The Battle of Onboarding Tools in 2025

The days when a quick tooltip or basic walkthrough could keep users engaged are gone. In 2025, products live or die by how quickly users find value. With competition tighter than ever, companies can’t afford sloppy onboarding. Customers want speed, personalization, and clarity, whether they’re logging in for the first time or adopting new features months later.

That’s where user onboarding software and product adoption platforms come in. The right tool helps reduce churn, drive engagement, and turn confused trial users into long-term paying customers. But the market is crowded. From Appcues to Pendo, WalkMe, Intercom, Userpilot, and newer entrants, teams face endless options.

Two names making a lot of noise in 2025 are Saltfish.ai and Product Fruits. While both promise to improve onboarding, their approaches couldn’t be more different. One bets on AI-powered personalization through video, while the other focuses on interactive walkthroughs and in-app guides.

On the one hand, Saltfish.ai is a fresh AI onboarding tool built with a video-first, personalization-driven approach. On the other hand, Product Fruits is a more traditional product adoption software focused on interactive walkthroughs, tooltips, and in-app guides.

So which is better for your team? Let’s start by looking at what each tool actually brings to the table.

Saltfish.ai: AI-Powered, Video-First Onboarding

Saltfish.ai is not your average onboarding tool; it’s built on the belief that the future of product adoption lies in AI-driven, video-first personalization. Instead of forcing users through static walkthroughs, Saltfish generates dynamic onboarding videos tailored to each user’s role, preferences, and journey.

This makes Saltfish especially powerful for global teams or complex products where one-size-fits-all onboarding falls flat. Beyond video, it offers AI-powered analytics, API-first integrations, and personalized engagement strategies that adapt as your users grow. Key strengths of Saltfish.ai include its deep focus on engagement and conversion: it explicitly tracks site analytics (views, watch time) and even offers session replays and advanced analytics on higher tiers.

Product Fruits: Guided Tours and Walkthroughs Made Simple

Product Fruits is a digital adoption and user onboarding software designed to help teams create interactive in-app experiences without needing code. Its core feature is product tours: guided walkthroughs that introduce new users to key features step by step. These tours can include tooltips, modals, and checklists to reduce friction during onboarding.

Beyond tours, Product Fruits also offers release notes, in-app announcements, and feedback widgets, making it more of an all-in-one product adoption toolkit. Teams use it to highlight new features, reduce support tickets, and boost user retention by ensuring customers understand the product from day one.

While it’s relatively easy to set up and integrates with tools like Segment and HubSpot, Product Fruits focuses more on linear, guide-based onboarding flows rather than personalized, interactive video paths.

Onboarding Experience: Video vs Walkthroughs

This is the biggest difference.

• Saltfish.ai believes the future of onboarding is video-first. Instead of a flood of tooltips, it generates AI-powered onboarding videos that adapt to your user’s role, industry, or even preferred language. Imagine a sales manager seeing a completely different onboarding flow than a developer, without you having to create two separate tracks. That’s the power of AI video.
  
  
  

• Product Fruits sticks to a more traditional model: in-app guides, checklists, and product tours. These are effective for walking new users through buttons and menus, but they lack the emotional punch and personalization that video brings.

If your product thrives on storytelling and user engagement, Saltfish wins here. If you just want straightforward tooltips and don’t need personalization, Product Fruits covers the basics.

Saltfish.ai vs Product Fruits: Quick Comparison Table

Onboarding & Interactive Product Tours

Product Fruits specializes in guided interactive walkthroughs and checklists that help new users learn the app. Its platform lets you create AI-enhanced product tours (with highlights, video clips and tooltips) to point users to important features. In other words, Product Fruits uses traditional UI elements (pop-ups, banners, life-ring help buttons) and step-by-step tours to onboard users gradually. 

By contrast, Saltfish.ai’s onboarding is delivered through short, embedded video flows. Teams create AI avatars (human-like presenters) who explain features and tasks in video format. These videos pop up at key moments in the user’s journey, greeting new sign-ups or guiding them through first steps. In practice, Saltfish behaves more like an in-product “face-to-face” tutorial, whereas Product Fruits creates clickable tours and hints. Both aim to convert visitors and engage new users, but Saltfish’s video approach is unique among AI onboarding tools.

Integrations & Analytics

Product Fruits offers broad integrations and built-in analytics. For example, it connects with common analytics and marketing tools (Google Analytics, Heap, Mixpanel, HubSpot, Segment, Slack, Intercom, Zapier, etc.), allowing teams to trigger onboarding flows or collect data based on events in these systems. It also includes robust in-app analytics: even the Starter plan includes flow completion reports, and higher plans add segmentation and advanced reporting. 

Saltfish.ai, by comparison, is simpler. Its video widget is embedded via a one-line script tag, so it can track engagement through that script and basic analytics in the dashboard. Saltfish’s Starter plan only offers Basic analytics, while the Growth plan adds advanced analytics and session replays. In summary, Product Fruits provides a full analytics suite and many third-party integrations for product adoption and engagement, whereas Saltfish focuses mainly on its own video engagement metrics and core embed functionality.

Ease of Use and Setup

Both platforms emphasize ease of use. Product Fruits provides a no-code editor designed for non-technical users, and reviewers note its intuitive interface and quick setup. In practice, teams can drag-and-drop tours and announcements without writing code. 

Saltfish.ai likewise prides itself on a simple setup: its video content can be generated from text and published quickly, and the front-end only requires embedding a single script tag. This makes both tools accessible to non-engineers. In customer feedback, Product Fruits often gets praised for its usability (G2 users mention “ease of use” and a “clean user interface” as major pluses). Saltfish.ai is newer and has less third-party review data, but its streamlined feature set (video builder and flows) suggests a much lower learning curve.

Pros & Cons

• Saltfish.ai
  
  
  

  • Pros: Delivers highly engaging, personalized video tutorials using AI avatars (offers 30+ languages in advanced plans); includes a true free tier (useful for small apps); easy to embed with minimal code. Video format can boost conversions and reduce bounce rates. And a strong customer support.
    
    
    

  • Cons: Narrower feature set (focuses on video flows only) and fewer native integrations than some competitors; the free plan is limited to 5K views. As a newer product, it may lack advanced in-app elements like tooltips.
    
    
    

• Product Fruits
  
  
  

  • Pros: Comprehensive onboarding/DAP feature set (guided tours, checklists, hints, announcements, surveys, etc.); strong customer support and ease-of-use. Broad integrations and analytics are built in. Pricing is transparent and usage-based.
    
    
    

  • Cons: Some users mention a learning curve for advanced features and limited customization of certain widgets. It is primarily customer-focused (not designed for internal IT apps), and multi-language or employee-onboarding features are still evolving.

Product Fruits offers segmentation where you can show different tours to different user groups. Helpful, but manual. Saltfish takes personalization further. Its AI onboarding tools generate videos that adapt on the fly. That means a small SaaS startup, a university, or a Fortune 500 enterprise could all use the same Saltfish setup, yet their end users would experience something unique and relevant.

Final Verdict: Why Saltfish.ai Wins in 2025

When weighing Saltfish.ai against Product Fruits, it ultimately comes down to what your team values most in an onboarding and product adoption tool. Product Fruits deserves credit for being straightforward and approachable. Its tours, checklists, and in-app guidance features give growing teams an easy way to get started with onboarding. It’s a decent option if you’re looking for a simple, lightweight walkthrough tool and don’t need much in the way of deep personalization or advanced video experiences.

That said, the real strength of Saltfish.ai lies in its ability to merge traditional onboarding flows with modern, AI-powered interactivity. Instead of static tooltips and repetitive pop-ups, Saltfish lets you embed personalized, interactive video experiences directly into your product. This transforms onboarding from something users have to tolerate into something they actually enjoy. By speaking to users in a way that feels tailored to their journey, Saltfish not only guides them more effectively but also builds long-term engagement and trust.

Then there’s support and partnership. As a newer company, Saltfish prioritizes its customers at every stage, offering hands-on guidance that larger, more established players simply can’t match. You’re not just buying software; you’re gaining a partner invested in your success. That means faster responses, more tailored solutions, and the ability to actually influence product development. This level of support makes Saltfish an attractive alternative not just to Product Fruits but to the wider field of competitors like Appcues, WalkMe, and Pendo.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a simple, cost-effective way to launch basic tours and checklists, Product Fruits is a solid choice. But if your goal is to deliver unforgettable onboarding experiences, scale effectively as you grow, and work with a partner that prioritizes your success, then Saltfish.ai is the clear winner in 2025.

Now’s the time to rethink how you onboard and engage your users. Don’t settle for static, cookie-cutter walkthroughs; Choose Saltfish.ai and give your team the tools to deliver onboarding that truly resonates

FAQs

Q: What is Saltfish.ai?
A: Saltfish.ai is a platform for generating interactive AI videos that can be embedded into websites and apps to onboard, convert, and support users. In other words, it’s like having an in-app video guide or product specialist that responds to user needs. You provide text prompts or scripts, and Saltfish generates a lifelike avatar video that greets users, answers questions with on-the-fly product tours, and helps explain your product’s features. The focus is on short, face-to-face video messages that enhance user experience and engagement on your site.

Q: What makes Saltfish different from Product Fruits?
A: Saltfish.ai differentiates itself by using interactive AI video for onboarding, whereas Product Fruits focuses on traditional product tours and in-app guides. In other words, Saltfish creates engaging face-to-face style video walkthroughs, while Product Fruits creates clickable tours, tooltips, and checklists (part of its broader product adoption toolkit). Both are AI-driven, but Saltfish’s strength is video content, whereas Product Fruits offers a wider range of in-app guidance and analytics.