Pendo.io vs. Smartlook

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Pendo.io
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
Pendo.io is a product engagement platform with features for in-app analytics, surveys and feedback, and guidance.N/A
Smartlook
Score 8.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Smartlook is an analytics solution tool for websites, iOS/Android apps, and various app frameworks, that answers the "whys" behind users' actions. It helps users understand precisely how customers interact with website and app — watch recordings, create heatmaps, use automatic tracked events, and build conversion funnels. Data is seen on one central dashboard, which enables sharing and collaborating with colleagues. This is to support clear, data-driven decision-making for product managers,…
$55
per month 5000 sessions
Pricing
Pendo.ioSmartlook
Editions & Modules
*Free
Free
Base
Contact sales team
Core
Contact sales team
Pulse
Contact sales team
Ultimate
Contact sales team
Pro
$55
per month 5000 sessions
Free
Free forever
per month 3000 sessions
Enterprise
Custom pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Pendo.ioSmartlook
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsAll Smartlook packages support both web and mobile app platforms.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Pendo.ioSmartlook
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Pendo.ioSmartlook
Small Businesses
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Medium-sized Companies
ChurnZero
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Score 9.6 out of 10
Siteimprove
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 7.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Pendo.ioSmartlook
Likelihood to Recommend
9.8
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Pendo.ioSmartlook
Likelihood to Recommend
Pendo.io is very well suited for organizations, who want to quickly connect with Customers without even directly talking to them. Pendo.io allows in-app guides and documentation to help organizations connect with their customers and guide them in their product. The feature tracking capability is the best to understand the page/feature usage also by segment to categorize and understand user behavior. Replays are somewhat helpful but still can have improvements. Less appropriate where the customer base is less.
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Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money.
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Pros
  • Analytics - ability to rebuild new analytics back to the snippet install date
  • Guides & Resource Center - ability to create and deploy guides without the need ofr development.
  • Feedback, polls, surveys and NPS - quantative and qualative data is invaluable.
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  • Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys.
  • Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams.
  • Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers.
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Cons
  • The guide builder UI could be a bit more user-friendly; it's hard to remember where the different options are at first and takes some practice.
  • Interpreting user paths visually can be tricky at times, especially when trying to understand where drop-offs or blockers occur.
  • More granular user permissions so that I don't need to grant full admin rights to a user if I want to let them edit translations on a guide, for example.
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  • Events -- but I think this is something that we could improve ourselves in our system.
  • Create some suggestions for funnels and heatmaps.
  • Give general insights for a certain period of time, e.g. from Oct. 7th to 12th, 75 users left the checkout step and 60% of them left due to a payment issue. IDK just bringing some ideas!
  • Send an e-mail with main insights.
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Likelihood to Renew
We have had an excellent experience with Pendo. When we've had questions or concerns, Pendo is very quick to respond and communicate with us. We have experienced top-notch customer support and customer engagement. We have actually modeled some of our implementation and product processes after Pendo's examples.
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As my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too.
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Usability
It is intuitive for core tasks like tracking feature usage, building Guides, and viewing dashboards. The interface is clean and well structured, making it easy for product managers and operational teams to get value quickly without heavy technical support. However, there is a noticeable learning curve when setting up advanced custom events, reports, or integrations, which can take some time and internal knowledge-sharing to master.
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Smartlook is very intuitive and simple for an average programmer (I don't know if it will be as simple for a normal user). We have never had to resort to looking for information on the web or ask for help for something we didn't understand or didn't work as expected.
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Reliability and Availability
Every time I have logged into Pendo, the service has been available for me to use. The page has never been down when I am trying to get info from there.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Everything loads fairly quickly and it's not slow. I don't use an integration, I log in straight in the webpage.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
They've been great anytime that we have needed help with something. They also have some really great help articles. We're able to figure most things out through their articles, but when we've had to call in they've been very helpful and we haven't had any problems. I'd highly recommend working with them.
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I am always very happy when a company offers the option to use online chat, as I do not like to call customer support and writing an email is just too slow and cumbersome. I did not even expect a reply right away, yet it took the customer support team less than a minute to respond to my problem.
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Online Training
The training schedule was well thought out and tailored to meet our needs. Chantelle stayed with us through the whole implementation and made sure that we were good to go.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Use Segment to install and cut developers out of the work cycle!
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Pendo.io excels at creating guides. The editor experience is precisely what anyone working with a DAP tool desires – unobstructed and focused on a single screen. Pendo.io boasts AI features, and the customization options exceed expectations. When we became more familiar with the product, we questioned why we hadn't considered it sooner. Pendo.io has simplified analytics, making them as straightforward as bread and butter. The number of widgets available for data representation in the dashboard is astounding. Furthermore, Pendo.io offers a wealth of features, including feature tagging, webpage tagging, Pendo Listen, NPS surveys, a resource center, and more. I used WalkMe for three years and encountered challenges achieving the desired flow for customer onboarding, which sometimes proved difficult. In contrast, Pendo.io makes everything achievable thanks to its ability to incorporate custom code into guide creations.
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Like I mentioned, Smartlook is younger than FullStory and it seems like they're trying to improve. The dashboards are lacking. I wish I had more control over what I see there instead of the standard. We use the API to determine customer name and company and I'd like to see some custom dashboards.
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Scalability
The system is pretty flexible and scalable, I have used it in different browsers and devices without issues.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Increasing revenue by providing an awareness mechanism for add-on modules
  • Increasing adoption by providing guidance through new user flows and feature availability
  • Allowing us to promote events and recruit users for UAT using both embedded and static guides
  • Improving conversion from free trials by delivering key value messages during the trial experience.
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  • We have increased the conversion rate from the beginning till now with 120%.
  • We redesigned our landing pages and decreased the bounce rate by 41%.
  • We rethinked and redesigned our menu structure and internal site linking to increase the time users spent on our site based on the data we got from Smartlook analysis.
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ScreenShots

Smartlook Screenshots

Screenshot of HeatmapsScreenshot of RecordingsScreenshot of DashboardsScreenshot of EventsScreenshot of FunnelsScreenshot of Analytics for websites & mobile apps