Whatfix | Monetization project on B2B SaaS
📄

Whatfix | Monetization project on B2B SaaS

Product is not monetizing- The litmus test

This section is not applicable for Whatfix. Please refer to the next sections

Product is monetizing

Screenshot 2025-04-12 at 4.08.15 PM.png

🎯 Company Background

Founded in 2014, Whatfix is a B2B SaaS digital adoption platform that provides in-app, step-by-step contextual guidance to end users on enterprise applications. For example, when deployed on an HR platform like SAP SuccessFactors, Whatfix can offer guided walkthroughs, self-help widgets, and tooltips directly within the application.

This enables organizations to onboard users faster, reduce employee training time, cut down on support queries, and improve overall user adoption. The primary use cases for Whatfix include:

  1. Reducing training and support costs
  2. Accelerating adoption of enterprise software
  3. Improving the digital user experience across functions like HR, IT, finance, and operations

Whatfix’s primary product is its Digital Adoption Platform that offers features like guided walkthroughs, help functionality, notification pop-ups to help users learn within an application. Apart from this, Whatfix also offers the following products:

  1. Whatfix Product Analytics - helps enterprises analyze how user behaviour on an application so that they can understand how to enhance the application experience for the end users
  2. Whatfix Mirror - Whatfix Mirror is an application simulation software builder that provides interactive, replica sandbox environments of any web application for hands-on end-user training.

As of FY24, Whatfix’s revenue was USD 51 Mn, a growth of 49% over FY23. 70% of its customers are based in North America. Whatfix generates its income primarily through software subscriptions and professional services that enable customers to utilize its hosted platform throughout the contract duration. These services are provided on a subscription basis. Whatfix is already monetizing.

🔁 Retention Curve 

For a SaaS company like Whatfix, retention is measured through Net Revenue Retention. Net Revenue Retention (NRR) or Net Dollar Retention (NDR) is a crucial SaaS metric that measures recurring revenue generated from existing customers, considering churn, contractions, expansions, and upgrades. A good NRR is above 100%, with successful SaaS companies averaging around 143%


💡To calculate Net Revenue Retention: (Total Revenue at the end - Revenue Churn + Expansion Revenue) / Revenue at the beginning x 100.

Based on the latest data from 2021 onwards, Whatfix’s NRR is as follows:


Year

NRR

2021

132%

2022

127%

2023

115%

2024

111%

image

The Net Revenue Retention (NRR) curve for Whatfix from 2021 to 2024 shows a gradual decline from 132% to 111%. Despite the softening, the NRR consistently remained above 100%, indicating that Whatfix not only retained existing customers but also successfully expanded revenue within accounts year over year. The curve reflects the company’s strong land-and-expand motion, a critical driver of sustainable growth for B2B SaaS businesses.


🛠️ Depth of Engagement


Type of User

Average Contract Value

% of Total Revenue

Product and service usage

Casual

$47k

46%

Product - Digital adoption platform

Add-on paid services - none

Core

$300k

21%

Product - Digital adoption platform

Add-on paid services - Dedicated digital adoption assistant + Professional services

Power

$900k

33%

Product - Digital adoption platform

Add-on paid services - Dedicated digital adoption assistant + Professional services + dedicated digital adoption project manager + Product Analytics for user behaviour analysis +

The Core and Power customer segments account for 54% of Whatfix’s total revenue. These customers use add-on services from Whatfix to enhance the usage of the product. This shows depth of engagement with the core digital adoption platform.


🌟Core Value Proposition


  • Target customer: CIO, Functional Heads, L&D Professionals, Product Owners at mid sized and large enterprises who are responsible for implementation and roll-out of employee facing and customer-facing applications
  • Needs: improve user productivity, ensure process compliance, and enhance user experience of internal and customer-facing applications
  • Product: Digital Adoption Platform
  • Category: Application Adoption


CVP: For mid-sized and large enterprises who need to improve user productivity, ensure process compliance, and enhance the user experience of internal and customer-facing applications, Whatfix is a Digital Adoption Platform that delivers in-app guidance, training, and performance support, driving faster and more cost-effective application adoption compared to traditional training methods or alternative digital adoption solutions.

JTBD - The primary JTBD for Whatfix is Functional. It helps enterprises make application adoption easier and faster. The secondary JTBD for Whatfix is Financial. Whatfix makes application adoption more cost-effective by reducing the need for heavy training teams or external support.

Substitute pricing

🧩Substitutes of Whatfix

Whatfix has the following substitutes in the market:

  1. Digital Adoption Platforms like WalkMe: WalkMe is a direct competitor offering similar digital adoption capabilities, including in-app guidance, user onboarding, and analytics. It targets mid-sized to large enterprises looking to enhance user adoption across applications.
  2. Application-Specific Guided Learning Solutions: Some enterprise software providers, such as Oracle, offer their own built-in guided learning solutions. These are typically plug-and-play modules designed specifically for their platforms, offering limited customization and flexibility compared to dedicated digital adoption platforms.
  3. In-House Training and Support Teams: Organizations that choose not to invest in a digital adoption platform often set up internal change management, training, and support teams. These teams manually assist with onboarding, training, and user support, but the approach can be resource-intensive and less scalable over time.

A detailed comparison of key differentiators is given below:


Differentiator

Description

Whatfix

Walkme (acquired by SAP)

Application Specific Guided Learning (Eg - Oracle Guided Learning)

In-house training & support team

Easy to build training and support content

Build in-app guidance with easy to use no-code editor

Offers a code-free editor for building a knowledge base that supports self-guided learning.

Offers a code-free editor for building a knowledge base that supports self-guided learning.

No content creation capabilities. These are usually plug and play solutions

Requires significant time and technical resources to develop training materials.

Customization flexibility

Design and configure in-app content to match specific organizational workflows, branding, and user needs without heavy technical dependency.

Offers extensive customization to align with organizational workflows and branding.

Provides customization options but may require technical expertise for complex modifications.

Customization is limited

High customization potential but demands considerable effort and resources.

Personalized in-app guidance

Deliver context-sensitive help by targeting users with relevant information based on their role, behavior, and stage in the user journey.

Enables personalized, role-based in-app guidance and support.

Provides contextual in-app guidance with user segmentation support.

Personalization capabilities are limited

Personalization depends on the scalability and resources of the training team.

Measure in-app training

Track user engagement with training content and evaluate the effectiveness of onboarding and process compliance through detailed analytics.

Offers guidance analytics to track user engagement and training effectiveness.

Provides user and account-level analytics with segmented support.

General end-user engagement and in-app content analytics; lacks advanced product analytics.

Measurement relies on manual assessments and feedback; lacks automated analytics.

User behaviour analytics

Monitor and analyze user interactions within applications to uncover friction points, drop-offs, and opportunities for process optimization.

Provides in-depth content consumption and usage analytics; offers an add-on for custom event tracking.

Delivers user and account-level analytics with segmented support.

Offers general analytics; may not provide detailed user behavior insights.

Analysis is typically qualitative and resource-intensive.

Integration with support tools

Seamlessly integrate with popular LMSs, knowledge bases, support ticketing systems, analytics platforms, and video channels to provide holistic in-app assistance.

Integrates with various LMSs, knowledge bases, and support tools for comprehensive in-app assistance.

Offers API and advanced API support for integrations; some features exclusive to custom plans.

Limited support for external tools

Not applicable

Multi-language support

Localize help content into multiple languages to cater to diverse user cohorts across different geographies and business units.

Supports auto-translation of content for a global user base.

Offers multi-language support; may require additional configuration.

May or may not provide multi-language support

Requires extensive resources for translation and localization.

Enterprise - wide use

Scale digital adoption across multiple applications and departments, supporting both employee-facing and customer-facing workflows within large enterprises.

Designed for scalability across various applications and departments.

Suitable for large organizations; complex customizations may require technical knowledge.

Restricted to the application within the enterprise

Scalability is limited by available resources and expertise.

Customer Service

Provide dedicated customer success managers and account managers to ensure ongoing support, best practices adoption, and proactive issue resolution.

Known for responsive customer support and personalized solutions.

Provides customer support; quality may vary based on plan and region.

Support is integrated within the application's broader customer service framework.

Service will vary depending on the quality of the team hired

Ease of setup

Flexible deployment options including cloud-based, web extension, or on-premise implementations, ensuring minimal disruption to existing IT infrastructure.

Offers an Editor plugin for Chrome that facilitates setup; scores slightly below average for ease of setup.

Implementation can be complex; may require technical expertise.

Deployment is streamlined within the application

Time consuming to hire and set up a team

Pricing

Pricing based on factors such as number of users, applications supported, and features enabled, offering flexible plans for different enterprise needs.

Generally considered more affordable; exact pricing varies.

Pricing is customized; typically higher cost due to extensive features.

Pricing details are not publicly disclosed; likely integrated with Oracle's pricing models.

Pricing depends on the size and location of the in-house training and support team. Typically higher than a digital adoption platform


✨Key differentiators of Whatfix over its Substitutes

1. Whatfix vs. WalkMe (Other Digital Adoption Platforms)

Key Differentiators:

  • More Cost-Effective: Whatfix typically offers a more affordable pricing structure compared to WalkMe, making it attractive for mid-sized and cost-conscious enterprises.
  • Lower Technical Complexity: Whatfix requires less technical effort to deploy and customize, enabling faster time-to-value.
  • Superior Customer Support: Whatfix is known for its personalized customer success engagement compared to WalkMe’s tiered support model.

What customers are paying for:
💸⚡️ Ease of setup, faster deployment, better ROI at a lower cost.

If they don't pay:
💵🚨 They might choose WalkMe and incur higher costs and longer implementation times.


2. Whatfix vs. Application-Specific Guided Learning (e.g., Oracle Guided Learning)

Key Differentiators:

  • Cross-Application Scalability: Whatfix can be deployed across multiple applications (Salesforce, SAP, Workday, etc.), while Oracle Guided Learning is restricted to Oracle products.
  • Customization Flexibility: Whatfix allows deep customization of workflows, branding, and user segmentation, while in-app guided learning tools offer limited out-of-the-box solutions.
  • Advanced Analytics: Whatfix provides detailed user behavior analytics, helping organizations optimize processes, which most in-app guided learning modules lack.
  • Enhanced Multi-Language Support: Whatfix enables localization for global teams, whereas application-specific guides often lack broad multilingual capabilities.

What customers are paying for:
🌐📊 Cross-application scalability, custom workflows, deep insights into user behavior.

If they don't pay:
¦ They are limited to rigid, pre-built guidance within one application ecosystem without insights or flexibility.


3. Whatfix vs. In-House Training and Support Teams

Key Differentiators:

  • Faster Setup and Scale: Setting up and operationalizing an internal training team is resource-intensive and slow. Whatfix offers ready-to-deploy, scalable solutions.
  • Continuous Content Maintenance: Whatfix updates content dynamically as applications evolve, whereas in-house teams struggle to manually maintain training material.
  • Cost Efficiency: Employing, training, and retaining internal staff over time can be significantly more expensive than adopting a scalable digital platform.
  • Consistency and Standardization: Whatfix ensures consistent learning experiences across all users and locations, which is difficult to achieve with manual training efforts.

What customers are paying for:
⚡️🎯 Speed, scale, lower maintenance effort, and consistent training experiences.

If they don't pay:
🛠️ They need to build, maintain, and continually update manual processes, leading to higher long-term operational costs.


Whom to charge?

💵 Monetization Hypothesis

Expansion of Whatfix licenses across multiple applications within an organization presents a scalable revenue growth opportunity once functional value is demonstrated. The following section details how to monetize existing customers using the value management framework.


🧐 Whom to charge?

In Whatfix’s current model, many customers initially adopt the platform for a single application. However, expanding Whatfix licenses across additional applications within the organization (e.g., CRM, ERP, HRMS systems) remains a largely untapped monetization opportunity.

Once value is proven in one app, the customer can expand Whatfix across more apps (HRMS, CRM, ERP, internal tools, etc.). Expansion from 1-2 apps to more than 4 apps can multiply contract value 2x-5x easily. The more the applications Whatfix is deployed, the lower is the churn risk of a customer.


In the case of Whatfix, a customer would expand the license to another application only when it sees tangible benefit from its current deployment. As the JTBD of Whatfix is functional, the tangible benefit can be shown in terms of:

  1. Time saved in onboarding employees compared to traditional classroom training
  2. Cost savings from reduced dependency on manual training and support teams
  3. Operational efficiency in creating and maintaining training content versus manual methods


Further, expansion of Whatfix license can be charged to those customers who have more than 1 enterprise application and invest in in-app learning or training within the application. 

Hence, expansion can be charged to customers who meet the following criteria:

  1. Customers with multiple enterprise applications who already invest in in-app learning or digital training.
  2. Customers who have realized tangible benefits (time or cost savings) from their current Whatfix deployment.


📊 RFM Analysis

To prioritize monetization efforts effectively, we conducted an RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis across Whatfix’s customer base.

  • Recency measures how recently a customer engaged with Whatfix.
  • Frequency measures how often the customer uses Whatfix 
  • Monetary measures the customer’s contract value and their investment in Whatfix's services.

The analysis reveals that Core and Power users, with higher recency, frequency of use, and monetary value, are prime candidates for license expansion and upsell strategies.
Casual users, with lower deployment depth and monetary commitment, should be nurtured carefully, and expansion efforts should follow only after demonstrating tangible ROI.

When to charge?

🕑 When to charge?

In a SaaS company like Whatfix, the decision to pitch for expansion revenue should be driven by consistent value realization by the customer.

Customer Success Managers (CSMs) play a critical role in this process by conducting Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), where they showcase usage metrics, time savings, and cost savings derived from Whatfix deployment. Demonstrating tangible outcomes builds confidence and opens the door for identifying additional use cases and expansion opportunities.

The perceived value of Whatfix is twofold:

  • Functional Goal: Helping enterprises make application adoption easier and faster.
  • Financial Goal: Reducing the need for heavy training teams or external support, making adoption more cost-effective.

Following the Value Management Framework, the value realization journey at Whatfix can be mapped as:


Stage

Whatfix Strategy

Responsible Team

Value Creation

Create a product that helps enterprises accelerate and simplify application adoption

Product

Value Communication

During sales cycle, communicate quantified impact such as:

- 1.25x increase in employee productivity

- 84% reduction in training content creation cost

- 65% faster go-to-launch for enterprise applications (as highlighted on Whatfix’s website and sales communications).

Sales

Value Experience

Post-implementation, demonstrate actual value realization using usage analytics and customer success metrics. Value experience must be reinforced regularly through QBRs, and ideally locked in 3 to 6 months before contract renewal to secure expansion opportunities.

Customer Success and Account Management

Thus, at Whatfix, expansion monetization should begin once:

  • Perceived value > Perceived price
  • Tangible functional and financial outcomes have been communicated and experienced by the customer

Timing expansion pitches only after proving clear functional and financial value ensures that Whatfix customers view additional deployments not as an expense, but as a natural next step towards broader digital transformation.


🎯💸 Value Communication

At Whatfix, Value Experience Can Be Communicated across 4 levels of maturity


Level

Description

What to track

Why is it important

1

Product Usage Metrics

% of users actively engaging with Whatfix features (guides, flows, tooltips, task lists)

Shows whether customers are adopting Whatfix itself. (Early indicator of functional success.)

2

User behaviour metrics

- Task completion rates and time

- % of users completing workflows without external help

- Application adoption rates

Proves that users are completing business processes faster and independently (Functional JTBD).

3

Operational Efficiency Metrics

- Reduction in training hours needed

- Drop in support queries related to application usage

Shows operational improvement and reduced support dependency (Financial JTBD).

4

Business Impact Metrics

Reduction in operational costs (training + support)

- Increase in employee productivity (tasks completed per day/week)

- Faster launch of enterprise applications

Tangible proof of business value delivered — critical before pitching for expansion or renewals.

Tracking and showcasing these metrics regularly during QBRs ensures that perceived value exceeds perceived price — creating the right conditions to pitch for expansion revenue.

What to charge for?

The decision on what to charge for is dependent on the core value proposition of Whatfix and the user outcomes it delivers.

🎯 CVP:

Whatfix helps mid-sized and large enterprises accelerate user productivity, ensure process compliance, and enhance the experience of employee and customer-facing applications through in-app guidance and performance support.

💡 Core user outcome:

Faster and more cost-effective application adoption

🤑 What to charge?

Whatfix can be deployed across employee and customer facing applications. 

  • Employee facing applications - Employee-facing applications are those used by employees for internal business functions. Eg - Workday, Salesforce, Successfactors. The primary user outcome is faster and smoother application adoption.
  • Customer facing applications - Customer-facing applications are those used by an organization’s customers, partners, or external users. Eg - HDFC banking app. The primary outcome is faster adoption that drives increased frequency of customer usage.


The pricing model of Whatfix is as follows:


Application type

What to charge for?

Pricing Model

Description

Employee facing

# of employees with access to Whatfix 

Access

For employee-facing applications, pricing follows an Access model, where customers pay based on the total number of users with access to the application, regardless of actual usage.

Customer facing

Monthly active users

Output

For customer-facing applications, pricing follows an Output model, where customers are charged based on the number of Monthly Active Users (MAUs) actively using the application.

How much to charge?

Pricing can be tackled using logical estimation of the value delivered to customers.

1. Employee-Facing Applications (Access Model Pricing)

Hypothesis:

The value Whatfix provides = Time saved by reducing training + Cost saved from reduced support dependency.


User Category

Average Training Cost Saved/User

Average Support Cost Saved/User

Total Perceived Annual Value

Suggested Annual License/User

New Deployment Customer (Casual)

$200

$100

$300

~$30–$50/user/year

Expansion Customer (Core)

$400

$150

$550

~$50–$80/user/year

Strategic Customer (Power)

$500

$250

$750

~$80–$100/user/year

Assumption: Pricing ~1/10th of perceived annual value to maintain perceived fairness and scalability.


2. Customer-Facing Applications (Output Model Pricing)

Hypothesis:

The value Whatfix provides = Increase in active customer engagement and cost savings from reduced onboarding/support queries.


User Category

Average Revenue/User/Month (for customer)

Value of Faster Adoption (5% higher engagement)

Suggested Charge per MAU/Month

New App Launch Customer (Casual)

$10

$0.50

~$0.05–$0.10/MAU/month

Growing App Customer (Core)

$20

$1.00

~$0.10–$0.15/MAU/month

Mature App Customer (Power)

$50

$2.50

~$0.20–$0.30/MAU/month

Assumption: Pricing ~1/10th of the marginal value created by better onboarding and engagement.

Summary


Application Type

Pricing Basis

Example Metric

Suggested Pricing Anchor

Employee-Facing Applications

Access

$ per user per year

~$30–$100/user/year

Customer-Facing Applications

Output (Usage)

$ per Monthly Active User (MAU)

~$0.05–$0.30/MAU/month

By anchoring pricing to tangible functional and financial outcomes, Whatfix ensures that customers perceive strong value relative to price — enabling sustainable monetization as adoption scales.

Pricing page

🔎 Pricing Page Discovery

The Pricing page on Whatfix’s website is easily discoverable through the top navigation bar and remains consistently accessible even when users browse other sections of the site. This ensures clear navigation for users arriving from organic search, direct visits, or referrals.


image


However, product and feature pages currently prioritize linking users to the Demo Request page instead of embedding contextual links to the Pricing page.

This represents a potential friction point, as prospective customers often seek preliminary pricing information before committing to a demo request. Early visibility into pricing can help set expectations, qualify leads better, and improve overall conversion rates.

Recommendation:

Embed contextual links to the Pricing page within product and feature descriptions to allow users to self-navigate to pricing when they are exploring the value proposition, thereby reducing friction in the user journey.


🎨 Pricing Page Design

✅ What is working

Clear product differentiation - On clicking the Pricing page, there is a clear demarcation of products and platforms, allowing users to quickly identify offerings.

image

Structured feature comparison - Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans are laid out in a comparison table, helping users understand feature differences.

image

Feature tooltips - Drop-down explanations for each feature enhance user understanding without cluttering the page.

image

Visibility of add-ons - Additional services such as Product Analytics and Customer Support Services are listed, giving customers an option to customize based on needs.

image

FAQ section - A well-placed FAQ section addresses common concerns about subscription models, features, and add-ons, reducing user hesitation.

image

❌ What's not working

No indicative pricing - Although the FAQ section mentions that subscription is based on a flat fee plus user license, there is no visible indicative dollar pricing for Standard, Premium, or Enterprise plans. Users lack even a ballpark figure to gauge affordability.

image

Trust Signals Are Missing on Pricing Page - No customer logos, testimonials, or third-party endorsements appear directly around the pricing tables to reinforce credibility at the point of purchase consideration. There is just one testimonial on the pricing page.

image

Over-Reliance on Demo CTA - The only call-to-action is “Get a Demo,” which may discourage pricing-sensitive users who want preliminary information before engaging with sales.

image

Add-Ons Not Bundled Visibly - Add-on features are listed separately at the bottom rather than being bundled with plans, missing a chance to increase perceived value.

image

💡 Recommendations for Pricing Page Redesign

The redesign incorporates cognitive biases like Price Anchoring, Borrowing Trust, and the Ownership Effect, tailored for Whatfix’s enterprise audience. This design will improve user decision-making, reduce friction, and better align perceived value with purchase action.

1. Introduce Price Anchoring (Middle Plan Bias)

🧠 Behavioral Bias Used: Price Anchoring + Decoy Effect

  • Add indicative pricing ranges (even if approximate) for Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans.
  • Make Premium Plan visually stand out (highlighted border, tag like "Most Popular") so that users subconsciously lean toward it.

Why: Buyers naturally prefer middle options when faced with three tiers — it feels "safe and balanced”


2. Introduce Trust Signals ("Borrowing Trust" Bias)

🧠 Behavioral Bias Used: Borrowing Trust Effect

  • Add logos of well-known customers (e.g., Cisco, Experian, UPS) above or near the pricing tables.
  • Add small quotes or mini-testimonials linked to specific features ("Helped us cut onboarding time by 60% — Cisco").

Why: Third-party trust reassures users that buying Whatfix is a safe and credible decision.


3. Clarify Add-On Bundling (Surround Effect / Bundling)

🧠 Behavioral Bias Used: Surround Effect / Bundling

  • Instead of showing add-ons buried far below, show bundles like: ➔ "Add Digital Adoption Assistant + Product Analytics" for +20% uplift.

Why: Users see more value when bundles are framed together rather than isolated. It makes upselling easier too.


📖 Summary

In a B2B SaaS company, monetization through license expansion depends on consistently delivering and showcasing value — starting from the moment a lead is captured to post-implementation value realization.

To succeed, all teams — from sales to customer success — must be aligned on what value is being communicated and how customers will experience it, particularly through tangible outcomes like cost savings, time savings, and improved efficiency.

In the case of Whatfix, the core value communicated is faster and more cost-effective application adoption.
This messaging is reinforced across Whatfix’s website and during demo discussions with potential customers.
Once a deal is signed, customers experience this value through metrics such as:

  • Reduction in training hours needed
  • Drop in support queries related to application usage
  • Cost savings achieved by reducing dependence on training and support teams

Value management is not just important — it is critical.
It ensures that customers see, experience, and believe in the product’s impact, driving stronger retention, deeper product adoption, and sustainable revenue growth.


[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]

Brand focused courses

Great brands aren't built on clicks. They're built on trust. Craft narratives that resonate, campaigns that stand out, and brands that last.

View all courses

All courses

Master every lever of growth — from acquisition to retention, data to events. Pick a course, go deep, and apply it to your business right away.

View all courses

Explore foundations by GrowthX

Built by Leaders From Amazon, CRED, Zepto, Hindustan Unilever, Flipkart, paytm & more

View All Foundations

Crack a new job or a promotion with the Career Centre

Designed for mid-senior & leadership roles across growth, product, marketing, strategy & business

View All Resources

Learning Resources

Browse 500+ case studies, articles & resources the learning resources that you won't find on the internet.

Patience—you’re about to be impressed.