Live demo agents and captured interactive demos
A captured demo is a clickable copy of your product, recorded ahead of time. A live agent works in the product itself while someone talks to it. Both are useful. Here is how to choose.
The two formats, row by row
| Question | Captured interactive demo | Live demo agent |
|---|---|---|
| What people see | Saved copies of your screens, captured ahead of time | Your product as it is today, in their browser |
| Who chooses the path | You do, when you build the steps | The visitor, by asking; you set the limits |
| A question you didn’t plan for | Not answered; the steps are fixed | Answered, within the pages and actions you allow |
| After you ship a change | Recapture the steps that changed | Uses the new screens; check that mapped paths still work |
| Same every time | Yes | No. Answers vary with the question |
| Works with no sound | Yes | Yes, with captions, and typing instead of talking |
| Where you can put it | Anywhere: emails, docs, blog posts, your site | Where your app or site runs the script |
| Risk to real data | None; it is a copy | Needs limits: use a demo workspace, and it asks before real changes |
| How cost grows | Usually with plan tier or seats | With minutes of conversation |
Choose a captured demo when
- You want the same polished steps every time, for a launch, a sales email or a help article.
- The demo needs to live outside your product, in places a script can’t run.
- Your product changes rarely, so recapturing is cheap.
- You don’t want a conversation at all, only a clear sequence.
Choose a live agent when
- Visitors arrive with different questions, and a fixed sequence answers only some of them.
- You ship often, and captured steps go stale.
- New users need help in their own account, with their own data.
- You would rather pay for conversations that happen than for seats.
Using both
They don’t compete for the same moment. A captured demo in a launch email can bring someone to your site, and a live guide can answer the question they arrive with.
A live agent with mapped paths sits between the two: the common flows play back quickly and the same way each time, and anything else gets a live answer.
The test we’ll add here
We plan to build the same task twice on one sample app, once as a captured demo and once with Showalong, and publish both recordings side by side: including an interruption, a question off the script, and the work needed after a change to the app.
Until then, this page compares the formats, not any company’s product. For specific products, see the comparisons.