5 Best Guided Walkthrough Software for Demos

Guided walkthrough software has become a popular way to create a SaaS product demo for prospective customers. As interactive product demo examples show, 89% of visitors engage with demos on landing pages, while inbound leads are 70% more likely to sign up for a trial after experiencing a demo.

But you already know all the benefits of creating product tours. Choosing a tool that fits your business needs and helps you make interactive onboarding walkthroughs is the tricky part. From HowdyGo to Navattic, these tools satisfy different use cases, such as homepage embeds or live demo calls and offer must-have features like GIF creation, advanced analytics, demo checklists, and more.

In our article, we’ll focus on interactive product demos that prompt users to sign up rather than on onboarding product tours that new users explore after signing up. Interactive guided walkthroughs shorten a sales cycle, increase conversion and showcase what an app can do. Plus, they’re more engaging and detailed than homepage screenshots or videos.

Let’s review five guided walkthrough software to help you find the most suitable one.

Top 5 app walkthrough software

Our focus is on five tools that sales, marketing, and product teams can use to create interactive walkthroughs. 

Customers won’t experience the full value of your product through screenshots, they want to experience the real thing, but without the commitment of a sales call i.e., interactive product tours that guide them step-by-step, so that they feel confident that they know the main features of the app and can easily decide whether or not it is a good fit.

Here are five tools that can help you with that.

1. HowdyGo

HowdyGo is an interactive HTML demo recording software tool excellent for guided tours that allow new customers to experience and understand your product. Its valuable features, like html editing, analytics tools, personalization and demo checklists, can help you achieve 1.5x more activations and 90% demo engagement.

The best part? A marketing or sales team can create walkthroughs in pixel-perfect resolution in just a few clicks and with no coding knowledge. Here’s how to create a great interactive product demo with HowdyGo in a nutshell:

1. Install the HowdyGo Chrome extension and click on “Start Recording.”

2. Navigate through the app to showcase its advanced features and move between tabs if needed.
3. When you're done, click on “Stop Recording” and use the Editor. This feature lets you add, delete or reorder steps, edit text and images, write annotations, add chapters, and personalize or customize your demos.

See how easy it is to create interactive product tours? Allow your teams to show key features of the app in an engaging way to increase conversion and attract new users.

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Features

• Unlimited HTML interactive demos: When you click through the app, HowdyGo creates pixel-perfect interactive demos. The tool caches HTML, CSS, fonts, and media without requiring coding knowledge. You can create unlimited product tours on every plan and add as many users as you want to build demo centers.
• Editing options: The Editor has numerous options to tailor your demos. You can edit the steps or add text and annotations to guide users through the app. For easier navigation, leverage chapters that break product tours into sections.
• Animated steps: HowdyGo captures HTML snapshots of a page and recordings of how that HTML has changed over time. After recording, our product tour software can playback how your app has changed as an HTML animation. This is useful for drag-and-drop gestures and live data pop-ups.
• Personalization: Use variables to dynamically edit text, images and annotations in interactive product tours. These variables create a personalized experience by adding a prospect’s name, company logo and email into your demo.
• Lead capture forms: Engage with prospects while they explore the product and new features. You can add lead capture forms at any stage of the product tour to collect viewers’ names, email, phone, company and country. HowdyGo saves this and can also automatically send this information to your CRM.
• User-friendly analytics features: You can use built-in analytics to monitor user engagement, impressions and completion data. That helps them understand how to improve product tours for better user experiences.

Use Cases

As a guided walkthrough software tool, HowdyGo is a perfect tool for:

• Website embeds: Embed interactive demos on the website or landing pages so that prospects get a quick overview of the app.
• Social media videos: Work with product teams to capture and export videos of the most eye-catching features for social media. Launch marketing campaigns with interactive product demos and target relevant audiences.
• Sales teams: Sales reps can create product tours to move leads down the sales funnel. This allows them to spend less time on calls while ensuring their contact experiences the product firsthand.
• Product demo GIF: HowdyGo allows you to capture GIFs for landing pages, emails or social media.

Pros

• Hands-on support from the founders during and after the onboarding process. We’ve made thousands of interactive demos along the way and know what works for companies with different sales and inbound marketing strategies.
• An unlimited number of user seats and demos, regardless of the plan.
• Integrations with tools likeHubspot, Salesforce, Zapier and Google Analytics.
• Drag-and-drop editor and an easy-to-set-up extension – say goodbye to a steep learning curve!
• Free trial to ensure you fully explore our tool.

Pricing

Thanks to HowdyGo, businesses can improve user engagement with guided tours for just $79 a month. Our 14-day free trial gives you enough time to explore product tour features like demo checklists, editing and customization.

User ratings

Customers appreciate the ease of use, which helps them create interactive product tours with just a few clicks. They also praise the intuitive user onboarding process and direct founder support.
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2. Storylane

Storylane is interactive product demo software that captures a front-end copy of any product. You can capture product flows and stitch them together to create tours that educate prospects and new users about your app.

Like other no-code solutions, on their higher priced tier, the tool allows HTML no-code edits in a few clicks. You can also create basic product tours that feature screenshots only for a lower price ($50).

To capture product tours, install the Storylane Chrome extension and start recording from the browser. Click on “Stop Recording” to save a demo and start editing it.

Want to have unlimited user seats and demos? Explore a Storylane alternative that has affordable pricing and doesn’t ask you to pay per user.

Features

• HTML demos: Storylane captures no-code copy (both HTML and CSS) of the app, which you can use for onboarding tours or lead capturing in their second tier.
• Lead forms: Add custom lead forms from tools such as Marketo and Hubspot to track and engage with prospective customers.
• Personalization: Use tokens to personalize product tours at scale. You can personalize demos with lead forms or URL params.
• AI assistant: The feature lets you translate interactive walkthroughs into over 25 languages or automatically add voiceover.
• Self-service: Storylane is a demo automation software, which means you can offer self-service support to ensure users explore your product at their own pace.

Use Cases

• Email campaigns: Share interactive demos at every stage of the user journey via email. Choose from different email providers to track user behavior and data whenever recipients engage with the demos.
• Embedding: Storylane offers several embed options. You can choose an inline embed, with or without a CTA, or a popup embed to share demos across websites and landing pages.
• Personalized demos: Personalize prospect or user onboarding experience with demos that reflect a viewer’s role, industry or needs.

Pros

• Storylane integrates with Zapier, Marketo, Hubspot and Gmail, to name a few.
• It has Session analytics that lets you segment users and see how they engage with demos.
• You can dd text, images, videos or logos to customize demos and make them more recognizable.

Pricing

This product tour software offers a free plan for one published screenshot demo only. But, unlike guided demos, screenshot demos don’t let users experience and feel your product. Its pricing starts at $50 per creator a month if you decide to pay monthly. If you want to make HTML demos, this plan won't do, so you’re looking at $125 per creator a month (minimum of 5 creators) for HTML product tours.

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Sounds expensive? See how it compares to another tool in our Storylane vs Walnut comparison.

User ratings

Customers praise Storylane for being easy to set up. They also appreciate that it allows them to make reactive changes in-app wherever needed.

3. Walnut.io

Walnut.io is a tool for codeless and customizable interactive walkthroughs primarily aimed at sales reps. It allows you to capture your product in one click or showcase to customers how it integrates with other software. Walnut.io is also a good choice for live demo presentations, which you can personalize for each prospect.

Keep in mind that Walnut.io offers annual contracts only which come at a hefty price. In comparison, HowdyGo is more flexible, providing both monthly and annual billing.

As with other tools, you need the Chrome extension to start recording. After you've captured the product tour, you can edit and customize the demo.

Features

• In-demo personalization: Walnut.io includes data from CRM, lead forms or contact lists to personalize demos across landing pages or marketing outreach campaigns.
• Numerous UI elements: Add elements like buttons, icons and checkboxes to draw attention.
• Multiple devices: Check how interactive product tours look on the web and mobile apps. You can view them in portrait or landscape mode.
• Demo playlists: Share product tours in playlist forms and let customers watch them in the order they choose.

Use Cases

• Sales teams: The representatives gain access to reusable product tour templates they can personalize for prospects.
• Marketing teams: Integrate guided walkthroughs into digital marketing assets to increase conversions and gather marketing leads.
• Employee and user onboarding: Improve both user and employee onboarding with product tours that feature step-by-step instructions on how to use the app.

Pros

• Insights AI, a chatbot, that monitors demo performance and team usage. For instance, you can ask it to tell you which user created the most demos during the previous month.
• The option to see how your demos appear across different devices.

Pricing

The pricing isn’t available on its website, but Vendr claims that it starts at $15,100 annually. Don’t worry – there’s a Walnut.io alternative that captures product tours for less, fit for your sales and marketing teams.

User ratings

Users appreciate that they can personalize a demo in just one minute before every sales call.

4. Arcade

Unlike HowdyGo, Arcade captures screenshots of your product and stitches them together to build a demo. They’ve also announced a beta of their HTML demo tool. As for screenshots, you an edit them by adding hotspots, images, videos or text to make the demo appear more interactive and provide contextual guidance. However, if you use HowdyGo, you get HTML videos that walk users through the features and functionalities of your product at their own pace.

Arcade comes with AI voice overs available in multiple languages. The product tour software automatically detects the language of your demo and ensures the speakers sound professional and natural.

The extension or desktop app allows you to capture screenshot demos. The process is intuitive and can be launched by clicking “Create Arcade.”

Features

• Advanced branching: Explore this feature to allow customers to choose a product tour tailored to their role and needs. For instance, before the demo starts, ask them about their position and which feature interests them.
• Insights: Measure audience size, play rate, completion rate and other metrics. Use the findings to amend demos and make them more appealing.
• Mobile view: When enabled, Arcade will optimize product tours for mobile whenever it detects a container that is less than 600px wide.

Use Cases

• Marketing: The team can repurpose a demo to GIF and video formats. Once exported, you can share GIFs or videos on social media or via emails.
• Product adoption: Educate new users about your product and decrease the learning curve. During user onboarding, they can also get updates on new features through Arcade.
• Sales leave-behinds: Send educational demos to prospects after the sales representatives have finished with their calls.

Pros

• Branches that allow users to choose what they want to watch.
• Custom links for each business to support account-based marketing.

Pricing

Arcade offers a free tier for one user, equipped with basic features and up to three published demos. If this is limiting, the next plan starts at $38 per user a month but doesn’t include advanced features like branching and custom themes.

Are you ready to create HTML demos? It’s time you explore this Arcade alternative.

User ratings

Customers point out that the learning curve is short, and they praise the amount of customization options available.

5. Reprise

Reprise is a guided walkthrough software that lets companies build demo environments that can then be turned into product tours or leave-behinds. It’s mostly suitable for sales teams as it focuses on live demos delivered via a dedicated content delivery network.

However, marketing teams can use it to build product stories. For instance, they can create feature walkthroughs and demo libraries and share them online to help prospects understand why they need a certain product.

With Reprise, you only receive support from an account executive, while HowdyGo offers expert guidance from the founding team. On top of that, its most basic pricing is available for 5 users only.

Like other guided walkthrough software on our list, Reprise has a browser extension that captures screens as soon as you click on “Create New.”

Features

• Analytics: The dashboard features key metrics like the total number of views. However, you can also get insights into individual user activity.
• Customization options: You can replace images, logos, data, and text. After making the changes, you can apply them in bulk to the entire demo environment.
• Shareable demo templates: With Reprise, your team members can save and share demo templates or use a shared image library.

Use Cases

• Live demos: The sales reps can create and share product tours for every stage of the user journey. After each interaction, they can send leave-behinds to allow leads to explore the product at their own pace.
• Website embed: Share product tours on the website in a few clicks.

Pros

• Ease of use and its click-and-type functionality.
• Bug-free sandbox environments.
• Highly customizable demos.

Pricing

Although Reprise doesn’t promote its pricing on the website, it seems to start at $1000/month, paid annually.

User ratings

Some customers focused on the tool’s ease of use, commenting that they were able to create product tours on their own without any issues.

Comparison table

Tips for creating effective guided tours for demos

Here are our tips that will help you create effective guided tours.

Get to know your audience

Knowing your target audience and their needs is crucial if you want to make an effective product tour. That’s why you should:

• Research users: Start by interviewing your existing customers. For instance, you can send them surveys or schedule meetings where you’ll get to know them better. That can help you identify your target audience’s pain points and needs.
• Define personas: Create user personas for your target audience. This will allow you to cater to different tastes with your guided product tours.
• Identify concerns: Users may have some doubts about your product. Address their concerns in the product tour to build trust.

Based on the collected information, you can make different demo videos to address different people. For instance, Skodel, a HowdyGo customer, has different demos for workplaces and education.

Define demo goals

Sit down with the team and decide what your goals are. You can ask these questions:

• Which features and benefits do we want to showcase?
• Should we highlight use cases or customer stories?
• Which pain points does the product solve?
• What actions should the user take after watching the product tour?

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Once you answer the questions, you’ll have a clear goal in mind, which will help you create an effective product tour.

Keep it simple

The demo should be clear and to the point. You can achieve that by:

• Using clear language
• Not overwhelming viewers with too much information
• Incorporating visuals
• Including navigation

Users will engage with easy-to-follow content, and your product tour should get straight to the point without any fluff. Case in point, Ansarada, which uses HowdyGo to teach users how to edit, collaborate, save and view MS Office files from within their virtual data room in a clear and concise way.

Use interactive elements

Interactive elements ensure your prospects are engaged while watching the demo. You can add different types of interactive elements, including:

• Clickable hotspots
• GIFs and videos
• Animations
• Story telling

The point is – don’t use only text in your demos. There are many other interactive elements that actually keep viewers interested and encourage them to click through the entire demo.

ADInstruments leverages the HowdyGo Editor to add chapters and annotations for easier navigation through each lesson.

Conclusion

It’s important that you find a guided walkthrough software tool that fits your budget and needs, so you don’t waste time learning a tool you won’t end up using. The market offers platforms with different features, use cases and pricing. You should find the one that gives you more bang for your buck.

HowdyGo is an easy-to-use HTML interactive demo tool. With just a few clicks, it creates a demo of your product, helping you showcase all relevant features to potential customers.

Personalization and customization options ensure you appeal to every prospect out there. Unlike other tools, HowdyGo offers unlimited demos and user seats on all pricing plans. That ensures your entire team can come together to build an extensive and engaging demo library.

We helped SaaS companies create over 1,000 demos, but don’t trust our word, try it yourself.

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FAQs

What is a guided walkthrough?

A guided walkthrough is an asset that helps new users understand how a product or service works.

What is an interactive walkthrough?

An interactive walkthrough is a step-by-step guide for users in which they need to participate, i.e., click through or insert information, to learn a particular product or service.

How do you make an app walkthrough?

For a walkthrough, you need a demo platform like HowdyGo. This tool lets you capture, edit, customize, personalize and share the app walkthrough with customers.

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