Best Onboarding Software

Top Customer Onboarding Software Tools Compared

1. Video-Based Onboarding Solutions

While in-app guidance helps with feature discovery, 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

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.”

- Angelo Huang, Co-founder and CEO, Swif

➡️ Read more about how Swif transformed their customer education with Clueso here

H3: Camtasia

A robust video editor that offers extensive customization for creating detailed product tutorials with professional transitions and effects.

H4: Features:

• Full video editing suite

• Extensive effects library

• Multiple audio tracks

• Custom transitions

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Pros:

• Powerful editing capabilities

• Large resource library

• Extensive customization options

• Strong community support </aside>

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Cons:

• Steep learning curve

• Time-intensive editing process

• Manual voiceover recording required

• Expensive one-time purchase </aside>

H3: 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.

A quick and simple solution for basic screen recording for simple product demos with easy sharing capabilities.

H4: Features:

• Quick recording via browser extension

• Basic editing capabilities

• Cloud storage

• Viewer insights

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Pros:

• Easy to use

• Quick sharing options

• Good for team communication

• Reliable cloud storage </aside>

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Cons:

• Limited professional features

• Basic editing capabilities

• No advanced effects </aside>

H3: 2. 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.

H3: In-App Guidance Platforms: Quick Overview

H3: 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.

Source: Pendo

H4: Features:

• Interactive walkthroughs

• User analytics

• Feature adoption tracking

• Custom messaging

• A/B testing

• Usage patterns

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Pros:

• Deep analytics capabilities

• Good for data-driven decisions

• Strong enterprise features

• Multiple app support </aside>

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Cons:

• No content creation capabilities

• Significant setup time

• Steep learning curve </aside>

H3: 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.

Source: UserPilot

H4: Features:

• Code-free UI analytics

• User segmentation

• Resource center

• Simple implementation

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Pros:

• Robust behavior tracking & analytics

• Easy to implement

• Good for gathering user feedback </aside>

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Cons:

• No content creation capabilities </aside>

H3: 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.

Source: AppCues

H4: Features:

• No-code builder

• UI element tooltips & feature discovery

• Flow analytics

• Goal tracking

• Theme customization

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Pros:

• Ideal for basic UI introduction and simple feature highlights

• Good for first-time user guidance

• Simple implementation </aside>

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Cons:

• No content creation capabilities

• Cannot effectively demonstrate complex workflows or processes

• Can get expensive at scale </aside>

H3: 3. 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.

H3: Project Management Platforms: Quick Overview

H3: 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.

Source: Rocketlane

H4: Features:

• Customer portal

• Project templates

• Time tracking

• Document collaboration

• Milestone tracking

• Integration capabilities

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Pros:

• Purpose-built for onboarding management

• Strong client collaboration

• Good project visibility tools </aside>

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Cons:

• Requires separate content creation workflows

• Complex setup process

• Higher learning curve </aside>

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.

H4: Features:

• Sales deal rooms & client spaces

• Project tracking and visibility

• Document sharing

• Meeting scheduling

• Custom branding

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Pros:

• Clean client interface

• Ready-to-use templates

• Easy to customize </aside>

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Cons:

• Requires separate content creation workflows

• Not mobile-friendly </aside>

H3: 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.

H4: Features:

• Implementation tracking

• Task automation

• Client communication

• Resource sharing

• Progress reporting

• Team collaboration