Two years ago, I embarked on a journey to build a user onboarding tool for non-developers. My goal was to create a solution that would help non-technical users build product tours for their apps without any coding. However, the project ultimately failed due to several reasons—technical limitations, poor market fit, and the wrong approach to user experience.
Through this experience, I realized something crucial: the existing tools on the market didn’t fully meet the needs of either developers or non-developers. Open-source libraries like Intro.js, Shepherd.js, and driverjs were overly simplistic. They lacked essential features like product tour management, customizable start rules, segmentation, and data tracking. On the other hand, paid SaaS tools such as Appcues, Userpilot, Userflow, Userguiding, and Chameleon, while rich in features, often claim to be non-developer-friendly. Yet, non-developers frequently struggled to configure complex product tours, resulting in issues like "element not found" and software instability—issues that, as a developer, I find intolerable.
Reflecting on my previous experience and lessons learned, I decided to rebuild my idea with a new focus—one that catered directly to developers. I wanted to create a product onboarding solution that offered the flexibility of open-source tools while including the full features that developers need to manage product tours effectively and without expensive SaaS limitations.
That’s how UserTour was born. It’s an open-source, developer-friendly user onboarding tool designed to address the shortcomings of existing solutions. With features like product tour management, customizable start rules, segmentation, and data tracking, UserTour is tailored to help developers create robust and seamless onboarding experiences.
I’m excited to share UserTour with the community and invite developers to collaborate in making it the ultimate user onboarding tool. The project is open-source, and I welcome your feedback and contributions to improve it.
