
Organizations need efficient ways to share tribal knowledge - from company values and policies to departmental workflows and best practices. Traditional approaches of live sessions and static documentation often lead to inconsistent knowledge transfer and become outdated quickly. Modern tools in this space focus on creating scalable, engaging content that can be easily updated and distributed across the organization.
Cultural Training Tools: Quick Overview
| Feature | | Synthesia | Teams | Zoom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional Videos | AI-enhanced | AI avatars | Basic recording | Basic recording |
| Process Documentation | | | | |
| Content Updates | Easy updates | Manual | Manual | Manual |
| Multi-language | | | | |
| Content Reusability | High | Medium | Limited | Limited |
| Enterprise Security | SOC2, ISO | SOC2, ISO | SOC2, ISO | SOC2, IAPP, GDPR ++ |
1. Clueso
For employee onboarding, Clueso shines in its ability to create consistent, professional training content that scales across the organization. Its unique combination of AI-powered video creation and automatic article creation makes it particularly valuable for teams that need to maintain large libraries of training content that requires frequent updates. Additionally, teams that have previously used slides to share onboarding materials can now convert these decks into slick videos with professional narration to create more engaging experiences.
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Features
- PPT/Slides to video conversion with professional voiceovers
- Easy content localization with translations and closed captions
- Automated transcripts
- Knowledge base hosting
What Users Love
"We used to spend hours writing articles and creating video guides. Now, with a few clicks, we have professional video guides with no background noise, that are easily edited if we want to change anything."
Upgrade your employee onboardings with Clueso
2. Synthesia
Synthesia takes a different approach to training content, focusing on creating presenter-led videos with AI avatars. While effective for certain types of corporate communications, it lacks the ability to show actual software interfaces or document real workflows, making it more suitable for high-level messaging than practical training.
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Features:
- AI avatar creation
- Script-to-video conversion
- Multi-language support
- Template library
- Studio backgrounds
Pros
Cons
3. Teams/Zoom
These communication platforms serve as the backbone for live virtual training sessions. While essential for real-time interaction and immediate feedback, they don't provide solutions for creating reusable training content or documentation, often requiring integration with other content creations tools like Clueso to create lasting training resources from live sessions.
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Features:
- Live virtual training and session recordings
- Breakout rooms
- Chat features
- Calendar integration
Pros
Cons
Technical Training Solutions
As companies rely on more digital tools, getting employees proficient with internal software has become critical for productivity. But documenting complex workflows and keeping training materials current with ever-updating tools is a major challenge. Tools in this category focus on simplifying the creation and maintenance of technical documentation, whether through interactive guides, automated documentation, or professional video tutorials.
Technical Training Tools: Quick Overview
| Feature | | Whatfix | Tango |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training Guides | Video + Docs | In-app flows only | In-app flows only |
| Video Creation | Professional | | |
| In-built Knowledge Base | | | |
| Easy Content Updates | | Manual | Manual |
1. Clueso
While specialized tools focus on specific aspects of technical documentation, Clueso shines in comprehensively capturing and communicating internal processes. Whether it's documenting complex SOPs, creating tool training videos, or building an internal knowledge base, Clueso's ability to generate both professional video guides and detailed documentation from a single recording makes it particularly valuable for teams that need to standardize and scale their internal processes.
Features
- Step-by-step documentation
- AI-powered video enhancement
- Automatic Professional voiceovers for clear instruction
- Easy content updates across formats
- Built-in knowledge base with authentication
- Screenshot and GIF generation
What Users Love
"Clueso has enabled us to transform our knowledge base with AI-enhanced support articles and captivating feature videos. Turning a rough recording into a professional video is now a matter of minutes, not hours."
2. Whatfix
Specializing in digital adoption, Whatfix creates interactive guides directly within applications. While effective for real-time software guidance, it focuses solely on in-app experiences and lacks the ability to create comprehensive training content or documentation that users can reference outside the application.
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Key Features:
- Interactive in-app guidance
- User analytics
- Pins and nudges
- SCORM compliance
- LMS integration
Pros
Cons
3. Tango
Tango automates the capture of step-by-step processes, making them useful for quick documentation of simple workflows. However, the output is limited to static guides, lacking the engagement of video content or the professional polish needed for formal training materials.
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Key Features:
- Automatic step capture
- Screenshot automation
- Basic formatting
- PDF export
- Easy sharing
Pros
Cons
Best Practices for Creating Effective Onboarding
Content Strategy
Map Your Onboarding Journey
- Define clear paths for different user segments
- Create content hierarchy based on user needs
- Plan update frequency and maintenance
- Consider multi-channel distribution
- Set clear success metrics
Production Standards
- Establish branded templates
- Define quality benchmarks
- Create review processes
- Set up content governance
- Maintain consistent voice and tone
Content Management
- Regular content audits
- Version control system
- Update triggers defined
- Archive strategy
- Content reuse plan
ROI Measurement
Track these metrics to measure the impact of your onboarding:
Customer Onboarding Metrics
| Short-term Impact | Long-term Impact |
|---|---|
| Time to first value | Customer retention |
| Feature adoption rates | Product adoption |
| Support ticket volume | Customer satisfaction |
| User engagement | Expansion revenue |
| Completion rates | Net revenue retention |
Employee Onboarding Metrics
| Short-term Impact | Long-term Impact |
|---|---|
| Time to productivity | Employee retention |
| Training completion rates | Team productivity |
| Knowledge retention | Cross-team collaboration |
| Tool adoption rates | Employee satisfaction |
| Feedback scores | Internal mobility |
Frequently Asked Questions About Onboarding Software
General Questions
A: While there's some overlap in features, customer onboarding software typically focuses on product adoption and self-service learning, while employee onboarding software emphasizes internal processes and compliance. However, modern tools like Clueso serve both use cases effectively by providing flexible content creation capabilities.
A: Not necessarily. While some organizations use specialized tools for specific needs, modern platforms often combine multiple capabilities. For example, you can use Clueso for both video tutorials and documentation, while complementing it with in-app guidance tools for specific feature discovery needs.
A: Implementation time varies by solution type:
- Content creation tools (like Clueso): 1-2 days
- In-app guidance platforms: 2-3 weeks
- Project management tools: 1-2 weeks
- Enterprise solutions: 4-8 weeks
Cost & ROI
A: Pricing varies by solution type:
- Basic tools: $8-15/user/month
- Professional solutions: $50-250/month
- Enterprise platforms: Custom pricing
A: Track metrics such as:
- Reduction in training time
- Decrease in support tickets
- Improvement in feature adoption
- Time saved in content creation
- Customer/employee satisfaction scores
Technical Questions
A: Most modern tools require:
- Updated browser (Chrome recommended)
- Stable internet connection
- 8GB RAM minimum
A: Yes, but capabilities vary:
- AI-powered platforms like Clueso: Easy updates without re-recording
- Traditional tools: Usually require complete re-recording
- Basic tools: Need new recordings for changes
Content Creation
A: Look for tools that offer:
- Branded templates
- Style guides
- Team collaboration features
- Review workflows
- Automated quality controls
A: Consider a mix of formats:
- Video tutorials for complex processes
- Interactive guides for feature discovery
- Written documentation for reference
- Live sessions for personal touch
Enterprise Considerations
A: Key security features include:
- SOC 2 compliance
- SSO integration
- Role-based access
- Content permissions
- Secure hosting
- Audit logs
A: Yes, but capabilities vary:
- AI-powered tools like Clueso: Often offer automatic translation and localized voiceovers
- Traditional tools: Require manual translation and recording