Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ShepherdJS VS Userflow

Compare ShepherdJS VS Userflow and see what are their differences

ShepherdJS logo ShepherdJS

Guide your users through a tour of your app.

Userflow logo Userflow

Turbo-charge your user onboarding and convert more customers
  • ShepherdJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-29
  • Userflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-10

ShepherdJS features and specs

  • User Guidance
    ShepherdJS allows for creating guided tours and feature introductions, which can help in onboarding new users or guiding existing users through new features effectively.
  • Customizability
    The library provides a wide range of customization options for the appearance of the tour steps as well as their behavior, allowing developers to tailor the user experience to meet specific application needs.
  • Ease of Integration
    ShepherdJS is designed to be easy to integrate with modern JavaScript applications and supports various JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue.
  • Accessibility
    It includes built-in features to enhance accessibility, ensuring that tours can be experienced by all users, including those with disabilities.
  • Community and Support
    ShepherdJS has an active community and is backed by frequent updates and bug fixes, which can be valuable for developers seeking support and reliability.

Possible disadvantages of ShepherdJS

  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of integration, there can still be a learning curve associated with understanding and implementing the full range of features ShepherdJS offers, especially for new developers.
  • Dependencies
    ShepherdJS has dependencies that need to be managed, which can sometimes lead to conflicts or increase the difficulty of the setup process in certain environments.
  • Performance Overhead
    Implementing tours in a web application may introduce additional DOM elements and require JavaScript execution, potentially impacting performance, especially on resource-constrained devices.
  • Limited Offline Capability
    Like many web-based libraries, ShepherdJS requires a browser environment to function, which can limit its effectiveness in offline scenarios or in cases where network connections are unstable.

Userflow features and specs

  • Onboarding Experience
    Userflow provides an intuitive interface for creating user onboarding flows, making it easier for businesses to guide new users through their applications.
  • Customization
    It offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the onboarding experience to fit their unique brand and user needs.
  • Ease of Use
    The platform is known for its user-friendly design, enabling even those with limited technical skills to build comprehensive onboarding processes.
  • Integration
    Userflow integrates seamlessly with various third-party tools and platforms, enhancing its functionality and adaptability.
  • Analytics
    Provides robust analytics and reporting features, helping businesses to track user engagement and the effectiveness of their onboarding flows.
  • No-code Platform
    Userflow is a no-code solution, meaning it doesn't require any coding knowledge to create and manage user onboarding processes.
  • Support and Resources
    The platform has a strong support system and a wealth of resources, including documentation and tutorials, to help users get the most out of their service.

Possible disadvantages of Userflow

  • Pricing
    Userflow can be relatively expensive compared to other onboarding tools, which might be a concern for startups and small businesses with limited budgets.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of use, there can still be a learning curve for new users to understand all the features and best practices.
  • Customization Complexity
    While customization is a strong point, it can also lead to complexity in setup and maintenance, requiring more time and effort.
  • Feature Overload
    Some users might find the abundance of features overwhelming, particularly if they only need basic onboarding functionalities.
  • Limited Free Plan
    The free plan offered by Userflow is limited, potentially restricting access to advanced features that could be essential for some businesses.
  • Dependency on Internet Connection
    As a cloud-based service, Userflow is heavily dependent on a stable internet connection, which could pose problems in areas with unreliable internet access.

Analysis of Userflow

Overall verdict

  • Overall, Userflow is a strong choice for businesses looking to enhance their user onboarding experience. It provides an effective balance of ease-of-use and powerful functionality, making it a popular option among SaaS companies.

Why this product is good

  • Userflow is well-regarded for its intuitive interface for building and deploying in-app tours, onboarding sequences, and application walkthroughs without requiring extensive coding knowledge. It offers a robust suite of features that aim to enhance user engagement and improve retention by simplifying the user's learning curve within an application.

Recommended for

    Userflow is ideal for product managers, customer success teams, and growth-focused SaaS companies that need to improve user onboarding, reduce churn, and enhance user engagement through personalized, in-app guidance.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ShepherdJS and Userflow)
User Engagement
36 36%
64% 64
User Onboarding And Engagement
User Experience
38 38%
62% 62
Digital Adoption
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ShepherdJS and Userflow

ShepherdJS Reviews

8 Best Usetiful Alternatives and Competitors That Are More Professional
Shepherd.js is not a fully developed 3rd party tool like most of the other alternatives that I listed. It is an open-source library to make it easier to create simple product tours.
Source: userguiding.com

Userflow Reviews

15 best user onboarding software you need to try in 2023
Taking a similar approach to UserGuiding, Userflow adds pop-ups, hotspots, checklists and other features on top of web app screens to guide the newcomer through the main product features. You must first install Useflowโ€™s Javascript into your web app script. Thereafter, no additional coding is required.

Social recommendations and mentions

ShepherdJS might be a bit more popular than Userflow. We know about 10 links to it since March 2021 and only 8 links to Userflow. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ShepherdJS mentions (10)

  • 7 best product tour JavaScript libraries for frontend apps
    Shepherd.js is a simple JavaScript library aimed at easing the process of making user tours in web applications. It has a clear, intuitive interface wherein you describe your tour step-by-step, which helps improve the tour UX and enhance user understanding: Shepherd.js offers extensive customization options and seamless integration with your application. It prioritizes accessibility with full keyboard navigation.... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Using React Shepherd to build a site tour
    In this tutorial, I will show you how to use React Shepherd to easily implement a site tour on your website. React Shepherd is a lightweight wrapper library for Shepherd.js that allows us to create a walkthrough of a website โ€” either parts of the site or the whole application โ€” by using dialogs that represent steps that you create. At the end of this article, we will have a functioning site tour as shown in this... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Guided Tours Solution for Your Web Application
    Shepherd is a powerful and customizable open source JavaScript library for creating interactive tours and onboarding experiences in web applications. It uses another open source library Floating UI to render the dialog tours. It offers a simple setup process, dynamic content support, the ability to create custom actions and events, and theming and styling too. More importantly, it is responsive too and never goes... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Reddit: Help us design more content to onboard users
    Using/building something like this would go a long way (https://shepherdjs.dev/) and could also have the benefit of keeping the tours in parity with the current L2 UI. Source: over 2 years ago
  • What is the UX term for those pop-up boxes which helps users with their first few tasks after finishing onboarding?
    Weโ€™ve called them Product Tours https://shepherdjs.dev is good. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Userflow mentions (8)

  • Launch HN: Frigade (YC W23) โ€“ Faster, better product onboarding
    Are you able to share the main differences between yourselves and Userflow (https://userflow.com/)? Watching the video looked pretty similar. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Multi-Million Dollars in annual revenue with just 3 employees!
    Last week I had the opportunity of talking to another great founder. Esben Friis-Jensen is the cofounder of Userflow and his company has a multimillion-dollar annual revenue with just 3 employees. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Looking for recommendations on what to use to create a product walk through
    Iโ€™ve just put https://userflow.com/ into our product and I love it. We are bootstrapping - they have a bootstrappers plan $100/mo, a cost for onboarding I was happy to pay. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Roast my startup: sliceloop is a platform that helps with content operations management
    A client at a digital agency I used to work for used this for onboarding new customers to an online trading platform: https://userflow.com/. Source: over 3 years ago
  • What PRODUCT TOUR software do you like for an early SaaS?
    Https://userflow.com/ is pretty good. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ShepherdJS and Userflow, you can also consider the following products

Intro.js - Simple Javascript framework for adding screen tips

Userpilot - Product user experience software for product & UX teams

UserGuiding - Create in-app experiences with the most straightforward product adoption platform โ€” quick implementation, lasting user engagement.

TourGuideJS - Intuitive and customisable tours for user onboarding. A free and complete alternative to IntroJS, Sheperd and the rest.

Appcues - Improve user onboarding, feature activation & more โ€” no code required! Stop waiting on dev and start increasing customer engagement today. Try it for free.

Bootstrap Tour - The easiest way to show people how to use your website.