Introduction
Let's face it— you have enough on your plate.
With pay wages and the cost of operations constantly rising, we know how difficult it can be to manage resources and properly train your team.
Training Industry’s “Trends 2023: Managing Training for a Changing Workplace,” says that concise, detailed informational materials can aid employee skill development and increase productivity throughout the training process.
Scribe and UserGuiding are two popular solutions for onboarding and training your teammates today.
Here's why Scribe's the right one for you.
TL;DR: Scribe vs. UserGuiding
- Scribe and UserGuiding are process documentation tools specializing in tutorial creation, efficiently creating training and onboarding materials to increase productivity in the workplace.
- UserGuiding is a user onboarding platform for creating detailed product walkthroughs.
- Scribe automatically generates visual guides with detailed step-by-step instructions as you work— Scribe is better for step-wise product guides.
- UserGuiding requires more time and hands-on effort.
- Scribe and UserGuiding are simple to install, but Scribe's countless sharing options offer incomparable ease of access to both employers and employees.
- Scribe has unique features to customize and organize your guides, ensuring thorough and instructional Scribes in no time, every time.
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What is Scribe?
Scribe is an AI-powered tool that documents your processes for you.
The Chrome extension and Desktop app build visual guides while you work — so that you can train teammates, answer questions and ramp up new hires in half the time.
It’s not magic—but it certainly feels like it!
Scribe's key features:
- Automatically create detailed step-by-step guides as you work.
- Get started instantly with an intuitive, simple interface.
- Countless editing options help streamline your SOPs (standard operating procedures.)
- Pages offers ultimate customization — easily combine Scribes and add multimedia to create the most thorough materials possible.
- Scribes are easily accessible and can be embedded, saved as a PDF, or shared via link or supported in-app integrations.
What is UserGuiding?
UserGuiding is another popular process documentation tool in the employee training industry.
You can use it to create interactive walkthroughs to help onboard teammates on new platforms.
UserGuiding's key features:
- Create step-by-step onboarding walkthroughs.
- In-app surveys and feedback collection.
- Access to detailed analytics and reporting.
While UserGuiding and Scribe both create guides to simplify workplace training processes, UserGuiding requires more effort from its users.
Scribe breakdown
Scribe's approach to process documentation is simple and approachable.
Simple installation
No prior knowledge of coding/codes is required to start making and sharing your Scribes immediately — it's as easy as downloading a browser extension!
With Scribe’s ease of access, there’s no need to sit through tedious how-to guides and sift through directions to begin making your own process documentation guides.
Perfect guides, effortlessly
Once you install the software, just turn on the extension and go through your task as usual.
Once you're finished, Scribe will automatically generate your step-by-step guide, complete with detailed, outlined instructions.
Countless editing features:
All Scribe users can edit text, delete steps and use AI to customize their guide. Pro users get additional, awesome features like:
- Zooming in, highlighting and annotating screenshots.
- Rescinding sensitive data with Auto and SmartBlur.
- Adding brand colors and logos.
- Creating unlimited guides.
AI-powered training manuals and more
Streamline your step-by-step SOPs with this key feature unique to Scribe. With Pages, you can embellish your Scribes by adding:
- AI-powered text.
- Hyperlinks.
- Animated gifs.
- Videos.
Pages lets you organize multiple Scribes into a single instructional document, allowing users to quickly build the most thorough step-by-step guides possible!
Always accessible:
Scribes are available wherever you need them. The "Scribe Sidekick" shows you all of the guides available for whatever site your own, so you can learn on the fly.
And you never have to worry about outgrowing your software—Scribe is designed to evolve with your processes.
Use the feedback function to make sure that your guides are always up-to-date, and rely on universal updates to fix your guide, wherever you have it. You'll never have to worry about version control again.
Scribe Pros and Cons
Scribe pros
- Simple user interface.
- Instant, accurate content—always.
- Unparalleled accessibility with countless sharing options.
- Realistic, competitive pricing structures.
- Seamless editing tools.
- Countless exclusive features (Pages, SmartBlur, SmartEmbed).
- Capture anytime with browser, desktop and mobile capability.
- Scribe's website offers clients beneficial resources.
- Attentive support team.
Scribe cons
- Pro. plan is recommended to optimize user experience.
- While they're working on solutions, Scribe currently only supports digital processes.
- The free plan limits how many guides you can create.
Scribe user Josie K. says,
“I was spending hours in my operations role documenting long and complicated digital processes. Due to the manual nature of this, it was very common for steps to be missed. Scribe has totally solved this issue... I'm winning back multiple hours a week and the guides look so much better than our previous SOP template.”
Userguiding breakdown
Userguiding is absolutely a competitive product, with a variety of useful features.
Customization
UserGuiding allows you to manually adjust each process step with full descriptions and images.
Though UserGuiding has preset templates that allow for a quick start on various types of projects, the creation process can be time-consuming. Nonetheless, the software’s numerous customization options aid in building unique process documents.
Feedback collection
UserGuiding offers limited feedback collection within their service, a feature that allows you to analyze the productivity and functionality of your materials.
UserGuiding also allows you to set up in-service surveys to identify how your team perceives their onboarding program.
Helpful resources
If you have difficulty grasping the ropes, UserGuiding has a help and resource center to help users adjust to the program. Webinars, podcasts, e-books and additional answers are available on the UserGuiding website to ease the introductory learning period. However, their app does not have an option for live chat support.
Userguiding Pros and Cons
UserGuiding pros:
- Plenty of customization options.
- Helpful support team and resources.
- Feedback collection analyzes the effectiveness of your step-by-step guides.
UserGuiding cons:
- Building materials is a hands-on process.
- Steep learning curve— it takes practice to get the most out of the program.
- Limited sharing options and integrations.
- Some users report difficulties with buggy web extensions.
- Paid plans begin at a higher cost.
💡 Check out our list of the best UserGuiding alternatives to streamline user onboarding.
Pricing comparisons
Unlike many competing process documentation tools, Scribe offers users realistic, affordable pricing based on their personal needs.
While UserGuiding has its benefits, it comes at a higher price than Scribe. While Scribe's pricing adjusts based on your needs and the size of your company, UserGuiding's pricing model is less realistic.
Why use Scribe?
While Scribe and UserGuiding are both undoubtedly powerful process documentation tools, Scribe carries unique advantages over its competitors.
Now that we have discussed both tools, here's why Scribe may be the perfect software for your team:
1. Faster and more efficient
Scribe offers its users a more concise and productive experience than its competitors with its accurate, automatically generated descriptions and visuals. With Scribe's ease of use, there's no learning curve— simply start capturing to build your guides instantly.
2. Easy sharing
While UserGuiding can be installed with a few simple clicks, to share your step-by-step guides, you must first upload them to a host website.
For many technologically inexperienced users, this can be quite the process and challenge within itself. The user must manage container codes and install them on their website before their materials can be accessible to the public.
Though this process is not very complex, it can be intimidating if you aren’t familiar with coding. But luckily for those of us who are less tech-savvy, if you can’t quite figure out how to maneuver the Google Tag Manager on your own, UserGuiding does allow the option to 'send an email to your developer colleagues' for an additional helping hand during the installation process. Quite approachable— right?
Suppose the user is trying to install their guides while not having full access to a webpage’s source or container code. In that case, UserGuiding Now, a completely separate software extension, is necessary for users to publish their materials without requiring access to a page’s source or container code.
It's a bit of a confusing process, to say the least.
With Scribe's countless sharing options, you can guarantee that your team members will always have easy access to their guides, whether it be via:
- Link-sharing.
- The Scribe Sidekick.
- Easy embedding in your favorite tool.
- Export to PDF, HTML or Markdown.
3. Reliable browser extension
While the UserGuiding software offers in-browser accessibility with their extensions as mentioned above, when I installed both the UserGuiding and UserGuiding Now Google Chrome extensions, the programs were prone to bugs and would often be unresponsive to user commands.
4. Cost-effective
UserGuiding's paid plans come at a heftier cost without offering the same features and ease of access as Scribe.
Don’t overpay a flat annual rate just to attain premium features; Scribe can accommodate teams of all sizes within a reasonable budget that will work for you!
5. Intuitive editing tools
The Pages and Image Blur and Redaction features unique to Scribe are vital organizational tools to ensure you always administer the most concise instructional documents possible.
Final thoughts: Join the 1 million users that love Scribe
Scribe and UserGuiding are both handy process documentation tools that are guaranteed to increase productivity and salvage resources in the workplace.
Both are great tools, but Scribe offers unique advantages that will save you hours — without breaking the bank.
Training Magazine's 2022 Training Industry Report states, "U.S. training expenditures passed the $100 billion-mark for the first time in 2021-2022."
Instead of spending huge sums on creating onboarding guides and informational materials, let Scribe tackle step-by-step process documentation for you while you work as usual.
With its accessibility, accuracy, realistic pricing and wide-ranging features, Scribe makes time-consuming training processes a thing of the past.
When debating Scribe vs. UserGuiding, Scribe's accessibility and wide-ranging features set it apart from the rest of the market. It's time to invest in the future— if you’re ready to revolutionize your workplace and facilitate your enterprise's growth, try Scribe for free today!
