Pendo Pricing: How Much Does the Onboarding Software Cost?

Pendo Pricing Hero Image

If you’re looking for information on Pendo pricing, you might be having a difficult time finding it, like many of its competitors in the onboarding software niche.

Pendo’s pricing ranges from four to five figures annually according to our research, but it’s not publicly listed. Instead, they supply a bespoke quote to each potential client on request.

Solutions like Nickelled, where the pricing is provided openly on the website are very much in the minority.

What Is Pendo Used For?

Pendo is a product suite that specializes in user onboarding and feature adoption. It provides analytics based on user behavior to build effective guided tours that bring in engagement. It is one of many products in the crowded onboarding software market industry and has clients such as CISCO, OpenTable, and Marketo. Since it’s used by large enterprises, we can assume the pricing goes high at the upper end, and the product may be too complex for smaller companies.

User Onboarding

Pendo tooltip

Pendo allows its clients to create guides and walkthroughs that are integrated into a website or application.This helps users save time by finding what they need quickly, and can lead to improved ROI on customer-facing applications, and increased productivity for employee-facing software.

User analytics

Pendo Product Metrics

Pendo’s analytics allow you to analyze which elements of your app or website your users aren’t engaging with, and can be integrated with other analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Tag Manager. Once you’ve identified these elements, you can use Pendo’s user onboarding functionality to streamline complex processes or point your users in the right direction.

It also has a product roadmap feature that allows teams to understand which updates to prioritize based on user feedback.

However, there’s a caveat here. If you example Pendo’s pricing pages (more on that below), you’ll see that packages are delineated by the feature set you’re using. So if you want the all-singing, all-dancing product that includes features like the product roadmap, you’ll need to plump for a more expensive package.

In-app support

Pendo allows you to provide support to your users by creating walkthroughs on pages that often cause confusion. This allows them to get the support they need within the app itself, and means they won’t have to burden your customer support team.

Customer-facing & employee solutions

Pendo is optimized for use on both customer and employee-facing solutions. Whether you’re looking to train your staff or improve your sales via your website, Pendo can do both. 

Pendo vs Nickelled

Nickelled user interface

Nickelled, in contrast, is much easier to use than Pendo and requires no coding knowledge to set up. It also offers similar onboarding features, such as app guides, embedded video and multiple triggering functions. It is also significantly more affordable than Pendo. 

We have a proven track record of helping clients, such as eBay, Sears Gumtree and Gengo, improve their on-page engagement by customers and staff respectively. Nickelled’s up-to-the-minute insights allow users to make changes in real-time, to ensure the best possible user experience.

Finally, unlike Pendo, which retains user data for seven years, Nickelled does not need to collect or store user data, potentially making Nickelled a better option for privacy-focused businesses.

Nickelled Key Features

  • Product adoption tools: Interactive guided tours, tooltips, embedded video, etc.
  • Delivered from the cloud – no need for installations
  • No coding required
  • Analyze sessions in real-time
  • Full-screen, interactive experience on all devices
  • Feedback surveys help you monitor and improve

Pendo’s Pricing Tiers Explained

On its website pricing page, Pendo offers a number of different pricing options. However, prices are not provided upfront, and potential customers must get in touch for a quote. The service is divided up into different pricing bands, with those higher up the pricing scale offering more features. 

Pendo Pricing

There is a free version that allows users to create guides with a maximum of 1,000 users per month. However, this doesn’t offer the use of insights and analytics, which is an essential feature for any onboarding software. Equally, if you are using the product for a SaaS tool geared towards prosumers, it’s likely that 1,000 users won’t get you particularly far. 

Key takeaway: if you want to get meaningful results out of using Pendo, you’ll have to pay for one of the higher tiers.

The Team package allows access to a number of key features that will allow you to get some value from Pendo.It allows access to analytics and mobile functionality, as well as increasing the number of monthly users. These are all necessary features for any onboarding software. This is the basic version, and the most cost-effective, but it does lack some of the more powerful features offered by the more expensive packages.

The main features of the Pro package are the inclusion of feedback, and the ability to integrate one other application, such as WordPress and Salesforce. User feedback provides an invaluable cache of qualitative and quantitative data that you can draw on to make positive changes. 

The Enterprise package allows three integrations, as well as an additional application key so it can be used on another website or app. It also offers a security audit and live chat support. This is an option best suited to big clients with big budgets, so if you’re looking for a good deal you probably want to look elsewhere.

While it’s not clear how much each version costs, the Team version is clearly the cheapest while Enterprise is clearly the most expensive. So, how much does Pendo actually cost?

How Much Does It Really Cost?

Despite the lack of clear information available on Pendo’s website regarding pricing, we have done our own research and found some testimonials from customers. A number of Pendo customers have provided information about what they paid on the software forum Capiche

A positive aspect of non-transparent pricing is that it appears to be open to negotiation. One of the users in the screenshot above says they were able to negotiate their yearly cost down significantly. However, the overall picture is that Pendo is one of the more expensive solutions available. Another user reports being quoted $30,000 per year for what appears to be one of the more advanced packages, which is in line with industry leaders such as WalkMe. Whatfix, which is often quotes as a competitor to Pendo, seems to be similarly priced (read more on that in our comparison here).

Another user claims they were sold a startup package for $12,000 a year. This package is not listed on the pricing page of their website, but since it is aimed at startups it’s fair to assume that this is on the cheaper end of the scale. This is a particularly high cost for a small business, suggesting again that Pendo can be quite pricey.

Nickelled Offers Transparent Pricing

By contrast, the pricing model for Nickelled is completely transparent. There are three pricing tiers, each of which has a monthly price provided upfront on the pricing page. As well as being transparent, these prices are much more cost-effective than Pendo. 

The Premium package costs less than $5,000 per year. Nickelled also offers a 14-day free trial (and a 30-day money-back guarantee), which grants access to the full product. 

The primary difference between the price tiers is the number of guides, known as flows, that you’re able to create. This makes Nickelled’s different packages much easier to understand than Pendo’s. There are a few minor differences in each, but for the most part, your experience with Nickelled will be very similar whichever package you select. 

Nickelled Flow example

The Starter option allows you to create 10 guides, the Growth option allows 25, and the Premium option has a limit of 100 guides. Users can also upgrade or downgrade if their priorities change, accessing more guides if they need them, or downgrading to less if they aren’t creating enough.

Nickelled pricing packages

Cost-effectiveness

So, which solution provides the most return on investment? 

Pendo cost-effectiveness

To recap, we’ve found that some users have been quoted $30,000 a year, which isn’t much less than industry leader WalkMe. 

It’s also worth noting that Pendo doesn’t seem to be used by as many major corporations as WalkMe, based on customer logo brands featured on their sites. While WalkMe can count Microsoft, Adobe, and HP among its clientele, Pendo’s biggest displayed client is CISCO. 

Pendo does offer a free version that remains free forever, but it is quite limited in terms of features and doesn’t offer analytics. While Pendo is clearly a quality solution, there are certainly more cost-effective solutions available.

Nickelled cost-effectiveness

Nickelled has many of the key features offered by Pendo at a much more transparent and competitive cost. With the free trial and money-back guarantee, Nickelled allows new clients to use Nickelled for up to 44 days for free if they decide it’s not for them. 

Additionally, Nickelled’s lowest price band is cheaper than even the most conservative yearly quote we could find for Pendo. The Nickelled Starter plan costs $1,089 per year, while the smallest Pendo quote we could find evidence of was $2,000 for a package with just the tour functionality.

Key takeaways – Pendo vs Nickelled

Pendo is a powerful but expensive solution that is best suited to large businesses. All of its best features appear reserved for clients that can afford to pay for their most expensive packages which, as we’ve seen, rack up bills of tens of thousands of dollars every year. 

Nickelled is a cost-effective alternative to Pendo, offering many of the same features for a fraction of the cost. Nickelled was built to provide onboarding software that is easy to use with no coding required. This makes it a user-friendly, accessible piece of software that you can use to start achieving results quickly.

Start your Nickelled free trial today

Still not convinced that Nickelled is the software for you? Sign up for your free trial today to get access to an unlimited version of Nickelled for 14 days.