Onboarding teardowns
One product at a time, walked in a real browser with no account: the exact path, the number of steps to the first useful action, the time it took measured rather than guessed, what the product does well, and three changes with the reason each one matters.
Why we publish these
Most writing about onboarding is about onboarding in general. This is not that. Each teardown is one product, one path, one date, and numbers anyone can re-measure — because a claim you can check is worth more than an opinion you cannot.
We count the same way every time, so the numbers mean something next to each other. The rules are below, and they are printed on every teardown. If we counted your product wrong, tell us and we will fix the page and say what changed.
If you want the pattern rather than the walk, the blog has the general version: ten SaaS onboarding examples and product tour examples. Our calculators turn the same measurements into money: time to value, funnel conversion and the revenue effect of activation.
Every teardown so far
Newest first. The numbers are the ones we measured on the day we walked it.
| Product | Walked | Steps | Time to first value | First useful action |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Excalidraw | 2026-09-27 | 3 | ~1.0 s | a shape on the canvas |
| Plausible Analytics | 2026-09-27 | 2 | ~0.5 s to the screen, 2.4–3.3 s to the numbers | the dashboard re-scoped to one traffic source |
How we counted
- A step is one deliberate action that moves you along the path: a click or tap, one field filled in, one required choice, or one dismissal of something the product put in your way (a cookie wall, a modal, a tour). Activating the entry control — the button or address you start from — is step 1. Page loads, redirects and waiting are not steps.
- The clock starts when the entry control is activated and stops when the result of the first useful action is on screen. We measure the product’s own latency with the page’s own clock, never a stopwatch: every wait ends on a condition we poll for, and the reading excludes the time a person spends reading and deciding. Treat the number as a floor, not as a user’s experience.
- The first useful action is the first thing that produces the output you came for — a drawing on the canvas, an answer to a question you asked of your data, a workflow that ran. Finishing a tour, verifying an email or seeing a dashboard someone else built is not it.
- We never create accounts. Every walk uses a public demo, sandbox or test mode. When a product cannot be reached without signing up, we say so and walk something else. That means we see the front door, not the signed-in house, and we say what we missed.
Disclosure
Questions
How do you pick the products?
They have to be well known enough that the walk is useful to someone, and reachable without an account — a public demo, a sandbox or a test mode. We never sign up, never enter credentials and never accept terms on anybody’s behalf, so a product that cannot be opened without an account waits until its owner can walk it.
Whose screenshots are these?
Ours. Every picture on these pages was taken by us on a publicly reachable page, cropped to the part we are discussing, with the product named in the caption. Nothing from behind a login, no marketing images, and nothing showing another person’s data.
You sell onboarding software. Why should we believe you?
Partly you should not, and we say so on every page. What we can offer instead of trust is method: the same counting rules every time, the path written out step by step, the screens attached, and the measurements stated with the machine they were taken on. Check them. The point of publishing numbers is that they can be wrong in public.
Can you tear down our product?
Yes, and we will publish what we find, including the parts you would rather we did not. Write to hello@getclew.io. If your first useful action is behind a sign-up, send a sandbox or a test account and we will say in the article that you gave us one.
How often do these appear?
The intent is a substantial teardown most days, plus shorter ones. The queue of candidates and their public entry points lives with the project so the series does not have to re-research itself every morning.