Frigade – Build Product Onboarding That Actually Works

TL;DR

TL;DR: Frigade is a developer tool for building interactive, customizable product onboarding checklists and flows — without wrestling with UI code or spending weeks on a feature that users ignore.

Source and Accuracy Notes

• Official site: frigade.com
• Documentation: docs.frigade.com
• Demo: frigade.com/#demo (built with Frigade itself)

What Is Frigade?

Product onboarding is one of those things that every product team knows matters, but most teams deprioritize it because building good onboarding is genuinely hard. You need interactive checklists, tooltips, announcements, and flow logic — all tied to user state — and none of it ships for free.

Frigade gives developers an API-first platform to build these experiences without building them from scratch. Instead of hand-coding a multi-step checklist with progress tracking, you define your flows in code (or JSON) and let Frigade handle rendering, state management, and analytics.

The key differentiator is that Frigade is built for developers first. It’s not a no-code drag-and-drop tool. You embed it via SDK, define your onboarding flows programmatically, and get a polished result that matches your product’s design.

What Frigade Handles

• Checklists — Multi-step guided tours with progress tracking
• Tooltips — Contextual hints tied to specific UI elements
• Modals and banners — Announcement-style notices
• Flow branching — Show different onboarding paths based on user role or behavior
• Analytics — Track completion rates, drop-off points, and step-level metrics

Setup Workflow

Frigade’s SDK integrates with web apps. Here’s the general approach for a React project:

Step 1: Install the SDK

npm install @frigade/react

Step 2: Define Your First Flow

import { Frigade } from '@frigade/react';

const frigade = new Frigade({
  apiKey: process.env.FRIGADE_API_KEY,
});

const flow = await frigade.getFlow('getting-started-checklist');

Step 3: Embed the Checklist

{flow && <Frigade.Flow flowId="getting-started-checklist" />}

Step 4: Track Completion in Your Analytics

frigade.on('stepCompleted', ({ flowId, stepId }) => {
  // Send to Segment, Mixpanel, PostHog, etc.
  analytics.track('onboarding_step_completed', { flowId, stepId });
});

Step 5: Style to Match Your Brand

.frigade-checklist {
  --frigade-primary-color: #6366f1;
  --frigade-font-family: 'Inter', sans-serif;
}

Deeper Analysis

Why Onboarding Tools Are Hard to Build Well

Most internal onboarding solutions start as a Notion doc or a Slide deck. When teams finally build it into the product, they underestimate the complexity:

• State management — Did the user complete this step? Skip it? Come back later?
• UI rendering — Checklists need to look good, be responsive, and animate smoothly
• Progress persistence — Onboarding state should survive page refreshes and sessions
• Design consistency — The onboarding UI needs to match the product, not look bolted on
• Analytics loop — You need to know where users drop off to improve the flow

Frigade handles all of this out of the box. You focus on the content and flow logic; Frigade handles the rendering and state.

Developer-First vs. No-Code

Unlike no-code onboarding tools (like Chameleon or WalkMe), Frigade is code-first. This means:

• You version control your onboarding flows alongside your app code
• You can conditionally render steps based on user properties
• You can embed onboarding into existing components without iframe hacks
• Your team owns the data — Frigade doesn’t lock you into their analytics backend

Pricing

Frigade offers a free tier for small teams, with paid plans unlocking advanced features like analytics dashboards, A/B testing for flows, and custom branding. Check frigade.com/pricing for the latest.

Practical Evaluation Checklist

• [ ] Quick start guide gets you a working demo in under 10 minutes
• [ ] SDK supports React (with potential for other frameworks)
• [ ] Flow definitions can be stored as JSON/code (version-control friendly)
• [ ] Completion state persists across sessions
• [ ] Analytics hook fires on step completion and flow finish
• [ ] Styling API lets you match your product’s design system
• [ ] Supports conditional branching based on user properties
• [ ] Free tier available for evaluation

Security Notes

• API keys are server-side only — never expose them in client-side code
• Frigade’s JavaScript SDK runs in the browser and tracks user interaction events
• Flow definitions and user state are stored on Frigade’s servers — review their data handling policy if you’re in a regulated industry
• No PII is required on Frigade’s side — you control what user identifiers are passed

FAQ

Q: Does Frigade work with non-React frameworks? A: Currently the primary SDK is React-focused. For other frameworks, you can embed Frigade flows via their JavaScript API or iframe approach, though the developer experience is best with React.

Q: Can I build onboarding for mobile apps? A: Frigade is currently web-focused. Mobile onboarding requires a different approach, though the team has indicated mobile support on their roadmap.

Q: How is Frigade different from building a custom checklist component? A: A custom component handles rendering. Frigade handles rendering, state persistence, analytics, design theming, and flow management. For a one-time simple checklist, a custom component might be faster. For onboarding that needs to evolve with your product, Frigade saves significant engineering time.

Q: Does Frigade offer a self-hosted option? A: Frigade is a hosted SaaS product. There is no self-hosted version available at this time.

Q: Can I A/B test different onboarding flows? A: This is available on paid plans. You can test different flow variants and track which produces better activation rates.

Conclusion

Frigade fills a real gap for dev tool teams that want polished onboarding without building and maintaining it from scratch. The API-first approach means it fits naturally into a developer workflow — you define flows in code, version control them, and embed them where needed.

If your product has any onboarding (and if it doesn’t, it should), Frigade is worth evaluating. The free tier is generous enough to run a real evaluation, and the docs are clear enough to get a working prototype in an afternoon.

Next steps:

• Visit frigade.com/#demo to see it in action
• Read the docs to understand flow definitions
• Install the SDK and try building your first onboarding flow