Actual Navattic Alternatives (Yes from Navattic)

With this kind of title, it’s hard to imagine a post about our competitors will be unbiased.

But we promise to keep this article as objective as possible, starting with using our own CRM data to identify which competitors we should include (based on what competitors come up most frequently in the deal cycle).

Why are we doing this? We want to work with companies that are the best fit for our software. If you’re not a good fit, no worries.

That’s why we wrote this list — to help you determine which interactive demo product will match your requirements best.

Interactive demos has become a catchall term. But the reality is that “interactive demos” are really an amalgam of three distinct categories:

1. Guided HTML or CSS walk-through demos
2. Entirely open sandbox replicas of your product
3. Guided screenshot and video walk-through demos

Navattic specializes in top-of-funnel HTML/CSS demos. These types of interactive demos are often used by marketing and sales as an asynchronous resource — rather than for a live demo call.

In fact, our State of the Interactive Product Demo research showed that 88% of our customers were using our interactive demos in their public marketing campaigns. A majority of those customers linked out to a demo on their website via a CTA like “Take a tour” or “Explore our product.”

An HTML/CSS cloning makes demos look and feel like their actual product. So much so that demo users think they’re actually using your app. And for the demo builders — in platforms like Navattic, they can easily edit captures to clean up messy demo data or add personalized touches for specific accounts.

Before we discuss our competitors, let’s review how HTML/CSS demos stack up against the other types of demos on the market and the pros and cons of each.

Guided HTML/CSS tours

Pros

As their name suggests, guided tours guide your prospects through your product. And as such, they ensure users see the value of your tool and don’t get lost. Because guided tours look and feel like your product, prospects also experience true “aha moments.” They are also built with a no-code drag-and-drop backend, so any GTM team member can make and update their guided tours in a few clicks.

Cons

Unfortunately, you can’t show every part of your product in one guided demo. We recommend an individual guided demo is between 10 - 15 steps, about 30 seconds long.

Since guided demos aren’t meant to be your whole product, you’ll need to create one (or more) demos for different use cases or features. As our customer Athennian put it, “we decided to build product tours for specific use cases, personas, and customers in different industries”

Another setback of guided HTML/CSS tours is that certain in-app features are difficult to simulate, like drag & drop.

Sandboxes

Pros

In a sandbox demo, you’re entirely cloning your product so that you can show potential customers any part of your application. For this reason, sandboxes are ideal for later-stage demos — where you can wow your prospects live on a call with hyper-personalization and the comprehensiveness of your platform.

Cons

The biggest con of sandboxes is that they are not no-code, and can require at least 2 - 4 months to deploy and engineering resources to maintain.

Sandbox demos are risky because they put the onus on prospects to know where to go and how to use your product. Ultimately, this limits the chances that they interact with — or even see — the best parts of your product. As our customer Coupa says, “We wanted our demos to be guided experiences so that customers wouldn’t get lost and could experience the most impactful areas of Coupa in a short period of time.”

Sandboxes also aren’t mistake-proof. Undetected bugs or confusing data could negatively impact a prospect’s first impression. Navattic customer SourceDay shares,

“We were looking for a solution to help our sellers showcase the product in a streamlined and controlled environment that they can’t break.”

Screenshots or Video-led tours

Pros

Screenshot and video-led tours are typically the fastest to set up — you could just use a snipping tool and Loom. You also don’t have to worry about responsiveness or mobile availability, so these demos tend to be compatible with more platforms. Early-stage startups benefit from this method because they can still show their “product” even if the full application isn’t built yet.

Cons

The biggest drawback to screenshots and videos is that they don’t make prospects feel like they are exploring your product themselves. As Navattic customer Phrase explains,

“We did consider building a tour using screenshots and animations but quickly realized that we were missing the “in-product” feeling.”

Screenshots and videos are static, making it hard for prospects to tell what’s a real product capability and what’s not. On top of that, polished edited videos can get expensive and need to be entirely redone if the product changes.

Our customer Crossbeam chose Navattic because they “hit a wall with tools like screenshots and videos. They just weren’t driving the acquisition and activation metrics at scale.”

Note: Navattic does have screenshot-builder capabilities but HTML/CSS captures are our bread and butter.

Interactive demos can generate new leads, educate existing customers, enable partners, help close late-stage deals, and more. But you won’t get what you need from your interactive demo software if you don’t pick the right one.

Below, we dive into Navattic’s main competitors, sharing what kinds of companies stand to benefit most from each tool, what type of interactive demo they sell, what customers think of their product, and how their pricing model works.

1. Reprise

In Reprise, users can build three kinds of demos: walk-throughs, live demo overlays, and sandboxes, making it a good fit for companies that need all three and want to centralize demo creation.

However, its complexity severely steepens the learning curve for marketers, SEs, and AEs, which, in turn, curbs time to value (and often involved engineering efforts). And, like other sandbox demos, it opens customers up to the kinds of errors you usually get in live environments.

Best for: Large, complex demo environments for live calls

Approach: Walk-through, sandbox, and overlay

G2 Rating: 4.3/5

Pricing: Reprise does not publicly share its pricing, but we have heard it scales up based on the number of demos and user seats. They also do not work with companies less than 200 employees, so they tend to have more enterprise grade pricing.

2. Walnut

Walnut takes a sandbox approach, capturing your product's front end with a Chrome extension and then allowing users to edit and personalize through a no-code interface or HTML. Once a user finishes creating their demo, it’s added to a shared library, which can be categorized, saved for future use, or cloned and updated for a live call.

A distinguishing characteristic of Walnut is that prospects can leave comments and questions as they go through a demo. AEs can respond asynchronously or use those comments as an entry point for another sales call.

But Walnut’s Chrome extension only works on web-based products (not desktop or mobile tools). Walnut also has limited use for marketing teams without native integrations to tools like Google Analytics, Segment, or Marketo.

Best for: Templated live sales demos to clone and personalize

Approach: Walk-through and sandbox

G2 Rating: 4.4/5

Pricing Comparison: Walnut does not have a pricing page on its website. From other sources, we’ve gathered that their pricing model is based on the number of user seats.

3. DemoStack

DemoStack leverages cloud-based recording technology to create a copy of your product’s frontend UI. This “Environment” learns how your backend responds to requests from the browser and simulates that response during playback, giving users a real feel experience.

Demostack also has “Live” interactive demo functionality, letting users add what they call “Overlays” of edits atop your existing product to highlight specific features for specific use cases, personas, or verticals. In “Presenter Mode,” you can demo your product from a fresh browser window with prompts and pre-designed prompts from a demo playbook.

Because you’re cloning and editing your entire demo environment, similar to Reprise DemoStack can have a long implementation time. Customers have also reported that their analytics module is lacking, and the tool only has integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Slack.

Best for: Customizing live demo data

Approach: Sandbox and overlays

G2 Rating: 4.8/5

Pricing Comparison: DemoStack requires prospects to get a custom quote, but they do display what comes with Live and Environment packages on their site:

• Live: 5 users, unlimited live demos, SSO, Salesforce, Slack, and HubSpot integrations, and a dedicated CSM.
• Environment: 10 users, unlimited live demos, 1 cloned app, SSO, Salesforce, Slack, and HubSpot integrations, a dedicated CSM and SE, and the potential to add on sandbox sharing.

Tours are add-ons to both packages.

4. Tourial

Tourial customers use screenshots and video capture to create product walk-throughs. A notable Tourial feature is their “TourPlayer,” which lets you build a playlist of demos for particular segments of your ICP.

Tourial also has built-in connections to Calendly and Chili Piper to streamline the interactive demo to sales call flow.

Video-based tours showcase mobile and Chrome extension functionality, drag-and-drop, and other actions that HTML capture can’t pick up. At the same time, these graphics are static, meaning demo builders can’t easily edit or personalize their demo environment data.

Best for: Chrome extension-based apps or pre-live production apps

Approach: Screenshot

G2 Rating: 4.5/5

Pricing Comparison: Tourial does not advertise the cost of their product.

According to their Plans page, the Tourial platform comes with unlimited interactive demos and users, integrated lead forms, contact-level intent data, a dedicated CSM, and strategy consultations.

5. Storylane

With Storylane’s basic plan, users can create screenshot and video demos, directing users to specific features using text-based prompts. Storylane has some features to help build quick demos like AI assist.

Prospects can also jump back and forth to different parts of a demo, giving them the freedom to explore. Yet that freedom can potentially confuse users, and if the demo is screenshot-based, it won’t feel like the user is actually exploring the product itself.

Storylane's cheaper price also means it is more of a self-serve tool, and support isn't offered until the $500 minimum plan.

Best for: Early-stage startups looking to quickly build an interactive demo

Approach: Screenshot, extra for HTML

G2 Rating: 4.8/5

Pricing Comparison: Storylane has a free trial that enables 1 user to publish 1 demo. They also have a fairly cheap entry-level plan, at $40 per month per user.

Storylane customers don’t get a demo HTML editor, personalization, support, clickable live demos, or certain integrations unless they choose the $100 per user per month Growth plan (5 seats minimum). Charging on a per-seat model can get pricy if you want more than just one team using it.

6. Arcade

Arcade is a screenshot-driven demo software tool that GTM teams can use to illustrate what their product does in a digestible way. Users can also weave in video and audio clips they’ve captured through Arcade’s Chrome extension and can trim, speed up, and edit their videos for an additional cost. The platform also has workflow and collaboration features to get team members on the same page and help them work on demos efficiently.

Despite that, editing screenshots and videos manually takes time and resources — and Arcade charges per seat. Because of the static nature of these demos, Arcade is better suited to quick, how-to demos than longer demos intended to show the full scope of a product.

Arcade is also missing integrations with key CRMs and automation tools like Zapier.

Best for: Social media or help article interactive demos

Approach: Screenshot

G2 Rating: 4.8/5, but only has 2 public reviews.

Pricing Comparison: Arcade has a free trial with 1 user and 3 published Arcades. Paid plans include:

• Pro: $32/mo for 1 user, unlimited Arcades, screenshot blurring, 1080p video exports, and intercom.
• Growth: $42.50/mo for multiple users, billed per seat. This plan includes additional video editing, pan and zoom, insights, and advanced branching features.
• Enterprise: Custom monthly price for enterprise teams.

7. Navattic

Technically not a competitor, but had to throw ourselves in the mix. Our guided HTML/CSS demos enable any team member to create demos — without engineering's help.

We support interactive demo builds for mobile apps, desktop apps, and web-based tools. We also integrate with Hubspot, Salesforce, G2, Twilio Segment, Marketo Google Analytics, and more.

We emphasize strategically supporting our customers to help them build successful demos based on our data-driven best practices. For example, we offer on-demand demo reviews for all customers.

Our focus on ease of use and fast deployments means we don’t specialize in overlays or click-anywhere demo sandboxes for live sales calls, since those can require a longer technical set up.

Best for: Mid-market or enterprises that want to use interactive guided demos across their entire GTM motion

Approach: Guided HTML/CSS, screenshot

G2 Rating: 4.8/5, with 122 reviews

Pricing Comparison: You can see our pricing on our website. We don’t charge per license or per demo, so you can invite as many team members or departments into Navattic to build out demos:

• Base: $500/mo for unlimited licenses, interactive demos, demo views
• Growth: $1,000/mo for SSO, multi-team organization and permissions, dedicated CSM, demo coaching

We also offer a dedicated plan for startups and can draft a customized plan to fit any unique company requirements.

Hopefully, our competitor analysis helped narrow down your evaluation.

But if you’re still on the fence, check out some case study highlights or see customer examples.

And if you’d like to learn more about Navattic, schedule a customized demo today.