Sandbox Demos: What It Is, Benefits, and the Top Tools

B2B buyers are the kind of people who need to see something to believe it.

But spinning up a fresh demo instance for every prospect is slow and risky. One misconfigured integration or stray click, and suddenly, you’ve lost your prospect’s trust.

Thankfully, there’s a better way. Using demo automation platforms, you can create cloned sandbox demos.

Sandbox demos are not your actual product, just a recreation of it – which means you don’t have to cross your fingers every time you demo your product live. There won’t be any bugs or errors.

You don’t have to create custom homegrown demos for every prospect, either. You can just copy and lightly edit each sandbox demo.

Below, we share more details around what sandbox demos are, why companies use them, and how to know whether they’re right for you. Additionally, we outline the pros and cons of six popular sandbox demo tools on the market.

Sandbox demos are simulated environments where sellers can demo their product live without worrying about bugs or messy data.

Unlike traditional demo environments, free trials, or freemium plans, sandbox demos are completely preconfigured to highlight the most relevant workflows and data for a prospect.

When sellers or SEs show a sandbox demo on a call, it may seem like they’re exploring every corner of the product. In reality, they’re moving through a curated environment, giving them full control over the story they’re trying to tell.

Having a polished sandbox demo makes showing your product live a lot more comfortable for your sales and SE teams, and it makes them more keen to show it right away – building trust with buyers and nudging them toward a purchase.

We’ve already touched on a few of the advantages of a sandbox demo, but here’s a more comprehensive list:

Prospects can see the product earlier in the sales cycle. They don’t have to jump through free trial or freemium hoops, and they don’t have to wait to experience a full environment.

Buyers see the value before committing. Prospects aren’t just hearing about the features; they’re experiencing them in what appears to be a realistic environment.

Every demo shows the best version of the product, not a buggy or incomplete view. Plus, sandbox demos eliminate the risk of exposing sensitive data or encountering live errors during the demo.

Traditional live demos, where a rep or SE is demoing the product in a real, live instance (not a sandbox demo), can create more problems than they solve. They require:

Setup time. AEs and SEs usually need engineering support to create environments tailored to every prospect’s use case(s). That not only pulls resources away from other priorities, but slows down the sales cycle.

Constant upkeep. Even if you manage to reuse a sandbox for another customer, it still needs updates every time new features or UI updates ship.

Guidance. Because sandboxes aren’t scripted or annotated, it’s easy for sellers to go off track.

A no-code sandbox demo builder like Navattic can remove the engineering overhead, be limited to specific flows so sellers show the right things, and make demos easy to adapt to different audiences.

For example, PowerSchool, a leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education, used Navattic sandbox demos to replace complex sandboxes. Now 90% of their deals have hands-on experiences.

“Navattic helps us solve our demo repeatability problem, saving valuable time for our sellers. We’ve also noticed deals that use Navattic demos are performing better than deals that use prospect-led sandbox environments,” the team explains.

“Additionally, Navattic analytics are helping us better understand the buyer landscape. We can see exactly how prospects are engaging with the demos to see repeat visitors, time spent per session, and demo dropoff to give our sales team better insight into who we should be re-engaging at the right time.”

With some demo automation tools, you don’t have to choose between building sandbox demos or interactive demos. You can build both.

What you build depends on your use case:

A sandbox demo is a preconfigured environment that replicates your product.

Use it when: You’re presenting on a live sales call.

An interactive demo is a click-through async experience you can send pre or post live demo call

Use it when: You want to educate prospects and figure out what they’re interested before a live call or enable your champion post call

A live sandbox environment is a good fit if:

• You want prospects to explore a live version of your product with real data.
• You need a highly flexible, technical environment for prospect evaluation.
• Your team has the engineering resources to spin up and maintain sandbox environments.

An automated sandbox demo might be better if:

• You want to avoid the engineering overhead of maintaining sandbox environments.
• You need a guided, repeatable experience that highlights the right product moments every time.
• You want to repurpose your sandbox demos into interactive demos you can send before or after live sales calls.

Navattic

With Navattic demo automation, any team member can create HTML/CSS product demos without engineering help. Our product supports interactive demo builds and sandbox demos for mobile apps, desktop apps, and other web-based tools.

Creating a sandbox demo is as simple as:

1. Installing the Navattic Chrome Extension.
2. Walking through each part of your product that you want to show in your sandbox demo.
3. Adding any links or copy, adjusting demo data, and making any edits for look and feel.

Note: Sandbox demos are only available on the Navattic Growth plan.

Pros

• No-code. Our product is all drag and drop, and you can have our AI Copilot create a first draft, making it easy to get up and running. According to one of our customers, “The platform is incredibly easy to use and has thoughtful tools like allowing you to quickly edit out sensitive data and highlight certain components. It was a very low lift (less than a day!) to launch our first demo, embed it into our website, and start tracking leads.”
• Auto-linking. Navattic automatically links your Captures as you click through, speeding up the time it takes to create your demo.
• Easy Capture editing. Use blur, crop, or draw tools to hide sensitive data, focus attention on specific areas, or add callouts for clarity. You can even do it in bulk with Navattic’s new table and chart AI features.

Cons

• Not the best for replicating your entire product. Cloned sandboxes aren’t your real product, but they are ideal for demoing a specific section or workflow.
• Terminology. Some users report a bit of a learning curve when it comes to interactive demo technology, like flows, captures, modals, and tooltips (G2 Review).

Pricing

Navattic has a free Starter plan, which comes with 2 seats, 1 interactive demo, basic analytics, and our AI Copilot.

Paid plans start at $500/month, which comes with 5 licenses, unlimited HTML demos, unlimited demo views, unlimited integrations, demo analytics, in-app demo suggestions, and a dedicated CSM, and more AI Copilot use cases.

Reprise

In Reprise, users can build three types of demos: walk-throughs, live demo overlays, and sandboxes, making it ideal for enterprise companies that require deep sandbox customization.

Pros

• Strong sandbox environment capabilities. Its most sophisticated product, Replicate, can fully clone your application down to code level.
• Advanced personalization. There are a lot of customization options, so demos can be highly tailored to knowledge level and function. (G2 Review)

Cons

• Steep learning curve. G2 reviews indicate a lack of guidance (G2 Review, G2 Review), meaning the time it takes to create live and interactive demos can be substantially longer than other tools.
• Higher engineering lift. “Some features, such as hiding certain elements or working with modals, require custom code, which means engineering time.” (G2 Review)

Pricing

Contact sales. Reprise doesn’t have public pricing, but our customers and prospects say they charge per demo, per seat.

Storylane

Storylane helps companies build and share interactive product demos, sandbox demo environments, and demo hubs for multiple use cases.

Pros

• Fast to launch. Multiple users have stood up their demos in just a few days and have commented on their ability to stitch different screens together easily. (G2 Review, G2 Review)
• Supports multiple demo types. You can create HTML demos, videos, demo sandboxes, and demo centers all from one tool.

Cons

• Lack of customization. Storylane doesn’t have presenter note capabilities. Presenter notes helps understand what story you want to tell and personalize automated sandbox demos for parts of your ICP or for a particular use case. (G2 Review)
• Storage. Some users have reported a demo storage hierarchy that is “one layer deep,” making it tough to navigate if you’ve made dozens of demos. (G2 Review)

Pricing

Storylane has a free plan that comes with 1 seat, 1 published guided demo (screenshot + video), unlimited shares and views, AI videos and voiceovers, download GIF, and Slack Integration.

Paid plans start at $40/month, which comes with 1 seat, unlimited published guided demos (screenshot + video), multi-chapter demos, HubSpot, Zapier & GA integration, custom themes, and a removed watermark.

Demostack

Demostack lets you recreate your demo environment (versus cloning it), but also supports live demos.

Pros

• Deep product mimicry. Though it doesn’t reproduce your product, Demostack does create realistic data: “The ‘real data’ capability is essential when trying to personalize demos for specific client needs or industries.” (G2)
• Customization. “[Being able to] change the look and themes of what I'm showing proves that we listen and understand customer challenges. Quickly changing terminology helps them visualize the value they will get when they purchase our platform.” (G2)

Cons

• Difficult to implement and update. “It’s very hard to make it flexible to get more clicks and scenarios on the same environment. Demostack is fine for SDRs and downmarket AEs who want to show a high-level overview but not to scale complex demo scenarios.” (G2)
• Steeper learning curve. “I wish the demo URL would not change if I edited something in the demo, it's a bit troublesome to update it in the many resources that use it. Editing isn’t always consistent.” (G2)

Pricing

Annual pricing starts at $55,000 per year.

Consensus

Consensus is a video-based demo automation platform that helps teams to scale their GTM motion by enabling teams to create and share demos throughout the sales process.

In 2024, they acquired Reachsuite to create “product simulations,” light versions of a sandbox where users can explore, interact, and see highlighted features. But their bread and butter is async video demos.

Pros

• Customization. You can personalize videos for specific prospects or customers in your broad-reach ABM campaigns.
• Detailed analytics. With Consensus, sales teams can see who has viewed each video and when, helping them frame their follow up.

Cons

• More focused on video. Consensus is more of a video platform – they recently launched their simulations product, but it is more for sending lightweight sandboxes than presenting a live demo.
• Poor UI/UX. On G2, users have complained about the platform timing out during recordings (G2 Review). They’ve also mentioned a confusing video dashboard (G2 Review), “The dashboard for recording videos could be more user friendly. It can sometimes be confusing and not clear how to access and use your videos once they have been recorded.”

Pricing

Consensus does not have public pricing. From their website, pricing is “based on the products you use and the size of your team.”

Testbox

TestBox allows GTM teams to automate the process of creating demo environments and POCs. Rather than cloning your product, Testbox integrates with your product and sits on top of it.

That way, sellers and SEs can create new demos with the most up-to-date product info and realistic data.

Pros

• Full trial sandboxes. Users can show specific features that are relevant to a prospect’s needs or even hide features if they’re not ready yet. They can also see exactly which stakeholders came into the sandbox and what features they tested.
• Pre-filled data. Each sandbox comes with “realistic, PII-free data and functional integrations,” which gives leads a more accurate picture of how the product will look when they’re using it. You can also have Testbox create custom datasets and templates tailored to specific verticals.

Cons

• Less guided than interactive demos. Because it’s intended to look and feel like a real sandbox, it doesn’t have as many callout boxes or other forms of guidance, so there’s a chance prospects might feel lost or unsure of what they’re supposed to do or look at.
• Resource intensive. “We are discouraged from editing the testbox account (creating new numbers, editing call flows, etc.). It would be great to be able to do all of this and have the account automatically delete any changes to show how it works practically to clients.” (G2)

Pricing

Testbox does not have a free trial. Their lowest plan starts at $44,750 for 15 users, and comes with a single, foundational demo or POC experience (no integrations or data requirements).

Each additional user is $1,200/year.

To get a few more product modules, complex data-driven workflows, and third-party integrations, you need the Growth plan, which is $59,500 for 15 users.

Eager to build your first sandbox demo? See how you can get one spun-up with Navattic.