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With so many different product-led growth solutions available, figuring out which one is right for you is tough. You know you want to increase user adoption, organic customer acquisition through word of mouth, improved customer satisfaction, and a more efficient and scalable customer acquisition model but need to figure out which tool is best for the job. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different tools with large teams and diverse products, with my picks of the best product-led growth software.

What Is Product Led Growth Software?

Product-led growth software refers to tools and platforms that prioritize the product as the main driver of customer acquisition and retention, emphasizing user satisfaction and advocacy as key elements of business success. Through in-app onboarding guides, user analytics, product usage tracking, freemium models, and referral programs, they empower companies to leverage the product itself as a marketing and sales tool, fostering organic growth through positive user experiences.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Product Led Growth Software

Here’s a brief description of each product led growth system to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.

Best for segmentation and inline guidance

  • Free trial available
  • From $279/month
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Rating: 4.4/5

Chameleon is a product-led growth (PLG) tool designed to help software teams improve user adoption through tailored in-app experiences. Its toolset includes in-app messaging (such as tooltips, banners, and modals), interactive product tours, and surveys that make it easy for businesses to guide new users through key features and workflows.

One unique feature is Chameleon’s HelpBar, an AI-powered universal search that customers can implement for in-product searchable help resources, which enhances the user’s ability to explore and adopt new features independently. Chameleon also focuses on data-driven segmentation and analytics integrations. By leveraging detailed user behavior data, teams can craft highly personalized onboarding journeys, targeting specific user segments with timely messages and demos.

Chameleon also offers A/B testing tools that are vital for product-led growth. A/B testing lets you experiment with different onboarding flows or feature presentations to see what resonates best with your users. This insight helps you make informed decisions that boost engagement and adoption rates.

Unlike many traditional user engagement tools that rely on pop-ups or notifications, Chameleon emphasizes non-intrusive, native-looking elements that seamlessly integrate into a product’s interface. This approach is intended to guide users in an intuitive, user-friendly manner, fostering natural product discovery without overwhelming or distracting them.

Integrations include HubSpot, Salesforce, Heap, Mixpanel, Twilio Segment, Fivetran, Google Analytics, Intercom, Slack, Zapier, Zendesk, and Amplitude.

Best for tailored user onboarding workflows

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $89/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

UserGuiding is a product walkthrough and user onboarding software designed to assist businesses in creating interactive, personalized onboarding experiences for their users directly within their products.

The tool delivers tailored onboarding flows that can be segmented and customized to meet the specific needs of different user personas, thereby improving trial conversion rates, user activation, and feature adoption.

UserGuiding provides interactive product tours that facilitate step-by-step user guidance through web applications, aiming to accelerate the understanding of core functionalities for new users. Onboarding checklists and tooltips offer structured task completion and contextual hints, respectively, enhancing user familiarity with the application.

Stand-out features include tooltips and user segmentation. Tooltips are small, contextual hints that can be placed next to specific features within the application. They offer quick explanations or tips to help users understand the functions of various elements. User segmentation allows the creation of personalized experiences by segmenting users based on their behavior, properties, or events. Different segments can receive tailored onboarding experiences.

Integrations include Mixpanel, Segment, Intercom, Slack, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Woopra, and HubSpot.

Best for its guided onboarding feature

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $89/month
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Rating: 4.7/5

Product Fruits is a comprehensive product adoption software that enables companies to achieve product-led growth. The software helps product owners to onboard new customers and engage existing ones by creating interactive in-app flows. Users can optimize their product onboarding strategy with the software, enhance user experiences, and drive sustainable growth. Product Fruits helps identify areas for improvement for user onboarding so organizations can prioritize product features and make data-driven decisions to stay ahead of the competition. The software requires no prior technical knowledge, making it easy for anyone to set it up. The user-friendly interface also ensures users can access customer onboarding data to maximize activation rates.

Product Fruits allows businesses to onboard new users, ensuring they have a smooth experience with the product. It guides users through the onboarding, providing clear, interactive instructions and tips to ensure they get the most out of the product. With the feedback widget, organizations can prioritize product development efforts based on customer feedback, market trends, and internal objectives. This feature lets users focus on the most important initiatives, align team efforts, and ensure accountability.

Key features include segmentation and rich styling options. Segmentation allows for the personalization of onboarding flows to distinct user personas, such as admins and managed users or new and returning. Styling via custom CSS lets you customize the experience so it looks like an integral part of your app or website. 

Product Fruit costs $89 per month with a monthly subscription or $69 per month with an annual payment. There is a 14-day free trial with all the features; no credit card is required.

Best for transforming feedback into product growth

  • 7-30 day free trial
  • From $25/user/month
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Rating: 4.3/5

ProdPad is a product management software designed to help product managers plan and develop their products effectively. It provides tools for road mapping, idea management, customer feedback, and more. 

The platform stands out because it integrates customer feedback directly into the product development process. This approach ensures that product decisions are driven by user insights, aligning with the principles of product-led growth. The software’s intuitive interface and features like idea management, product backlogs, and voting on ideas, allow product teams to prioritize and execute the most impactful initiatives.

Another key feature that supports product-led growth is its dynamic product roadmap functionality. Unlike traditional roadmaps that are often static and fixated on timelines, ProdPad's roadmaps are outcome-driven, flexible, and easily adjustable to changing priorities and market conditions.

Furthermore, ProdPad’s integration capabilities allow seamless connection with various customer relationship management (CRM) and project management tools. This connectivity ensures that valuable user insights are not siloed but shared across all platforms to provide teams with a more unified view of the customer journey and product experience.

Integrations include JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, Dropbox, GitHub, Confluence, Slack, Doorbell.io, Trello, Rally, Uservoice, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, Intercom, and more.

Create Personalized Onboarding Flows to Help Customers Adopt Products

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $249/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

Appcues helps product managers enroll new customers, monitor their behavior, and create interactive workflows. The platform allows you to provide a self-service onboarding experience to new customers when they sign up for your product. Your marketing department can use the platform to manage product promotions, create announcements in your application, and start referral campaigns.

The key features of Appcues help your customer reduce their time to value by assisting them in learning what your app can do quickly. These features include feedback collection, user onboarding tours, A/B testing, and goal management. You can easily add these features without the need of a developer by using Appcues’ drag-and-drop builder.

Appcues integrates with popular software to help you measure and create user experiences, such as Klaviyo, Heap, Customer.io, and Google Analytics.

Appcues costs from $299/month or $249/month when paying annually for up to 2,500 active monthly users. They also offer a free trial that allows you to show up to 50 Appcues flows and track up to 10 events.

Capture Product Usage Data to Improve Customer Experience

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.4/5

Pendo is a product experience program that helps various software teams determine which features their customers are using and which they’re ignoring. These insights can help you set up in-app guides, messages, and walkthroughs to help your users get the most from your product. The data from Pendo’s platform can also help you to analyze customer usage across web and mobile applications.

Pendo’s behavioral analytics tool helps organizations extract and analyze data, such as time spent, trends over time, and drop-off points. These details can help you make any necessary changes based on results and create material for a specific user group. To enhance your customer’s experience, Pendo provides tools to send feedback surveys and polls, enabling you to gather qualitative and quantitative data to understand where there’s any dissatisfaction.

Pendo integrates with multiple third-party applications such as Calendly, Figma, HubSpot, Microsoft Teams, and Optimizely.

Pendo offers customized pricing upon request, but the platform has a free forever option.

Infuse Business Intelligence in Customer and Employee Applications

  • Free trial + free demo available
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.3/5

Sisense is an AI-powered analytics platform that helps innovative startups to global brands explore their applications’ data and take action based on the results. The platform can empower you to interpret your data efficiently and present its critical insights in plain text. Sisense also helps organizations gather data from multiple sources for a complete business overview.

Sisense can provide you with everything you need to organize your data and give your users a branded analytics dashboard. You can build data visualizations and actionable components to optimize your application’s performance and manage your resources. The platform helps you integrate analytics into your products, no matter your tech stack.

Sisense integrates with Salesforce, Amplitude, and Amazon Web Services. It also integrates with SQL databases, such as PostgreSQL and MySQL.

Sisense offers customized pricing upon request, as well as a free trial.

Identify Hidden Insights in User’s Journey

  • 14-day free trial + free demo
  • Pricing upon request
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Rating: 4.3/5

Heap’s platform allows you to see and understand everything your customers do when using your product. Your marketing and product teams can see where to make vital improvements to the product or your website. With these details, you can create a product that keeps your customers coming back.

Heap can pinpoint where your customers might be struggling in their journey using your product so you can make fast improvements to their experience. The platform helps you see every action from every user. You can get a complete set of behavioral data and learn what your customers are clicking, where they’re going, and what they’re doing.

Heap integrates with over 100 third-party applications, including Shopify, Salesforce, Intercom, and HubSpot.

Heap offers customized pricing upon request, but they provide a free version for up to 10,000 monthly sessions.

Create Configurable Survey Widgets to Close The Customer Feedback Loop

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $99/month (up to 5,000 users/month)
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Rating: 5/5

Refiner is a survey solution for data-driven SaaS organizations. The platform helps companies create micro survey widgets to help SaaS organizations segment their customers, track satisfaction levels, or research what to make next. You can use the platform to ask users questions while they’re using your product.

Refiner allows organizations to customize their surveys by adding brand-specific colors and multiple languages and visualize the data they collect. Product managers can preview surveys they create to ensure they stay on brand and that the survey is easily understandable for customers. You can also receive notifications about surveys your customers complete and set up triggers to contact them according to their responses.

Refiner integrates with other software such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Heap, Airtable, and Zapier.

Refiner costs from $99/month for up to 5,000 interactions with your survey when paying monthly and $79/month when paying annually. The platform also offers a 14-day free trial.

Enhances Product Innovation by Enabling Cross-Team Collaboration

  • From $6/user/month

Stack Overflow for Teams helps an organization share knowledge during each step in the product lifecycle. The platform provides a central knowledge base for your organization so multiple teams can resolve challenges. It helps reduce distractions by letting individuals document their experience with specific challenges to help anyone who comes across the same one in the future.

Product teams can use Stack Overflow to work together and deliver a better user experience. They can do this by collecting and analyzing feedback from multiple departments, saving historical knowledge, and developing product roadmaps by implementing siloed information. Your teams can use feedback loops from your marketing, sales, and support departments to incorporate their input and create better products.

Stack Overflow integrates with many tools you might already be using, such as Slack, Jira, Okta, and GitHub.

Stack Overflow costs from $6/user/month and offers a free version for you to try.

Best Product Led Growth Software Summary

Tool Best For Trial Info Price
1
Chameleon

With Chameleon, cards and banners (like the purple one above) can be embedded directly into your product.

Best for segmentation and inline guidance

Free trial available

From $279/month Website
2
UserGuiding

UserGuiding lets you select from a variety of survey templates where you can collect user feedback.

Best for tailored user onboarding workflows

14-day free trial

From $89/month (billed annually) Website
3
Product Fruits

Product Fruits provides users with a step-by-step guided tour of the product, showing them how to use each feature and highlighting the value it can provide.

Best for its guided onboarding feature

14-day free trial

From $89/month Website
4
ProdPad

ProdPad integrates customer feedback into product development to drive growth.

Best for transforming feedback into product growth

7-30 day free trial

From $25/user/month Website
5
Appcues

Create excellent in-app experiences to deliver the right experience to the right user.

Create Personalized Onboarding Flows to Help Customers Adopt Products

14-day free trial

From $249/month (billed annually) Website
6
Pendo

The Pendo dashboard provides analytics to help product teams make data-driven decisions.

Capture Product Usage Data to Improve Customer Experience

14-day free trial + free plan available

Pricing upon request Website
7
Sisense

Infuse business intelligence analytics in products, applications, and existing workflows.

Infuse Business Intelligence in Customer and Employee Applications

Free trial + free demo available

Pricing upon request Website
8
Heap

Collect reports on Heap’s dashboard that describe your customer’s journey when using your product.

Identify Hidden Insights in User’s Journey

14-day free trial + free demo

Pricing upon request Website
9
Refiner

Preview custom customer surveys after completing the guided set-up.

Create Configurable Survey Widgets to Close The Customer Feedback Loop

14-day free trial

From $99/month (up to 5,000 users/month) Website
10
Stack Overflow

The knowledge sharing and collaboration management dashboard allow multiple teams to work together.

Enhances Product Innovation by Enabling Cross-Team Collaboration

Not available

From $6/user/month Website

Other Options

Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list.

  1. Calixa

    Customer Journey Analytics Platform

  2. Readme

    Generate and Manage Interactive API Documentation

  3. Pocus

    Provides Insights to Help Sales Teams Convert Self-Serve Users to Paying Customers

  4. Survicate

    For user research & feedback

  5. Frontegg

    User Management Platform for B2B, B2C, and SaaS Product Developers

  6. HubSpot

    Everything you need to track, organize, and build relationships with your customers for free.

  7. Totango

    Grade the health of your application by identifying return users, how often they use the app, and for how long to build your marketing campaigns.

  8. ChartMogul

    SaaS subscription analytics to measure, understand, and grow recurring revenue.

  9. Intercom

    Allows marketing, sales, and support departments unify their customer’s experience.

  10. CloudTalk

    Create a virtual call center with local phone numbers to provide customer support.

  11. ChurnZero

    Subscription businesses can understand how their customers use their products and optimize the customer’s experience.

  12. Upzelo

    Provides real-time analytics to increase customer retention and also see how well your application is performing against comparable companies.

  13. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud

    Use with your cloud technology to connect with customers and partners through the popular CRM.

  14. Google BigQuery

    Provides scalable data warehouses that are easily accessible and stream data in real-time to give you up-to-date information on your processes.

  15. Mixpanel

    Identify valuable insights to engage, convert, and retain customers and learn their behaviors.

  16. Social Intents

    Live, web-based chat software for engaging with website visitors.

  17. Userflow

    Build customizable in-app tours, surveys, and checklists without using code.

  18. Zendesk

    Provide customer service via text, phone, live chat, social media, and e-mail.

Selection Criteria: How I Picked the Best PLG Software

To craft my list of the best product led growth software, here are the criteria I evaluated:

Core Functionality

There are a few different types of software on this list. So I’ve made a point of highlighting the core functionality of each platform. Some provide product analytics while others streamline product development workflows. Whatever the case, I’ve explained how each software will contribute to your product led growth model in their overviews.

Key Features

Of course, exact product features will depend on the type of software you’re looking at. But here are some key features I spotted in the software I evaluated for this list:

  1. Customer journey mapping: The ability to track the end-user’s product experience from sign up through to adoption to help you optimize it.
  2. Product roadmapping: Some software helps you outline your product roadmap, and many have templates to help speed up the process.
  3. Self-service customer support: This could be a knowledge base, chatbot, or in-app notifications that help customers make the most of your product.
  4. Customer onboarding automation: Tools that help new customers get up and running on their own, without the need for sales reps to step in.
  5. Customer acquisition tools: Anything that will help you acquire new customers in a hands-off way, such as through referral or self-serve signup.
  6. Analytics and reports: Ideally, you can track user metrics like upsells, churn, and customer acquisition costs (CAC) in a real-time, interactive dashboard.

Usability

The whole idea behind product led growth companies is to provide a frictionless, delightful user experience. So why would you expect anything less from the tools you use to run your business? I’ve looked for products with a user-friendly interface and a quick time to value.

Integrations

How a new software integrates with your existing tech stack is always something to take into account. Different platforms offer different integrations, but I kept an eye out for ones that connect with common workplace SaaS tools.

Many have native integrations with CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce, communication tools like Slack and social media messaging tools, and cloud storage solutions like Dropbox. Some also connect with third-party integration tools like Zapier. And others have an API you can use to build your own connectors.

Pricing

Cost will always be a factor when picking a new software, especially if you’re a startup or small business with a tight budget. Pricing varies pretty widely on this list, because there are so many different product types. That said, many of the providers offer free trials and demos, too. I always recommend taking a new tool for a test drive before purchasing.

What Is Product Led Growth (PLG)?

Product led growth is a business strategy that places your application at the center of a customer’s buying journey. This strategy depends on your product’s performance, features, and virality to do most of the selling for you. What makes PLG different is that it places your product in the middle of all your marketing efforts.

Keep in mind that taking a product led approach takes time and practice. You don’t have to overhaul your business model overnight, and you can implement small changes over time to get there. There are lots of great PLG companies leading by example, as well as niche PLG newsletters—so if you're looking for inspiration, they can be a great place to start!

Here are some key factors a PLG strategy consists of:

1. Growing Without Dependencies

A PLG strategy means you can grow your business without investing a lot of money on paid advertising or having your sales team call leads all the time. The strategy means you build your product in a way that helps you monetize and grow on its own.

2. Customer-Centric Promotion

PLG focuses on enhancing your customer’s experience to make them happy. When satisfied, they can become your biggest fans and promote your product for you. Your product can make customers happy by solving real problems, which helps your organization grow. You need to understand your customer’s needs and pains and work to develop a product to solve them. Afterward, you can align the company to provide product support.

Adopting a PLG strategy means your organization is doing everything possible to make its product the best one available. You can take customer feedback and create new product features according to what they want to see in your next update. This means your product revolves around your customers, and you see the results.

3. Implementing Independent Product Adoption

A significant factor in a PLG strategy is letting your customers serve themselves and adopt your product independently. It’s vital to your PLG strategy to give customers the ability to onboard themselves. But they also understand that help is always available. The strategy is about getting more from your product development by ensuring your customers can discover its features. It's about helping them find value, keeping them engaged, and having the right product led growth metrics in-check.

4. Using Non-Committal Pricing

A PLG strategy usually involves implementing a freemium-based pricing model. This is so your customer can start using and interacting with your product on their own without committing to a recurring fee. This aspect also allows small companies to get started for free and begin growing immediately with the understanding they’ll commit to a paid subscription when they’re ready.

A PLG strategy has an excellent onboarding process and engaging product tours to enable users to explore the product and develop their own conclusion on its value. Afterward, you can introduce a paid feature that can make your customers’ lives easier.

Other Product Management Software Reviews

Looking for additional tools to support your product development and management? Here are some of our other reviews:

What Do You Think About This List?

This list includes ten of the best product led growth platforms to help you use your product to generate leads and more customers. When choosing the best software for your application, remember to pick one that can improve your customer’s experience so they won’t hesitate to sign up after their free trial.

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Hannah Clark
By Hannah Clark

Hannah Clark is the Editor of The Product Manager. Following six years of experience in the tech industry, she pivoted into the content marketing space. She’s spent the better part of the past decade working in marketing agencies and offering freelance branding and content development services. Today, she’s a digital publisher who is privileged to work with some of the most brilliant voices in the product world. Driven by insatiable curiosity and a love of bringing people together, her mission is to foster a fun, vibrant, and inspiring community of product people.