Summary: Pendo is a product analytics platform that helps organizations make data-driven decisions to grow and scale. Check its features and pricing, and see if it suits your product needs and the goals you have set for customer engagement.

Key Takeaways

• Pendo is a no-code platform that helps manage software experiences.
• Its features help you understand how users behave and improve engagement.
• Features include collecting feedback, analyzing sentiment, giving AI-driven workflow suggestions, and creating personalized in-app guides.
• All these work well together in one place, making it easier to manage user engagement and increase adoption.
• Pendo also includes AI features to enhance workflows, improve user experience, and boost employee efficiency.
• You can try Pendo with a 30-day free trial or a forever-free plan. There are also four paid plans based on the number of monthly active users (MAUs).

In This Guide...

• Overview Of Pendo

• What Is Pendo?

• Core Features And Functionality

• Pendo Use Cases

• What Can You Do With Pendo?

• How Much Does The Pendo App Cost?

• Pendo Free

• Pendo Base

• Pendo Core

• Pendo Pulse

• Pendo Ultimate

• Does Pendo Offer Trials?

• Is Pendo Pricing Negotiable?

• Pros And Cons Of Using Pendo

• So, Is Pendo Worth It?

Overview Of Pendo

Most SaaS brands now have strong tech systems in place. Others still struggle to achieve good ROI because they focus only on launching advanced products. But the brands that stand out are the ones that also emphasize user experience. These companies likely recognize the benefits of Pendo or are already using it. Pendo is a leading platform for improving product experiences in SaaS companies, helping businesses understand how users interact with their products and services.

What Is Pendo?

Pendo helps digital businesses, especially SaaS companies, understand their products better. When companies use many tools to analyze user behavior, they waste time and resources on software development. However, Pendo has everything needed for managing software experiences in one place. It helps teams quickly adapt to changing customer needs by combining personalized onboarding, in-app guidance, user feedback, and product analytics. This allows users, including those without technical backgrounds, to easily see how customers interact with their products and improve product experiences for better ROI.

Core Features And Functionality

Pendo’s main selling point is how its features work together to boost efficiency. It connects various systems, helping businesses make the most of their AI, SaaS, agent-based, and mobile platforms.

One of Pendo’s core functions is to help teams leverage analytics to drive long-term business impact. Instead of relying on manual event tagging, teams can utilize automation that instantly tracks user behavior for real-time performance insights. Here are its key product analytics features:

Pendo Features For Product Analytics

• Feature Tracking Tracking how users interact with your software to identify which features are most desirable and drive more value.
• Automatic Event Tracking Automatically capturing clicks, pageviews, and other relevant user engagement metrics.
• User Journey Optimization Tracking user journey to compare and spot issues or drop-offs and optimize for higher conversions.
• Custom Dashboards Collaborative, automated dashboards personalized to track specific metrics, such as user conversion, retention, adoption, and drop-off.
• Session Replays Video "replay" playbacks of user behavior to identify usage patterns, context behind user journeys and interactions, product errors, and workflow bottlenecks.
• Data Integration Combining data from Pendo, existing CRMs, and third-party integrations like Salesforce and Slack to track product usage.
• AI Recommendations AI-powered recommendations to enhance workflows, productivity, and app usage.

Pendo Features For User Engagement

Standard email or product guides are a thing of the past. Modern users want easy-to-understand guidance that helps them quickly adopt software, and that’s where Pendo comes in. Below are the key engagement features for both desktop and mobile users:

• In-App Guides Guides embedded into your product’s UI, allowing users to get assistance without disruptions.
• Personalized Guides Segmented guides to target specific users based on where they are in their app journey, using tailored messaging.
• AI-Generated Guides Instantly generating step-by-step guides using AI, simply by putting in prompts, content preferences, and the starting URLs.
• User Tips Using tooltips, banners, onboarding guides, modals, and other in-app messaging tools to offer user guidance seamlessly.
• Resource Center Creating an in-app resource center with video tutorials, access guides, walkthrough tutorials, and other material for a better onboarding experience.

Pendo Features For Feedback Collection And Sentiment Analysis

User feedback is crucial for getting more people to use an app. Pendo offers tools that simplify the process of collecting feedback and analyzing user sentiment. This helps prioritize what users care about most. Here are the main features for collecting feedback and analyzing sentiment:

• Pendo NPS Continually tracking NPS (Net Promoter Score) in-app to measure user satisfaction and monitor improvements.
• NPS Analytics Tracking user behavior and product features that impact your NPS, both positively and negatively.
• Surveys And Polls In-app surveys and polls to gather user feedback (Pendo offers polls as part of its Guides).
• AI-Powered Sentiment Analytics AI-generated insights into user attitudes and trends to identify user patterns, recurring problems, usage trends, and unaddressed pain points.

Pendo Features For Employee Productivity

Pendo is designed for your customers, but you can also use it to boost your team’s productivity. It shows how your employees use internal tools and offers features that help them work with complex applications. Here are its key features for employee productivity:

• In-App Guides Step-by-step walkthroughs for onboarding new hires.
• Process Analytics Analytics on employee workflows to identify inefficiencies and issues to enhance in-app journeys.
• Change Management Customized guides to enhance adoption during new rollouts or system migrations.
• Roadmaps Creating internal roadmaps to align stakeholders and simplify communication among cross-functional teams.

Pendo Use Cases

Pendo is primarily used by UX designers, product managers, operations stakeholders, marketers, and customer success managers to reduce friction in user journeys and enhance software adoption. Common use cases include:

• Product Adoption Analyzing user interactions to track adoption and send in-app messaging to increase adoption rates.
• Marketing Customized in-app guides and messaging for specific user segments, along with in-app nudges for desired user interactions.
• Onboarding Personalized and automated onboarding for new users, especially through step-by-step walkthroughs to reduce first-time friction.
• Customer Success Monitoring usage and past behavior patterns to identify at-risk customers and deploy re-engagement campaigns.
• Churn Reduction Monitoring early indicators of user drop-off and re-engaging at-risk users before they drop off the funnel completely.
• Product Launch Creating customized in-app messaging to introduce new products or in-app features and measuring their adoption.
• Roadmaps Using collected feedback and sentiment analysis to plan structured roadmaps for efficient planning.
• Employee Interactions Employee segmentation for customized training, gathering feedback for enhancing workflows, and tracking usage of tools for ensuring compliance.

What Can You Do With Pendo?

With Pendo, continuous product improvement becomes effortless. Teams can leverage deep data and AI-powered insights for key applications, such as:

• Measuring product success through usage patterns and engagement metrics.
• Segmenting users based on adoption stage, behavior, and role to tailor experiences.
• Creating personalized onboarding experiences that help different users adopt different products seamlessly.
• Tracking retention rates, adoption numbers, emerging trends, new feature adoption, and other key metrics to understand user engagement better.
• Gathering comprehensive feedback through session replays, NPS surveys, in-guide polls, etc.
• Delivering customized in-app messages and guides based on user behavior and feedback.
• Analyzing sentiment to identify usage bottlenecks, patterns, and enhancements as quickly as possible.
• Leveraging customized dashboards to tailor engagement strategies for faster product adoption.
• Creating in-app messaging and guides for mobile products.

How Much Does The Pendo App Cost?

Pendo pricing is not publicly available, as the platform only accepts requests for custom quotes. However, Pendo pricing plans are segmented into four tiers to accommodate different team sizes and use cases, and the platform also offers a free plan. Each plan is flexible and scaled based on total monthly active users (MAU), so teams can choose one that fits their software adoption needs. Below is a detailed breakdown of what each Pendo price plan includes.

Pendo Free

The Free plan allows up to 500 MAUs and offers the following features:

• In-app analytics, including behavioral analytics, retroactive data analytics, retention reporting, and account segments.
• In-app guides, including mobile guides, accessibility features, and surveys.
• Pendo-branded NPS surveys (paid).
• One-year access to data retention.
• Product discovery roadmaps.
• SSO and security compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, Privacy Shield, etc.).
• Customer support (self-serve only).

Pendo Base

The Base plan lets you choose a custom number of monthly active users (MAUs) based on your needs. In addition to the features in the Free plan, the Base plan also includes the following:

• Customizable reports, product engagement scores, cross-app journey reports, and other analytics features.
• In-app resource center, guided experiments, automated guides, embedded guides, and additional guide-related functionalities.
• Session replays (available for a fee).
• Product discovery roadmaps (available for a fee).
• Custom NPS surveys (available for a fee).
• Orchestrated user journeys, native email capabilities, and marketing automation integrations (available for a fee).
• Seven-year data retention, API access (available for a fee), data synchronization (available for a fee), and one integration included.
• Customer support is available.

Pendo Core

The Core plan also permits a customizable number of MAUs, in addition to the features included in the Base plan:

• Session replays are included, featuring frustration indicators, unlimited session capture, and a 30-day retention period.
• Product discovery roadmaps are also available (available for a fee).

Pendo Pulse

The Pulse plan allows for a customizable number of MAUs and includes the following additional features beyond those offered in the Pendo plan.

• Product discovery features, including feedback summaries, automated feedback triaging, idea prioritization, and a customer portal.
• Sentiment analysis features, including NPS triage, email subscriptions, and AI summaries.

Pendo Ultimate

The Ultimate plan provides a tailored number of MAUs and the features included in the Pulse plan, plus:

• Orchestrated journeys.
• Native emails and marketing automation integrations.

Does Pendo Offer Trials?

Yes. The platform offers a 30-day free trial. This is different from the Free plan because it gives you full access to Pendo for one month. During this time, you can use all the features like analytics, feedback tools, journey orchestration, and in-app guides. The Free plan is valid indefinitely but has limited features.

Is Pendo Pricing Negotiable?

Pendo offers pricing plans that already include discounts for bundles. However, you can negotiate their prices, especially if you’re making a multi-year commitment, buying bundled services, choosing semi-annual billing, or purchasing in larger quantities. To discuss your needs and negotiate prices, contact Pendo’s sales team.

Pros And Cons Of Using Pendo

To see if Pendo is worth your time and money, let’s have a brief look at its pros and cons.

Pros

• Robust Analytics Pendo’s analytics are not only accurate but also extremely detailed, allowing teams to track feature adoption and historical patterns through retroactive analysis.
• No-Code Guides Pendo’s no-code nature means non-technical teams can easily adopt it and create step-by-step guides, onboarding walkthroughs, and other relevant resources without any developer assistance.
• Centralized Hub It offers a range of services in one place, including in-app messaging, self-service resource centers, NPS surveys, and sentiment analysis. It also provides AI-powered tools to improve workflows.
• Customizable Dashboards Highly customizable dashboards allow enterprises to leverage more personalized reporting, even cross-app dashboards that track engagement across various product lines.
• Useful For Employees Too Pendo works for both external users and company employees, enhancing adoption, efficiency, and workflow creation within teams.

Cons

• More Expensive The cost of each pricing tier increases as you increase MAUs. This means that the platform can be more expensive than other alternatives with fewer features.
• Larger Learning Curve Although in-app guides may be no-code, setting up analytics, segmenting users, and tracking employee workflows will require extensive product knowledge.
• Lack Of Customization Pendo offers various pre-built templates. However, its guides lack detailed UI customization, which large-scale branding teams need, as well as basic features such as mobile notifications.
• No Public Pricing Available The lack of transparency on its pricing plans makes it difficult for teams to make quick purchase decisions.

So, Is Pendo Worth It?

Pendo is a product analytics platform that helps organizations make data-driven decisions to grow and scale. It is best for mid-to-large-scale SaaS companies that want to track how users engage with their products, support large user groups, and manage employee performance. However, Pendo may not be suitable for early-stage teams that do not focus much on analytics, especially since its pricing goes up as monthly active users increase.

References:

• Pendo Pricing and Plan Breakdown (2025) + More Cost-Effective Alternative
• Pendo Pricing 2025
• What is Pendo? A Detailed Overview of Pendo Features, Use Cases, and Pricing

FAQ

Pendo is a no-code software experience management platform designed to help enterprise teams understand user interactions, deliver personalized guidance within products, and create tailored in-app journeys. It serves as a comprehensive solution for teams aiming to analyze user engagement more effectively, identify bottlenecks, improve workflows, and increase adoption rates.

Pendo focuses on in-app analytics, collecting feedback, helping users onboard, and personalizing experiences. In contrast, Google Analytics mainly tracks website data to show how users arrive at your site.

You may need one during installation, but once everything is up and running, you will no longer require developer support for most tasks, including event tracking, sentiment analysis, and guide creation.