StepsKit
AppcuesShortlisting more than two tools? The seven best Appcues alternatives covers the wider field, and StepsKit's feature list sets out what the one plan includes.
Appcues alternative
Pricing verified 18 August 2026 · Updated August 2026
Appcues founded this category in 2013 and ships the widest surface in it: native mobile SDKs, multi-channel workflows, and a polished builder. It publishes no prices, and every plan meters on monthly logins. StepsKit bills one price, and counts nobody. The question is how much breadth you use.
Flat price · no MAU metering · no sales call
StepsKitvsAppcues
StepsKit vs Appcues: the short version
The verdict
Appcues and StepsKit both ship in-app onboarding, at different scales. Appcues covers native iOS and Android, sends email and push alongside in-app messages, and puts every experience type on every plan. Its meter is the monthly active user, which it defines as any user who signs into your product in a given month. Only the Spark plan publishes a figure: $3,600 a year for up to 1,000 MAUs, for teams of 25 or fewer, plus a $250 implementation fee. Start, Grow, and Enterprise are quote-only. StepsKit is $19 a month, flat, with no MAU ceiling. The gaps run both ways: StepsKit has no mobile SDK, no A/B testing, no localization, and no email or push. The deciding question is whether onboarding lives only in a web app.
Stay on Appcues if
onboarding has to reach native mobile, or travel by email and push as well as in-app.
Switch to StepsKit if
your product is a web app and the meter counts logins from users who never open a flow.
The case for Appcues
What Appcues does better than StepsKit
Captured from appcues.com, docs.appcues.com, and the Appcues MCP documentation on 18 August 2026.
It reaches native mobile
Appcues documents SDKs for iOS and Android, so the same onboarding practice covers a native app and a web app. StepsKit has no mobile SDK and no plan that adds one. For a team whose product is an app first, this single line settles the comparison before price enters it.
Onboarding leaves the page
Workflows carry a sequence beyond the browser, reaching users by email and push when they do not come back on their own. StepsKit renders inside the page its embed is loaded on and sends nothing outside it. Re-engaging a lapsed user is a job it cannot take.
Every plan carries every feature
Appcues states that every plan includes every experience type, feature, and integration from day one. What varies by tier is volume: published experiences and months of reporting history. Buyers who dislike feature gating get a simpler decision, because the only question left is scale.
Twelve years of category work
Appcues has been building in-app guidance since 2013, and the depth shows in its documentation, its integration catalogue, and the number of teams who have run it in production. StepsKit is a much younger product with a correspondingly smaller body of prior art to lean on.
An agent can read the results
The Appcues MCP server lets an AI client ask how specific Flows, Pins, and Launchpads are performing, explore drop-off, and sanity-check targeting before a change ships. StepsKit's MCP exposes no analytics at all, so the same question has to be answered in the dashboard.
The case for switching
Why teams switch from Appcues
Each friction below comes from Appcues' own published pricing and plan pages, not from third-party reviews.
The meter counts logins
Appcues defines a monthly active user as any user who signs into your product in a given month. Onboarding reaches a fraction of those people, so the bill tracks total sign-ins while the value tracks the much smaller group who actually open a flow. Those two numbers drift apart as a product matures.
The price arrives by phone
Start, Grow, and Enterprise publish no figure. A grep of the pricing page for a dollar amount returns nothing, and each tier routes to a booking form. Putting a number in next year's budget therefore requires a call, which is friction at exactly the point a buyer wants to compare quietly.
Three meters, not one
Appcues states that pricing is based on monthly active users, number of installations, and published experiences. That gives the invoice three independent ways to move. A team that adds a staging install and a few more flows can raise its cost without adding a single new user.
Experience counts are capped
Published experiences are limited to 10 on Start, 25 on Grow, and 100 on Enterprise. Teams outgrow a tier by shipping more onboarding, not only by growing. Retiring a working flow to publish a new one is a strange constraint to hit while paying an enterprise price.
Spark runs out quickly
The one published price, $3,600 a year, applies only to teams of 25 or fewer and stops at 1,000 MAUs, with a $250 implementation fee on top. Crossing either limit moves the account to a quote. The transparent option is therefore the one most likely to be temporary.
Pricing
Appcues pricing vs StepsKit pricing
Appcues
From $3,600/yr
Three of the four plans carry no published figure. Spark is the exception at $3,600 a year, which works out to $300 a month for a 1,000-MAU ceiling and a team under 26.
$3,600CustomCustomCustom
Published paid tiers, lowest to highest.
StepsKit
$19/mo flat
Unlimited MAU — every feature included.
$19$19$19
At 1k, 10k, and 100k users.
Side by side
StepsKit vs Appcues, row by row
| Comparison | Appcues | StepsKit |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Highest plan pricing | Custom (Contact sales) | $19/month |
| Free plan | No | Yes — 1 tour, 1 tooltip group, 1 announcement |
| Public pricing for paid tiers | Yes | Yes |
| Self-serve purchase (no sales call) | No | Yes |
| Unlimited MAU on paid plan | No | Yes |
| Features | ||
Native mobile appsAppcues delivers experiences inside native iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter apps through its mobile SDK; StepsKit runs from a web embed and cannot reach a native app. | Yes | No |
Email and push in the same sequenceAn Appcues Workflow chains in-product experiences, emails, mobile push, branches, and delays; StepsKit renders inside the page its embed loads on and sends nothing externally. | Yes | No |
Checklists, Launchpads, and PinsAppcues ships persistent widgets for onboarding task lists, a resource-centre launcher, and anchored beacons; StepsKit has tooltip badges but no checklist or launcher surface. | Yes | Partial |
A/B testing experiencesAppcues runs two or more versions of an experience at once to compare which performs better; StepsKit has no variant mechanism, so weighing two onboarding approaches means shipping them sequentially. | Yes | No |
Localized experiencesAppcues shows custom content based on a user's language; StepsKit renders every step in the single language it was authored in, with no per-locale variant of a tour. | Yes | No |
Analytics an AI client can queryThe Appcues MCP server answers questions about how Flows, Pins, and Launchpads are performing; StepsKit's MCP exposes no analytics and reports engagement in the dashboard only. | Yes | No |
Publish an experience from an AI clientAppcues' MCP can publish and unpublish an existing experience; StepsKit keeps publishing a manual dashboard action by design, so an agent can draft a tour but not ship it. | Yes | No |
Unlimited published experiencesAppcues caps published experiences by plan at 10, 25, and 100; StepsKit sets no ceiling on how many tours, tooltips, announcements, or surveys run at once. | No | Yes |
AI agent authors experiences from your codebaseStepsKit's MCP creates and edits tours, tooltips, surveys, and themes against selectors in your repo; the Appcues MCP exposes no tools that create or edit content. | No | Yes |
Extra domains at no extra costAppcues prices on installations as well as MAUs, so each additional install is a pricing input; StepsKit covers production, staging, and marketing sites on one plan. | No | Yes |
Anchored and modal onboarding stepsBoth build multi-step guided tours from anchored and centered steps; Appcues calls them Flows and StepsKit calls them callout and modal steps. | Yes | Yes |
NPS surveysAppcues documents NPS and surveys as a first-class use case; StepsKit ships an NPS card with selectable rating scales, a follow-up question, and a re-survey window. | Yes | Yes |
Where StepsKit fits
Where StepsKit fits — and where it doesn't
It builds in-app guidance and measures it. It is not a product-analytics suite, a session-replay tool, or an enterprise rollout service.
What it does do ships on one plan: no tagging configuration, no implementation project, no sales cycle to start.
Your planOne plan
- Unlimited tours
- Unlimited MAU
- All surfaces
Next invoiceSame as last
Every feature on every plan
One flat monthly price. Unlimited tours, unlimited MAU, no per-seat metering, no feature unlocks across tiers. The price you see is the price you pay.
1
Next
Visual builder, no engineering for install
Click-to-target inside your product to attach steps. One line of code to install, no selector tagging or developer ticket required to ship the first tour.
Show when
plan = proANDrole = admin
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Matches 847 users
Audience targeting & frequency capping
Show the right tour to the right user once. Filter by URL pattern, page-level visibility, user attributes, and frequency capping in a single panel.
Decision
Should you choose Appcues or StepsKit?
Choose Appcues if…
- Onboarding has to run inside native iOS and Android apps, not only the web app.
- The same sequence needs to reach users by email and push, not only in-app.
- You test onboarding variants against each other before rolling one out.
- Onboarding copy has to appear in each user's own language.
- A persistent checklist or resource-centre launcher is how users find help.
- An AI client should answer questions about how live experiences are performing.
Choose StepsKit if…
- Your product is a web app, so native mobile SDKs would go unused.
- The meter counts logins from users who never open an onboarding flow.
- Ten published experiences on the entry plan is a ceiling you can already see.
- You want the price before the call, not after it.
- Your coding agent should write tours against the selectors already in the repo.
FAQ
Common questions about Appcues
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