What is Appcues?
Learn more about what Appcues is and what it can do for your product
Table of Contents
Appcues helps teams create, deliver, and improve product experiences without needing engineering support. Use it to welcome and onboard new users, guide people to their “aha” moments, announce features, gather feedback, and drive key behaviors at the moments that matter most across the customer lifecycle.
You can use Appcues in your web and mobile apps to create different experiences like Flows, Checklists, Pins, Launchpads, Banners, NPS, Surveys and to send emails and push notifications to your users.
To build with Appcues, you'll use:
- Appcues Builder - a Chrome extension that you'll open on top of your product to create some of our experiences like Flows, Pins or Banners.
- Appcues Studio - the dashboard where you'll create all the other experiences, define the settings of those experiences, as well as your styling and themes.
Appcues Builder
You don't need to install Appcues on your application to access the Appcues Builder. Sign up for a free trial account with Appcues and install our Chrome Extension to get started.
Once it's installed, open it on a page where you'd like to start building an experience, like a Flow. As an example, you can check out our article Build a Flow 101 to learn more.
Appcues Studio
The Appcues Studio acts as your main dashboard where you control all things related to your account. Here, you can create all the experiences that aren't created through the Appcues Builder and manage all the settings and data related to your account.
How Appcues fits into your product stack
✅ Where it lives
Appcues runs as a lightweight JavaScript snippet in your web app or as an SDK in mobile apps. It overlays in‑product experiences like Modals, Tooltips, Banners, and more. Learn more about which web and mobile application frameworks Appcues supports as well as other technologies and features.
✅ How it’s triggered
Experiences show based on rules you define: page URL, user attributes, events and segments. You can personalize your content with dynamic fields and your own branding.
✅ Data in and out
Send data in: user traits and events from your app, 3rd-party tools and data warehouse enrich targeting.
Send data out: engagement data flow back to your tool stack or data warehouse for unified reporting.
✅ Who uses it
Typically, product, UX, marketing and CX teams build experiences, but any team can use Appcues. Engineering supports the initial install, data instrumentation, and governance.
✅ Typical architecture
- Install Appcues snippet or SDK in your product
- Send user identification data and key events
- Create experiences in the Builder and Studio
- Target audiences and define goals
- Launch, measure impact, iterate or A/B test
✅ Where it adds value
- Onboarding and activation: drive users to reduce time‑to‑value.
- Free trial conversion: engage trial users after signup to convert them to paying customers.
- Feature adoption: contextual nudges highlight what’s new or underused.
- Feedback: NPS and surveys capture insight in the moment.
- Support deflection: tips and guided help reduce tickets.
✅ How it complements your stack
Appcues integrates with several analytics, CRM and marketing automation tools. These integrations enable customers to:
- Pass user behavior data between Appcues and other tools
- Pass user properties between CRMs and Appcues
- Connect event tracking across platforms
- Measure the impact of Appcues experiences on user behavior and business metrics