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In just seven years, the SaaS industry has experienced an explosive transformation, growing from a humble value of $31.4 billion to an estimated $195.2 billion by 2023, representing a 5x surge.
As the world becomes increasingly digitized, the SaaS industry continues to expand at an extraordinary pace. They’ve offered cloud-based software to assist administration, HR management, content production, marketing management, etc.
However, the industry’s rapid growth also provides a challenging game for SaaS companies to compete in the market. That’s when product demos and explainer videos come to the rescue.
As practical marketing tools, product demos and explainer videos have helped businesses of all sizes and fields achieve their goals. Curious to learn more? Let’s delve deeper to dig more details about the two.
A product video is marketing content that demonstrates a product or service. It describes a product’s features, benefits, and functionality to attract potential buyers. Companies often use product videos to drive sales.
Typically, product videos are short and straightforward content, which is best to raise the curiosity of the targeted audience. But some brands also spend a fortune creating more elaborate and cinematic videos.
You can hire an explainer video company to help you create professional-looking product videos. But, if you are looking to create your own, you can use online product demo software, such as Storylane, to create one. Storylane enables you to create product demos in ten minutes.
Check out Storylane in action👇
For your product video to drive the desired results, it must meet specific characteristics. Here are the components of a compelling product demo video:
In a product video, visuals are vital. Use high-quality cameras to create a professional product video presentation with engaging content. In addition, editing your raw recordings with top-tier editing software and an experienced editor is necessary.
If you want a quick process, consider hiring a video production company to get a satisfying outcome. They have considerable experience in producing a product demo according to your needs. You can also use video editing tools like Movavi to edit your recordings and ensure a professional finish.
A product video must convey a clear and concise message about the product’s features, benefits, and value proposition. Focus on highlighting your SaaS products and how they can solve specific pain points.
Ensure that you have an experienced copywriter to create your demo script. You can also hire a freelance copywriter with positive ratings and projects to help you make a concise and compelling script.
Every scene in the video must demonstrate the product in use and highlight its key features and benefits. For example, show a quick tutorial on how users can use a collaboration tool in your SaaS product.
Give a memorable tour of your collaboration tool through visuals and clear demonstration. Tell what users can do in your platform and how your SaaS features can help them work more efficiently.
A compelling call to action is necessary to encourage viewers to take action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a trial, or contacting the company. CTAs in product demos must be solid and clear to drive conversions.
For example, tell what you want the audience to do after watching your product demo. Do you want audiences to purchase or download your SaaS product? Or request a product demo through email?
A product demo video must include branding elements, such as logos, colors, and messaging, that reinforce the company’s brand identity and help to build brand awareness. Those brand identities help your SaaS product to be more memorable to target customers.
The video should be concise and to the point, typically 2-3 minutes at maximum, to ensure that viewers stay engaged and focused on the product. If you have more features to explain, consider providing several product demos rather than one long one.
Check out: A detailed guide to product demo
As one of the fastest-growing industries, SaaS has become a competitive market. You need to choose marketing tools carefully to expose your product and stay competitive in the industry.
Product demo videos are among the effective marketing content for boosting your SaaS marketing strategy. You can show your product in action, demonstrate tutorials, and show winning features through actual footage.
In fact, nearly 50% of customers agree that product demonstration videos help them make purchase decisions. Moreover, as highly shareable content, product demos are influential in growing audience reach and raising brand awareness.
You can easily find product demo videos from big SaaS brands on video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. In addition, product demo videos are versatile marketing tools that you can share across marketing channels.
If you’re looking for product demo inspirations, here is a list of SaaS product demo videos we love.
Other than product demo videos, SaaS companies can also create explainer videos for marketing purposes. Unlike product demos, an explainer video conveys a more specific topic.
As the name suggests, explainer videos aim to explain. The goal is to educate audiences about the topic discussed clearly. Here’s an example of it.
An example of explainer video from Breadnbeyond
Explainer videos use images, animations, illustrations, graphics, typography, and other visual elements to elaborate on the topic. Moreover, a compelling audio narration, background music, and sound effect are vital to complete the overall video.
Explainer videos don’t have purpose limitations. A company can create explainer videos for training purposes, business presentations, report explanations, etc.
The components of an effective explainer video are similar to a product demo. If you need help creating one, many explainer video companies are ready to help you introduce your SaaS product.
Although you hire an explainer video company, you can still customize visual, messaging, and audio styles to them. Here are some components to consider for creating a compelling explainer video.
It’s essential to keep your video clear and concise. Nobody wants to sit through a long, meandering video that doesn’t get to the point.
You want to ensure to present information in a way that’s easy to understand and follow. You need to cut any unnecessary fluff and go straight to the matter.
Your explainer video should also be visually appealing. After all, you want your viewers to watch the video all the way through.
By using high-quality graphics, animation, and sound effects, you can create a video that’s informative and enjoyable to watch.
Another vital factor to consider when creating an explainer video is how you can personalize it to your audience. An effective way to do this is by tailoring the content to your viewers’ specific needs and interests.
Doing so allows you to create a video that connects at a personal level with them. This way, your explainer video can help you build trust and credibility.
Stories can naturally draw people, and incorporating a narrative structure into your video can help to make it more engaging and memorable.
By framing your message in a way that tells a story, you can create an emotional connection with your audience that will help them remember your message long after the video is over.
After all, the whole point is to help your viewers understand a complex concept or idea. Provide valuable insights, tips, or solutions to the addressed problem.
You can create a video that helps the target audience understand your message and lets them know your product’s real value for their lives and work.
Must read: Best practices to create product tour
SaaS companies may need explainer videos for some reasons. You can align the content with the business goals you want to achieve—for example, an explainer video to educate audiences, train employees, or generate sales.
In a sales cycle, an explainer video can help your SaaS company to spread awareness. You can elaborate on a process or a concept that makes your SaaS product stand out from competitors.
In addition, explainer videos are helpful during the decision stage of the sales cycle. At this point, a potential customer may be on the fence about purchasing your product.
A delightful showcase experience and compelling delivery can help potential customers confidently purchase your product. This way, explainer videos can be an excellent sales tool for your company.
If you’re interested in creating explainer videos, check out some examples we highly recommend.
The remaining question is, which one is better? A product video or an explainer video? If you’re struggling to choose one, we’ve listed the differences. The following discussion can help you make an appropriate decision.
A product video’s primary purpose is to showcase a specific product’s features and benefits, while an explainer video often provides an overview of a particular concept or process.
Product videos typically focus on the product, highlighting its design, functionality, and unique features.
Meanwhile, explainer videos may carry the same tasks. But they tend to be more abstract and focus on explaining complex topics or ideas in a simplified manner.
Marketers often use product videos to attract and influence potential customers who are already familiar with the product or are actively considering purchasing it.
On the other hand, explainer videos have a broader audience, including people unfamiliar with the product or the industry it’s in.
Product videos are more visually oriented, showcasing the product in action and highlighting its features and benefits through demonstrations or testimonials.
Explainer videos are more educational and informative, using a mix of visuals, graphics, and voiceovers to explain a particular topic or process.
Product videos often include a strong call to action, encouraging viewers to purchase or take other specific actions.
Explainer videos may also include a call to action, but it’s typically less urgent and more focused on encouraging viewers to learn or explore the topic further.
Although product demo videos and explainer videos have different characteristics, you can combine them into the content. For example, you can introduce your SaaS product briefly and continue by explaining its specific features.
Besides, the two may also carry the same mission if used for marketing purposes. Both product demos and explainers are customizable to achieve specific goals, including raising brand awareness and improving conversion rates.
In terms of visuals, both can also look similar. Product demos and explainers typically use images, real-action footage, illustrations, and animations. Overall, whether it’s a product demo or an explainer, both can assist you in achieving marketing goals effectively.
If you’re looking to create an interactive product demo, take Storylane for a spin.
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If you're in the market for demo automation software, you've likely come across Storylane and Walnut.io. This comparison should help differentiate between both platforms to guide your purchase decision.
At a high level, Storylane and Walnut share several similarities. They’re both demo automation softwares that support HTML/CSS demos, browser extension-based capture, demo engagement analytics and insights, and CRM integrations.
That being said, Storylane stands out significantly when it comes to product versatility, user satisfaction, pricing flexibility, and overall platform capabilities. Here's how:
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to capture interactive demos:
Walnut focuses exclusively on HTML/CSS-based demos, which can be limiting when teams need video walkthroughs or screenshot-based demos. Storylane, on the other hand, is expressly designed for both demo formats — complete with auto-capture, annotations, guides, blurs, zooms, presenter videos, voiceovers, and more.
This flexibility puts Storylane in a significantly stronger position when it comes to scaling demos across departments and use-cases. Marketing teams can create image-based guided demos for websites, sales teams can use HTML demos for personalized experiences, and customer success can leverage video demos for onboarding.
Walnut.io is built primarily for sales teams, which can create friction when marketing, presales, or customer success teams need to create and manage demos. The platform's focus on sales workflows makes it less accessible for other departments.
Storylane is specifically designed for horizontal adoption across the entire go-to-market organization:
This cross-functional design is evident in features like Demo Hub, which allows teams to create galleries and playlists of demos that address multiple buyer personas and use cases in one place. Walnut does not offer comparable functionality.
User satisfaction data reveals a significant gap between the platforms. Walnut currently ranks 17th on G2's demo automation category with a satisfaction score of 32/100, while Storylane maintains substantially higher ratings with a satisfaction score of 99/100.
Storylane's intuitive interface and self-serve capabilities contribute to its higher user satisfaction. The platform's design focuses on practical usability rather than just aesthetic appeal, making it easier for teams to create, manage, and share demos without extensive training.
With a starting price of $9,200/year and no free tier, Walnut requires a substantial commitment upfront. This high entry point can be prohibitive for smaller teams or organizations wanting to test demo automation before making a significant investment.
Storylane’s pricing plans offer a more accessible approach with:
One of Storylane's biggest differentiators against Walnut is Lily, our demo automation agent that helps in two critical ways:
Lily's demo creation capabilities include:
As it stands, Walnut does not currently offer comparable AI features, putting them behind the innovation curve in the rapidly evolving demo automation space.
Storylane's Buyer Hub is a flagship feature that allows teams to showcase libraries of bite-sized product demos, PDFs, videos, and more through galleries and playlists. This organization makes it easier to:
Though Walnut supports a playlist style demo experience, its organization capabilities are relatively limited, making it challenging to manage multiple demos for different audiences and use cases.
Your decision ultimately depends on your priorities:
Choose Walnut if:
Choose Storylane if:
While both platforms will help you create interactive demos, Storylane offers a more versatile, user-friendly solution that scales across departments. Walnut's sales-specific approach works for certain teams, but its HTML-only focus, higher price point, and lower user satisfaction scores make it a more limited option for organizations looking to scale their demo strategy.
We encourage you to try both platforms and see the difference for yourself. Storylane's free plan makes it easy to get started without a significant commitment. If you choose to work with us, we hope the question "what's next?" excites you as much as it excites us!
If you're in the market for demo automation software, you've probably come across Storylane and Navattic. This comparison should help you differentiate between both platforms to guide your purchase decision.
At a high-level, customers prefer Storylane for the product functionality, versatility, ease-of-use, commercial model, and rate of innovation.
Before diving in, here’s a quick overview of core features common to both Storylane and Navattic — really, they’re table stakes for any modern demo automation platform:
And with that out of the way, here are a few ways Storylane stands out from Navattic...
Broadly, there are two formats of interactive demos:
In their own words, Navattic only specializes in top-of-funnel HTML demos. Storylane, on the other hand, is expressly designed for both demo formats — complete with auto-capture, annotations, guides, blurs, zooms, presenter videos, voice overs, and more.
What does this mean for you? With Storylane, you have the flexibility to pick between demo formats based on your needs: image-based guided demos for your website, video demos for email campaigns, HTML demos for sandbox environments, etc.
This flexibility (coupled with the next set of differences) puts Storylane in an unequivocally stronger position when it comes to scaling demos across departments and use-cases.
One of Storylane’s biggest differentiators against Navattic (and pretty much every other vendor in this category) is Lily, our demo automation agent. Broadly, Lily helps in two ways:
Here’s a rundown of what you can do with Lily today:
As for discovery, think of Lily as a conversation product expert with as much information as your best sales person, available 24/7 to guide prospects through discovery and qualification. Coming soon.
Where’s Navattic at with all this? As it stands, they do not support any comparable features.
Next up, we have Demo Hub: one of Storylane’s flagship features to address multiple buyer personas and use-cases in one place with galleries and playlists of demos. Galleries help marketers showcase a library of bite-sized product demos on their website (without overwhelming early stage prospects) while playlists help sales and presales teams share curated demo experiences with later stage prospects.
Navattic does not support any comparable feature to date. As it stands, Navattic’s response to Demo Hub is Demodash, an agency that charges as much as $2000 per demo to create demo centers for their customers.
Another key differentiator is Storylane's lineup of native apps. We’re the only demo automation vendors to support apps for Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Desktop (Mac).
These quality of life improvements are designed especially for sales teams to personalize and share demos without logging into Storylane (plus, easier change management is always nice).
You might be noticing a pattern here: To date, Navattic does not support this functionality — and given their focus on a limited set of use-cases, nor do we believe that they plan to. More on this next.
Most demo automation vendors sell to a specific function. Saleo sells to sales. Consensus sells to pre-sales. And Navattic? Well they primarily sell to marketers. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach, it can be a limiting factor when you’re looking to scale demo operations across departments and use-cases.
Storylane is specifically designed for horizontal adoption across marketing, pre-sales, sales, and even customer success, product, and development teams. The differences in product functionality highlighted above (coupled with under the radar features such as secure demo sharing and personalized links for email campaigns) are testament to this claim.
As for which demo automation software is easier to use, we’ll let numbers do the talking.
"Storylane makes it much easier to organize content with its tagging system for chapters and sections. While Navattic allows labeling, it lacks searchability and filtering capabilities, which becomes crucial when managing multiple chapters. I particularly appreciate how Storylane structures chapters with their own dedicated build sections. In contrast, with Navattic, when I created an 80-step process, it stretched into one long, horizontal sequence that required constant scrolling back and forth. Storylane's more concise organization makes me much more excited to build out product demos” - A customer when asked about how Storylane compared to Navattic
Upon initial inspection, Storylane is (slightly) more expensive per plan than Navattic. A closer look, however, reveals that we offer several features in our lower tier plans. To name a few:
If you really think about it, this probably translates to better bang for your buck. But what about the whole “unlimited seats” deal? Sounds great, sure — but how sustainable is it really? As your organization (and demo requirements) start to scale, it’s unrealistic to expect the same support for a 5 seat plan as a 200 seat plan. Another reason why Storylane’s value-based pricing makes more sense for the long run.
Edit: Recently, Navattic has also started capping their seats per plan. Goes to show that as a commercial model, the whole unlimited seats approach probably didn't work out as intended.
And there you have it! Both Navattic and Storylane are leading demo automation softwares — but when you break it down, it’s hard to argue against the latter. Storylane's objectively in the clear for most buying considerations: functionality, versatility, ease-of-use, and commercials.
It may not feel like it (especially to us), but demo automation has only been around for a handful of years. As a category, we’re still in nascent stages. Unlike with established verticals such as CRMs or project management tools, it’s on younger companies like ours to innovate and push the envelope in these “early days” of demo automation.
Nitty-gritty comparisons aside, it’s worth sharing that Storylane has been at the forefront of this since day one. With category-first initiatives like self-serve PLG, Demo Hub, and more recently, Lily AI — innovation continues to be at the heart of our business. If you decide to go with Storylane, we hope the question “what's next?” excites you as much as it excites us!
From day one, our mission has been to simplify B2B buying and selling. When we launched in 2021, we recognized that product demos – a key touchpoint in most customer journeys – generated undue friction for buyers and sellers alike. From both a creation and discovery stand point, demos fell flat in terms of ease-of-use, accessibility, and scalability. This gap is exactly what we set out to close with Storylane.
Storylane's growth has always been marked by industry-first innovations. We began by introducing interactive demos in 2022. The goal was to help teams build quick and simple demos for a range of marketing and sales use-cases. Soon enough, this put us on the map as the fastest, easiest-to-use demo automation tool in the market.
Next, in 2023, we became the first self-serve platform in our category. Here, our goal was to democratize access to demo automation for marketing, sales, and presales teams of all sizes. Today, we work with over 3000 companies ranging from early-stage startups to industry giants such as Microsoft, Gong, and Cognism.
Last year, in 2024, we recognized that one demo wasn’t going to cut it. After all, B2B purchase decisions involve multiple buyer personas, use-cases, and product lines. In such cases, it only makes sense to share multiple, context-specific demos with prospects.
After much anticipation, we launched Demo Hub; another category-first innovation designed to share multiple demos as galleries or playlists.
We’ve done well to get to where we are today — but we know there’s still a ton of scope to simplify B2B buying and selling for everyone involved. We realize that:
And so, in our attempt to address these all-too-common gaps in the buying experience, we're thrilled to announce Storylane’s boldest innovation yet: Lily, your demo automation agent.
Lily is a demo automation agent built for both buyers and sellers. She represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll be thinking about demo creation and discovery going forward, bringing in an agentic approach to Storylane’s existing line of demo automation products.
1. Create with AI: Simply capture your product with Storylane's browser extension and leave the rest to us. Lily will create and optimize demos in a single click — complete with product-specific guides, annotations, and voiceovers.
2. AI Avatars: Pick from dozens of avatars — or make one of yourself. Share a script and generate studio-quality presenter videos in seconds. No camera, edits, or redos needed.
3. AI Voiceovers: Speak your audience’s language — literally. Generate studio-quality voiceovers in over 60 diverse voices and 25 languages.
4. AI HTML Editor: Customize demos on the fly to meet your prospect's unique needs. Edit text, images, and graphs with just simple, code-free prompts — Lily does the rest.
All this? Just the beginning.
In March, Lily will evolve to support autonomous, contextual demo discovery for buyers. Imagine prospects exploring your product, right on your website, through intelligent conversations with Lily — getting exactly the information they need, when they need it — without any of the friction associated with traditional sales touchpoints.
In short, Lily will be a 24/7 tour guide — equipped with as much product knowledge as your best sales rep — to support buyers with contextual, self-serve product discovery.
As we launch Lily, we're more committed than ever to our founding mission: eliminating friction in B2B buying and selling. We believe agentic demo automation represents the next frontier in B2B sales enablement, moving beyond static product demos to intelligent product experiences.
To our customers who've been part of this journey – thank you. Your feedback and trust have been instrumental in shaping not just Storylane, but the future of demo automation. And to those considering how to make their demo experience more effective and engaging – welcome to the era of agentic demo automation.
The future of product demonstrations is here, and we couldn't be more excited to help you tell your product's story in ways never before possible.
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