Appcues is online software for creating in-product experiences such as user onboarding, feature announcements, etc. without writing any code. (The vendor believes it's the non-technical people who oftentimes have the best information about a software user's needs and desires.) The goal of using Appcues is to improve product engagement within the user's own customer base.
$299
per month/billed monthly
Braze
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Braze is a customer engagement platform that enables relevant and memorable experiences between consumers and the brands they love. With Braze, global brands can ingest and process customer data in real time, orchestrate and optimize contextually relevant, cross-channel marketing campaigns and continuously evolve their customer engagement strategies.
Every tool has its pros and cons and niche areas for implementation. Braze offers the value of a variety of multi-media channels, which we leverage for in-app messages and email campaigns, for a plethora of campaign opportunities. Appcues and WalkMe only offer in-app messages …
It is well suited for SaaS products or services that have a highly complex user interface. Through Appcues, you can ensure that people discover all the existing and new features and make them understand the value of your product as soon as possible to address the evergreen issue of churn. But if your user interface is really messed up, you should change the product itself instead of using a tool like Appcues to explain everything on the screen.
Braze is likely at its best for companies that engage with customers on both an app-level and web-level. It gets even better if you have the opportunity to leverage some of the additional channels Braze unlocks such as in-app messages and content cards. If you're only using Braze to send SMS and Email and the occasional push, you're likely better off finding a cheaper platform. Braze organizes its analytics in a very odd way in my experience, so I'd also recommend pairing Braze with a secondary reporting tool of your choosing.
We were extremely surprised that there are not any Appcues used in Appcues. The app is pretty easy to use, once you figure out how to use it. There were not any type of tutorials when we logged in that quickly walked through how to setup a flow.
Appcues has lots of support articles, however they are almost so numerous that it was hard to find simple onboarding documentation that we found useful.
The different tooltips and product actions are great, but being able to customize the different cues a little bit more by changing sizes and aspect ratios could be an improvement.
Braze's usability is one of the main things that makes it stand out from its competitors. The UX and UI are excellent, and it ensures it is not overcomplicated where it doesn't need to be. The online documentation is also handy to help support teams in your business.
Very responsive and helpful on simple questions, but not great other than that. They do not have a way for the customer/user to escalate a ticket. You have to contact your rep and in some cases, they don't respond within 24 hours so you have no idea if they have escalated it. There is no phone number for an urgent issue - you have to rely on email
It has a much, much better user interface, better customer care, and of course better pricing. This along with the fact that they were very accommodating for our use case ensured we went ahead with Appcues.
Compared to Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Braze is much more user friendly, flexible and provides for easier segmentation and personalization. The reporting in Braze is also much easier to use. Compared to Marketo, Braze has a better UI and UX, and an easier learning curve for new users. The set up and maintenance of customer journeys is much easier. The only thing I miss from Marketo is the ability to view the customer log, which allows you to see the automation that happens against each user profile, allowing for easier troubleshooting.
Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users who abandoned their cart after checking out with a product/service and leaving their chart or 24 hours.
Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users whose credit card failed when trying to upgrade to a paid account.
Negative: With the plethora of teams (disciplines / business units / markets) with access to braze, it's easy to accidentally over-nurture users.
