Finding the perfect Walnut alternative for your specific use case and budget can be tricky, as many powerful interactive demo platforms exist.

Need a break from limited editing options and rigid pricing?

To help you find the ideal platform, we sifted through user reviews on Capterra and G2, interviewed some users, and tested several interactive demo solutions.

Our efforts resulted in this hand-picked list of the 8 best Walnut alternatives, where we break down each platform’s strengths, limitations, best use cases, and more.

Let’s begin by explaining why many users look for a Walnut alternative in the first place.

Why switch to a Walnut alternative?

First, Walnut definitely has upsides that make it a solid option for certain user types.

Namely, Walnut was designed to help sales teams win over their prospects by delivering personalized product demos.

As such, it has a few solid features:

Deal Intel lets you track how your leads interact with your demos. It can reveal which stakeholders viewed the demo, find out which demos perform best, identify drop-off points and high-risk deals, and more.

Deep integration with Salesforce enables you to create highly personalized demos based on your CRM data, optimize demos using CRM intelligence, and match them to the specific stage of the customer’s journey.

However, several significant downsides to Walnut can put existing and potential users off, including:

#1: Unintuitive UI and limited editing options

Most users complain about Walnut's UI, as the platform has a steep learning curve.

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Moreover, it doesn’t have as many editing options as some competitors, making it a suboptimal choice for power users.

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#2: Rigid pricing

Unlike many other interactive demo platforms, Walnut doesn’t offer a free plan or trial, meaning you must pay to use it upfront.

Even worse - it only offers annual pricing plans, locking you in long-term contracts.

Also, some of its features that can be particularly useful to enterprises and other more advanced users - such as advanced translations, offline demos, white labels, etc. - are only available as add-ons that are charged extra.

#3: Frequent usability issues and dependence on customer support

Another downside to Walnut’s clunky interface is that you’ll often have to keep in touch with its customer support team.

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On the bright side, its support team seems pretty responsive, but the last thing you want is to have to ping support for every bug, glitch, and issue that occasionally arises.

What are the best Walnut alternatives in 2024?

1. Arcade

Full disclosure: While Arcade is our product, we aim to provide an unbiased perspective on why Arcade is truly the top Walnut alternative on the market.

Arcade is an interactive demo platform popular among users for its intuitive interface, super-short median publish time (approx. 6 minutes), and trademark visual polish.

This makes it the perfect Walnut alternative for users who want to ensure that they’ll get the opportunity to tell their product story in a way that perfectly suits their vision and goals.

Feature #1: Versatile demo-building options

Unlike most other interactive product tour platforms that stick to a single demo-building option, Arcade lets you create interactive demos in more ways than one.

Namely, the platform enables you to:

Take screenshots of your product and stitch them into a seamless product tour.

Record how you interact with your product in real time. Arcade captures every click and action you take and turns them into hotspots, letting you create an interactive product tour in minutes.
Upload existing screenshots and videos and transform them into interactive demo steps.

Pro tip: You can leverage this option to create demos of your mobile apps. Capture how you interact with your app on your mobile device, upload those recordings and screenshots to Arcade, and use its editing wizard to create compelling demos - as easy as that.

But that’s not all.

Arcade has both a Chrome extension that enables you to record and take screenshots of your web apps and a desktop app that lets you record and capture:

Multiple tabs and screens.
Other desktop apps.
Terminal apps.

Why is this important?

Well, most similar platforms only have a browser extension, meaning you’d have to use other tools to record multiple tabs and offline apps. With Arcade, you can take care of everything from a single reference point.

Check out Arcade’s Capture feature here. 👇

Feature #2: Rich editing capabilities

You know the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”?

The harsh truth is that it might not always apply to sales and marketing.

Humans are visual, meaning you’ll need to make sure that you showcase your product’s practical value and visual appeal for the best results.

One of Arcade’s unique strengths is that it enables users of all types and experience levels to do just that: create stunning product demos for all kinds of use cases - from user onboarding to marketing, sales, presales, and beyond.

Here’s an example of one of our users Arcade. 👇

This is made possible thanks to Arcade’s rich and intuitive editing capabilities, including:

Choose Your Own Adventure—This is an advanced branching option that gives demo viewers more control by letting them choose a specific demo step based on the following:

Their role (e.g., sales, marketing, etc.).
Level of product understanding (choose between demos for more basic or advanced features).
Specific interests (product overview, specific feature, book a meeting).

Chapters—Use these to segment your demo and provide additional context for each specific part. This will give your viewers an even more immersive and engaging experience.

Pan and zoom – Easily direct your audience’s focus on the most critical parts of the tour without advanced editing skills.
Mobile optimization – Arcade automatically adjusts and optimizes demos for mobile views when it detects they’re being accessed through mobile. This means you won’t have to create separate demos for mobile and desktop devices.
Page Morph – Edit any text on your page before recording. This way you can personalize demos for individual viewers or protect sensitive information.

Background music — The design settings panel allows you to attach an MP3 file and add any kind of music for an extra satisfying customer experience.
Synthetic voiceovers – Arcade supports 29 (and constantly increasing!) voiceover languages, allowing you to include clear and concise explanations at each walkthrough step.

Note: Each edit your team makes to a specific Arcade will automatically be reflected in all existing versions.

As a result, you won’t have to manually update demos you’ve already sent to customers and leads, as they’ll always have the freshest, most relevant version at their fingertips.

Feature #3: Sharing and exporting

After creating and editing your Arcade, sharing it with your audience is the final step.

There are several ways of doing this, such as:

Sharing links to your demo via any channel.
Embedding demos on your website, landing page, or any app.
Sharing via collections, i.e., sharing a bundle of related demos and enabling users to navigate between them easily.
Sharing via social media and email campaigns.

Pro tip: You can share your Arcade using custom links to give viewers an even better-tailored experience.

The platform also supports multi-media exports, which are perfect for use in email campaigns or social media posts, including:

High-quality GIF
High-quality video

Pricing

Unlike Walnut, Arcade offers a free plan (and a 14-day growth trial), which is ideal for users who want to create their first interactive demos.

The plan includes camera recording, synthetic voiceover, demo chapters, and more.

For unlimited Arcades and more design, personalization, and sharing options, you can upgrade to one of three paid plans:

Pro: $32 per user per month, unlimited arcades (i.e., demos), gives you more customization and branding control over demos.
‍Growth: $42.50 per user per month, up to 10 users, unlimited arcades, ideal for teams, and includes advanced editing, branching, and collaboration.
‍Enterprise: Custom pricing, minimum 10 users, unlimited arcades, enterprise-level security and analytics dashboards.

Note: The Growth plan has a 14-day trial. Try it for free to experience Arcade’s full capabilities.

How does Arcade compare to Walnut?

The first thing you notice when comparing Arcade to Walnut is that Arcade's interface is much more intuitive and easier to navigate.

As a result, Arcade has a minimal learning curve, enabling all kinds of users to start creating compelling demos within minutes.

Price is another key point. Whereas Walnut locks you in annual contracts from day one, Arcade:

Has a free forever plan.
Offers a free trial for its Pro plan.
Has both monthly and yearly plans (when billed annually, the price is lower).

Moreover, Arcade has many more editing features that let you create visually polished demos that delight leads and customers alike.

Walnut, on the other hand, is significantly limited in that aspect.

Ultimately, Walnut could be a good choice if you need a product demo platform designed for sales use cases alone and have more than a few extra bucks to spend on your designated solution.

Conversely, go for Arcade if you want to create compelling product stories for various use cases and audiences in less time and at a significantly lower price.

Pros & Cons of Arcade

✅ Delivers visual polish across levels.

✅ Intuitive, user-friendly interface.

✅ Affordable pricing.

✅ Rich personalization options to create tailored experiences on scale.

✅ Versatile use cases.

✅ Very fast average deployment time.

❌ Its most advanced features are available only on its higher-tier plans, although the cheaper plans include a solid range of capabilities for users with more basic needs.

2. Storylane

Best for: Creating both HTML and screen-recorded demos.

Storylane is an interactive demo platform that uses screen capture and HTML to build demos.

This allows for more versatility than Walnut, which limits you to screenshots alone.

Features

More demo-creating options, including using HTML product replicas and recording and taking screenshots of your product (remember, though, that it doesn’t let you record videos of scrolling and typing motions in your product, unlike Arcade).
Secure sharing enables you to set up special permissions and requirements for accessing your demos, such as requiring viewers to provide their email addresses to watch them or setting expiration times.

Demo Hub lets you create a demo library to share with your viewers. This library allows them to access all demos that are mutually relevant and connected in a single place.