Storylane vs. Walnut vs. HowdyGo - Compare interactive product demo tools
If you're a marketer evaluating interactive product demo platforms there are a variety of options on the market. These are the decision points we see as important factors:
TLDR; Storylane vs. Walnut vs. HowdyGo
If you're looking for a HTML demo tool, HowdyGo is by far the most affordable option, starting at $79/month for unlimited users. If you are a single user and only require screenshot demos, then Storylane will work best for you. Screenshot demos come with significant limitations, so we've tried our best to explain the differences below.
Screenshot demos (Storylane $40/month/user tier) are "clickable slideshows" that cycle through screenshots of your product. This limits their interactivity and your ability to customize them, but means that each "slide" can be anything, including a screenshot of a product that isn't web based.
HTML demos (Walnut, HowdyGo and Storylane $500/month tier) are perfect clones of your product. Viewers can interact with elements on the page, scroll, hover and click on things like drop-down lists as if they were in your actual app. In addition, they allow you to edit the content of the captured app after recording (text, images, etc).
When should you choose Storylane?
You should consider their screenshot demos if your product is not web based or you need to insert custom images instead of product screenshots as part of your demos. It's a very affordable option, and if you are a single user and don't need the additional customisation and interactivity HTML demos offer it will get the job done.
You should consider their HTML demo tier if you need a bit from both worlds (maybe you have a web app and a native app you need to demo).
When should you choose Walnut.io?
If you need to convince a lot of your colleagues to get on board before you get started, Walnut has a traditional sales approach that's suited to handling those conversations.
Their product is extensive and suited to teams who can have someone specifically responsible for demo creation to learn the process of building them. They've built a recognizable brand and their demos are high quality and full HTML.
When should you choose HowdyGo?
HowdyGo is built from the ground up to get you up and running fast with pixel-perfect HTML product demos. We provide friendly pricing and the guidance you need to prove the value of interactive product demos for your business.
Experiment friendly pricing
Fast learning curve
Individual guidance from the founding team
Starting with interactive demos can be daunting, but they've made it simple. We've easily integrated tools like Hubspot, we have clear reporting and attribution so we can track impact on things like conversion rates, and setting up/testing demos has been seamless."
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Once you build your first few interactive product demos, you'll find there are loads of use-cases for them and you'll want to involve other team members in the process. Reprise has strict limits on the number of demos and users you're able to onboard.
Aside from allowing unlimited users and demos, HowdyGo's price point is also much more friendly to smaller marketing teams, and will allow you to prove the value of interactive product demos to your business without a large upfront investment.
Compare functionality
Demo quality and editability
All three platforms capture high quality HTML demos and offer the ability to edit anything like text and images in the recorded UI. For Storylane, this only applies from their $500/month tier and above.
HowdyGo is the only platform that offers HTML Interaction Replay, the ability to smoothly replay transitions between screens exactly as they happen in your platform. While traditional HTML demos jump between different screens of your product, HowdyGo can show any animated transitions that occur between steps (eg. drag and drop, animated charts, multiple cursors, etc.)
Annotation customisation
All platforms offer extensive customisations options for the annotations you use to guide viewers through a demo. When demoing complex platforms, breaking a long demo into smaller chunks using checklists and demo centers can be especially useful to improve engagement and HowdyGo offers the most flexibility on this.
Demo analytics
Demo analytics are offered by all three platforms. You can capture leads using forms, identify companies viewing demos and track how many viewers are engaging. HowdyGo also offers the ability to drill down into individual demos, understand how they are performing and identify ways to optimize them.
Integrations
Extensive integrations are offered by all platforms with CRMs (Eg. Hubspot, Salesforce), marketing tools (Eg. Marketo) and analytics tools (Eg. Google Analytics, Segment).
Compare support
Getting started with interactive tours can feel a little intimidating. What should I demo? How should I capture and tell the story? Where should I put it to get the most impact?
That's why getting support and guidance is fundamental to your success when you start experimenting - HowdyGo is the only platform that provides more than just product support.
Example demos built with each software
We've picked some of the best examples of interactive product demos built with each platform to help you understand the look and feel you get from each.
HowdyGo example - Flagsmith
Storylane example - Clari
Walnut example - Sailpoint
FAQs
They replicate a flow in your SaaS and let you easily add onboarding-style callouts to a walkthrough.
This means you can embed your product, loaded with data, into your website and let people self-educate/self-qualify at their own pace.
Unlike an onboarding tool, it shows your product in a state that demonstrates to prospects functionality without making them guess what it’s capable of, when they're still deciding whether they should sign up for an account or book a demo.
If you're comparing different vendors, it's important to understand that interactive demo tools are split into these two categories:
- Full interactive HTML demos like HowdyGo, which let you edit your app after capturing, personalize content and generally offer a more convincing experience to your prospects. They feel high quality, like getting a new iPhone vs. your old Nokia 3310.
- Screenshot capture demos are effectively slideshows of your app. These tools are typically cheaper, and it can be a bit easier to get started. You're also unlikely to run into any weird recording glitches.
Learn more in our article Interactive Product Demos Explained.
If you would normally need your sales/engineering team to help you make a screen recording, the recording process is going to be similar. The difference is that as a marketer you will get complete flexibility to edit the demo after it's been captured.
We'll help you. We've created hundreds of demos of SaaS products, we're technically minded and we want to help you succeed. Things we've done in the past to help new customers get started:
- Deployed products on AWS.
- Interacted with customer APIs.
- Created LinkedIn advertising campaigns to demo an experimentation tool.
- Read through 50-page strategy decks to understand how a product works.
This is hands-on, in-the-weeds, real support like we are part of your team. Is this highly unprofitable support? Sort of. If you churn the next month, yeah, we'll lose money on that level of support. But we know that results are all that matters and we trust you'll get them.
In addition, HowdyGo is accessible to the entire team - We don't charge per user.
You can see, edit, duplicate and share demos across your team easily. This makes it easy to get a sales/engineer involved if you have to.
This is our 5 step simple guide to making an interactive demo:
- Capture a flow of your app that often gets demonstrated by your sales team.
- Add annotations, reuse messaging and convey a simple story that highlights your value proposition.
- Delete or auto-progress through unnecessary steps, your prospects want you to get to the point.
- Publish your demo and copy the embed code
- Paste the embed code into your CMS (whether it's Webflow, Unbounce, Wordpress, Ghost, Wix, etc.)
Your first demo shouldn't be too complicated. Just get started and have a bit of fun. It's really easy to add new steps, change the order around, edit text, etc.
TLDR; You can't. But they are great source material for creating a more engaging demo experience.
HowdyGo is designed to capture interactive, responsive HTML. This allows you to do cool stuff like editing the content of your app after capturing it, personalize what's on screen with templated values, and get analytics that are driven by actual user interactions (not just passive views).
Not to mention the fact it really feels like they are using your app.
Videos serve a purpose, but a 10 minute walkthrough doesn't do your product justice.
The most common use-case we see is an embedded walkthrough of your software on your website.
While there are a whole host of potential use cases (and you can see some of them in our documentation) we recommend starting out by just creating a simple Platform Overview demo of your software, or on a specific, popular portion of your software.
This is a great place to begin because it gives you something practical that can be shared on your website, or directly with prospects and leads.
We've built HowdyGo with integrations in mind, so when one of our customers needs a new one, we jump on it and make it happen.
There's good news though, everything in HowdyGo works without integrating (lead capture and analytics included), and, when we start building an integration it often takes less than a week to have it up and running.
Here's a quote from one of our customers:"Wow you guys are fast!!".
Jump in and get started, then have a chat with us and we'll move heaven and earth to get you up and running the way you want.
