Top 4 Hansel.io Alternatives in 2025

In-app engagement tools help growth and marketing folks improve monetization, adoption and activation. Modern consumer internet companies rely on tools like Hansel.io to shape user behaviour inside the app and to get them to carry out certain desired actions.

Hansel.io is a no-code product experience platform that helps product managers and growth marketers boost activation, conversions, feature adoption, and engagement by showing their users the right nudges and walkthroughs while they use the app. But Hansel.io has its downsides, such as limited nudge patterns, less-attractive customization and lack of features like AND/OR conditions for targeting that are still not implemented according to reviews.

The best alternatives to Hansel.io include Plotline, Leap (acquired by Whatfix), Appcues Mobile and Pendo Mobile. In this blog, we cover the feature set of these alternatives to help you make a decision on which tool to go ahead with.

Plotline

Plotline is an in-app engagement platform for modern consumer internet companies that enables product and marketing teams in high-growth consumer companies engage with their users from within their product, in real-time.

With Plotline, B2C companies can:

1. Drive monetization: Increase free to paid conversions, convert more users with real-time offers, and drive higher revenue per user
2. Improve adoption: Easily launch new feature announcements and guide users to undiscovered features
3. Increase activation rates: Build product tours, onboarding guides, to take users to their aha moments and activate them
4. Get feedback: Use contextual in-app surveys to get instant feedback from users

It has a no-code interface and fast setup. With integrations to all your preferred tech stack (Mixpanel, Amplitude, CleverTap, Segment, etc.) the tool can be installed in as little as 30 minutes.

Here are some other reasons why you might want to consider Plotline over Hansel.

Compared to Hansel.io, Plotline offers an extensive UI template library

As stated earlier, Plotline enables you to design in-app experiences with high flexibility that seamlessly blend in with your UI.

Plotline offers in-app nudges like tooltips, coach marks, stories, spotlights, modals, bottom sheets, native UI embeds, PIP videos, etc with the flexibility for deep customization. You can also add engaging visuals like images, GIFs, and videos to those in-app nudges.

Journey builder to automate messaging sequences; not available in Hansel.io

You can automate messaging sequences using the visual builder to suit your team's specific needs . It is also possible to add multiple if/else branches, time delays, and more to ensure that relevant messaging goes to every single user by branching communications.

Real-time user segmentation

You can target the right audience with Plotline’s segmentation engine and create highly relevant messaging campaigns based on real-time user actions and personas.

You can also set trigger events or filter by user attributes to target a specific segment of your users. Importing user cohorts from tools like Mixpanel and Amplitude is also possible. Plotline’s SDK serves 150M end users and delivers a nudge within 100ms of an event fire.

Measure ROI on campaigns

Plotline enables you to build impactful campaigns that move your metrics. After your integration of the mobile app with Plotline’s SDK, you’ll be able to add goal events that you want to track in the dashboard. You can then track how users in your target and control cohorts performed and whether the nudge significantly impacted your metrics.

Run contextual in-app surveys

Plotline’s in-app surveys help product teams launch contextual micro-questions to specific user segments based on their activity within the app. They provide powerful event-based targeting with a popup delay of less than 100ms to help you target the right user at the right time. These in-app surveys can be customized to match your design themes. There are 50+ pre-built templates including CSAT, Drop-off reasons, etc to get up and running in minutes.

Plotline pricing

Pricing scales based on your MAUs and how many impressions you use. It starts around $500 per month for the Starter plan. You can get started with a 21-day free trial by booking a call with the team.

Leap (Acquired by Whatfix)

Leap is a digital adoption platform that helps companies deliver modern and easy onboarding, effective training, and better support to users through contextual content displayed at the time of need. They are a no-code tool providing some general features like targeting, audio support, and multi-lingual assistance to enhance the in-app experience. It also lets you to measure usage and performance from the dashboard.

However, a number of Leap users themselves are now looking for alternatives because after the acquisition by Whatfix, the product and support quality have dropped drastically.

Solutions offered by Leap

Onboarding & training

Leap helps in guiding your new users to their goals using multi-screen walkthroughs. This shows them the value faster and leads them to activation. An additional feature of creating a self-paced training program using checklists of interactive walkthroughs is also possible that lets your users learn by doing.

In-app nudges and messages

‍Bringing the underused but valuable features to focus on through contextual tooltips, highlights, beacons, labels, & spotlights is also provided by Leap to solve various use cases. Configuring in-app surveys is also possible.

In-app help

‍On-screen guidance with videos and interactive walkthroughs are also provided by Leap so, they are engaged and get proper information. Live chat inside your app is also offered by Leap to provide real-time help for instant resolution.

Leap pricing

Leap provides custom-built pricing categorized into Engage (for consumer apps) and Adopt (for business apps). Both plans do not have a price estimation on the website which has to be requested through the chat option.

1. Engage: This is billed based on the MEUs with features of Onboarding, In-app messages, Nudge, and Delight provided.
2. Adopt: This is billed based on annual users with features of Onboarding, User training, and In-app support.

Appcues Mobile

Appcues is an adoption platform initially built for SaaS organizations to facilitate the creation and implementation of user onboarding flows, product announcements, customizable branding, A/B testing, and in-app surveys.

Their latest offering, Appcues Mobile, focuses on supporting mobile apps with their onboarding and adoption flows. They provide features like powerful targeting, the ability to measure the impact, and an easy-to-install SDK.

In terms of UI elements, they provide half-screen modals and carousels. However, this is where the flexibility in their UI template library ends, with no possibility to add element-specific nudges like tooltips, coachmarks, spotlights, etc.

Use cases solved by Appcues Mobile

Onboarding to help new users see value faster

‍Using walkthroughs, Appcues Mobile helps new users get acquainted with the app by highlighting the benefits they can expect and the key steps they need to take.

Create stickiness with new features

‍The ability to communicate newly launched features and give users another reason to come back can be solved using Appcues Mobile. The ability to use deep linking to send them to the right screen to get started is also supported.

Contextual upsell nudges to increase revenue

‍Appcues Mobile supports detailed targeting to create contextual, relevant in-app messages to get users to upgrade or add items to their in-app purchases at the most optimal time in their journeys.

Survey users

The ability to collect feedback, measure sentiment, and learn about your users directly within the app using in-app surveys are also possible.

Even though Appcues Mobile solves a variety of use cases, users often complain of limitations in the UI library, the ability to create customer journeys and limitations in design customization.

Appcues Mobile pricing

Appcues Mobile offers subscription-based pricing with a free trial period. It offers MAU-based pricing without any setup fees.

Appcues Mobile’s essential plan for 20K MAUs costs $649 per month and the growth plan for 20k MAUs costs $1,399 per month. Both these plans provide various features. Coming to the enterprise plan, you have to request a demo through the website.

Pendo Mobile

Pendo, like Appcues, was built for SaaS organizations to enhance their software products by offering comprehensive product analytics and in-app guides. By leveraging Pendo, organizations can assess their customers' product usage, develop guides and tours that guide users to key moments of insight, and gather feedback to enhance the overall user experience.

Where Pendo is different from Appcues is that it has a heavier focus on analytics, so if you want an all-in-on tool to take care of your analytics and adoption use cases, Pendo could be the right tool for you.

Pendo also recently introduced its Mobile version which is specifically designed to support mobile-first brands with their product analytics and adoption efforts. Common features included like in-app messaging, feature announcements, product tours, surveys, targeted content, customizable branding, and A/B testing, in addition to powerful analytics.

In terms of limitations, like Appcues and other tools, users often complain of limitations in the UI library, the ability to create customer journeys and limitations in design customization.

Solutions offered by Pendo Mobile

Guidance

‍The Guidance functionality lets app makers embed user-friendly walkthroughs in their apps as well as offer helpful tips and reminders along the way. This tool can improve onboarding and feature adoption.

In-app surveys

‍This tool enables software makers to incorporate survey questions and polls within their apps. It empowers product teams to ask targeted questions at opportune moments throughout the user's journey and to record their sentiments and thoughts about the product at specific instances. But, it lacks the real-time collection of insights.

In-app support

Pendo Mobile's Feedback feature is a bidirectional communication platform that enables app makers to collect user feedback regarding their experience and keep them informed about the progress of their requests and suggestions.

Product analytics

This feature not only allows product teams to record and monitor but also analyze how users interact with their app.

Pendo Mobile pricing

Pendo offers subscription-based pricing with a free trial period. The charges are MAU-based with no setup fees.

Like Appcues Mobile, it has Pendo Adopt (for consumers) and Pendo Engage (for employees). In Pendo Adopt, it is further classified into Growth and Portfolio classification, each providing various features. For detailed pricing, it asks you to contact sales through the website.

Criteria to choose an in-app engagement solution

It's great that you're looking into Hansel.io alternatives and really trying to understand the pros and cons of every option available to you.

Whichever tool you decide to go ahead with, you can judge it on criteria such as deliverability, lag times, UI template options, segmentation capabilities, and features like Journey Builder, impact measurement, etc.

If you'd like to dive deeper into Plotline, you can start a free trial with us.