Software

Stonly Alternative: Using Nickelled to Boost Product Adoption

August 24, 2021

stonly-alternative

Stonly is a user education platform allowing SaaS companies to create engaging knowledge bases and product guides. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right user onboarding or support solution for your SaaS. In fact, there are Stonly alternatives on the market (like Nickelled) that might be more effective, more interactive, and easier to set up. 

So, in this article, we’ll take a look at the key features, pricing, and pros and cons of Stonly vs. Nickelled, to help you decide which onboarding software would be better for you.

Main Differences Between Stonly Vs. Nickelled

  1. Nickelled allows you to create and embed interactive product guides into your web app in just minutes with no coding required. With Stonly, while creating your guides doesn’t require technical knowledge, you do need to be comfortable coding the Knowledge Base into your SaaS. 
  1. Nickelled allows you to create clear, interactive, and customizable guides with a range of UI patterns proven to work in user manuals and reduce onboarding time by weeks. On the other hand, Stonly offers limited UI elements, focusing on creating Knowledge Bases for user support rather than interactive onboarding flows.
  1. Nickelled offers unlimited product guide views and team members access on every level of our transparent pricing plan. That means our software is scalable, no matter the size of your business, and there are no hidden costs. In contrast, Stonly’s pricing model is based on a limited number of guide views per month and starts at just one team member seat.

What is Stonly?

Stonly markets itself as a “new medium for help and how-to content”, allowing SaaS companies to create product guides and knowledge bases. It was founded in France in 2018 with a mission to help people adopt new skills and become more successful with the products they use.

It’s an affordable user education solution for SMEs looking for a self-serve support platform and is currently trusted by companies including Calendly, Happn, BackMarket, and Malt.

Stonly: Key Features

  • Knowledge Base: create interactive help centers, like Nickelled’s solution for Gumtree, that give internal and external users the solution they need, when they need it (not included on their free price plan).
Stonly help center
  • Guides: create customizable, multi-path product tours with no coding.
  • Data integration for contextual onboarding: segment and trigger guides based on user profile and behavior (unlimited triggering on higher price plans only).
  • Feedback and analytics: collect quantitative and qualitative data, including NPS surveys, about your guide completion rate and your users’ sentiment (higher price plans only).
Stonly overview screen
  • Localization: multiple languages available on higher price plans.
  • Stonly Widget: install the Knowledge Base and Guides into your native or web app.

Stonly Pricing

Stonly pricing plans

Stonly’s pricing model is based on staggered limits on the number of guide views and users, both of which are unlimited on Nickelled’s pricing plans. Stonly also limits the number of guides unless you sign up for their Business or Custom packages. 

While they offer a free plan, unlike many Stonly alternatives, this doesn’t include their Knowledge Base, arguably their most powerful feature. Finally, like with Nickelled, you can do a 14-day free trial to test out their tools.

Stonly Pros And Cons

Pros

  • Offers free/cheap plans for businesses with very basic needs
  • Advanced analytics
  • More engaging than traditional knowledge bases and more effective than a chatbot

Cons

  • Guide views and user seats are limited, so most companies will require the Business package as standard
  • Not the most comprehensive user onboarding experience compared to other Stonly alternatives, as it lacks UI elements like launchers, checklists, etc.

Stonly Alternative: What is Nickelled?

Nickelled is a powerful onboarding solution designed to be easy to use by all, with no coding required for guide creation and a great UI. We increase support capacity, boost product adoption, and reduce churn by helping businesses provide a better customer experience.

A bootstrapped company founded in London in 2014 by expert consultants, Nickelled now serves a global customer base from the UK, US, and Singapore and is trusted by companies including KPMG, Statista, and Pitney Bowes. 

Nickelled: Key Features

  • Interactive onboarding experiences with a range of UI elements: create great onboarding flows using our guided product tours, tooltips, banners, hotspots, launchers, checklists, and progress bars.
Nickelled onboarding flows
  • Segmentation and contextual flow triggering: show relevant content to users based on their profile and actions.
  • Zero downloads: no software downloads or browser extensions are required to access our guides. They work for web apps across mobile, desktop, and tablet.
  • Integration with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Zendesk.
  • Customization: use a small amount of Javascript to customize your onboarding flows (optional). No coding or developer time is required to create the flows themselves – and in fact, you can create your first guide in just a few minutes, unlike many other Stonly alternatives.
  • Feedback and analytics: Nickelled includes in-app feedback surveys after every product tour (optional) and tracks user behavior to compile advanced reports about your onboarding flows.
  • World-class support: we respond to most queries within one hour.

Nickelled Pricing

Nickelled annual pricing plans

Nickelled’s pricing plan is clear and transparent, offering unlimited user seats and guide views with every package. Our pricing is instead based on the number of onboarding flows you create.

While Nickelled may seem more expensive than Stonly at first glance, our $91 per month Starter plan actually includes higher than their $99 per month Business plan. All of our plans include a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Nickelled Pros And Cons

Pros

  • Very easy to set up: zero developer time to create guides, just a small amount of CSS for customization
  • Create interactive, comprehensive onboarding flows
  • Includes unlimited users and views
  • Advanced analytics and built-in user feedback collection

Cons

  • Can be used for web apps only, not native apps

Stonly Vs. Nickelled: Feature Comparison

FeatureStonlyNickelled
Interactive guides with a range of UI elements✅ Hotspots, Tooltips, Tours✅Hotspots, Launchers, Tooltips, Checklists, Progress bars, Tours
User segmentation & flow targeting
Advanced analytics✅ *(Higher price plans only)
Localization into multiple languages✅ *(Higher price plans only)
Customization with CSS
Customer support
Feedback surveys
Integrations✅ *(Higher price plans only)
Widget for native and web apps
Pricing$99 per month for Business plan with 5 team members, up to 4000 views and unlimited guides$91 per month for Starter plan with unlimited team members, views and up to 10 onboarding flows

Use Nickelled to Boost Product Adoption

While Stonly is an effective and affordable toolset geared to support users through interactive help content, it’s not a comprehensive user onboarding solution. If you’re looking for the latter to boost product adoption and reduce churn, Nickelled is the better option for your SaaS.

Nickelled is easy to install, with no coding, downloads, or browser extensions required. It offers a much wider range of UI elements to create more interactive guides than Stonly does. Plus, with unlimited views and user seats on each of our transparent pricing plans, it’s designed to be scalable as your business grows. 

Need more proof? Check out Nickelled’s success stories or try our user onboarding solutions for free now.